Neglect Marilyn Manson, overlook the Intercourse Pistols; when it got here to surprising the self-appointed guardians of worldwide morality to the core, Alice Cooper just about wrote the handbook.
Flaunting a sketchy previous swathed in city legend and cunningly fabricated falsehoods regarding witches, ouija boards, dismembered chickens, blurred genders and necrophilia, Alice Cooper succeeded in outraging the forces of decency to an unprecedented diploma over the course of his informal early-70s transition from cult notoriety to mainstream ubiquity.
Cooper’s infamy was such that in Might 1973 Leo Abse, the incumbent Labour MP for Pontypool, spluttered within the Home of Commons: “I regard his [Cooper’s] act as an incitement to infanticide for his sub-teenage viewers. He’s intentionally attempting to contain these youngsters in sado-masochism. He’s peddling the tradition of the focus camp. Pop is one factor, anthems of necrophilia are one other.”
The nation’s main censorial nanny determine, Mary Whitehouse, head of the Nationwide Viewers’ and Listeners’ Affiliation, provided keen assist to Abse’s marketing campaign to ban Alice Cooper from returning to the UK. However as public response veered within the common route of hysteria, gross sales of Billion Greenback Infants (Cooper’s most provocative recording thus far) soared stratospherically; then, as now, controversy sells, and in 1973 no person was promoting greater than Alice Cooper.
After all, again in these days Alice Cooper had been a band; 5 people who had translated a shared fascination for the mop-tops and the macabre right into a million-dollar business that had not solely introduced them common vilification as wicked, corruptive pariahs, but additionally superstar past their wildest goals.
The quintet’s story begins innocently sufficient in Phoenix, Arizona, when monitor athlete Vincent Furnier is volunteered to organise the Cortez Excessive Faculty’s autumn 1964 Letterman Expertise Present.
Sadly, nobody appears to boast any discernible expertise, so Vince encourages some pals to take the stage as The Earwigs the place they mime alongside to Beatles data whereas carrying Beatles wigs. Guitarist Glen Buxton can really play his instrument. And whereas drummer John Speer fumbles his approach across the rudiments of percussion, bassist Dennis Dunaway hones his craft with the advantage of some helpful classes from Glen.
The Earwigs metamorphose into The Spiders; they play native Battle Of The Bands reveals; and so they exchange their departing rhythm guitarist John Tatum with ex-Cortez Excessive soccer star Michael Bruce of The Trolls.
Following a transfer to LA in spring ’67, the fledgling Coopers, now often known as The Nazz (however not for lengthy, due to Todd Rundgren’s band of the identical identify), exchange John Speer with fellow Phoenix émigré Neal Smith and set about endearing themselves to the Sundown Strip in-crowd by internet hosting common séances.
Quickly sufficient – now that they’re mixing in a social circle that features The Doorways’ Jim Morrison and Love’s Arthur Lee – Miss Christine (of The GTOs: Ladies Collectively Outrageously, the world’s first all-female rock band) arranges for the band to audition for Frank Zappa’s Straight label. The considerably over-eager Coopers famously flip up for his or her 6.30pm appointment at 6.30am, however discover their naïve tenacity amply rewarded when Zappa gives them a file deal.
Two days after altering their identify to Alice Cooper they’re taken on as the home assist band on the 20,000-capacity Cheetah Ballroom, the place they regularly construct a following regardless of the truth that their vocalist – having ditched the identify Vince in favour of the infinitely extra noteworthy Alice – had taken to carrying full make-up and a pink clown costume.
Progressively, the profitable Alice Cooper system takes form, and after recording a brace of feet-finding collections on Zappa’s Straight imprint (1969’s Pretties For You and ’70’s Straightforward Motion) the band signal to Warner Brothers and, with Canadian whiz-kid producer Bob Ezrin on the controls, hit the height of their kind with three set-piece collections launched in fast succession: June ’71’s Love It To Dying (the album that shocked America), December ’71’s Killer (the album that conquered America) and July ’72’s Faculty’s Out (the album that conquered the world).
Faculty’s Out, bolstered by the enormity of its anthemic title monitor, shortly attained the accolade of being the biggest-selling album in Warners’ historical past and, due to a frenzied tabloid press nearly foaming on the mouth with a degree of hyperbolic vitriol unseen because the introduction of the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper turned probably the most newsworthy and controversial band on the planet. However now got here the tough bit.
Within the face of blanket condemnation from the nice, the nice, the humourless, the pious and the post-pubescent, the band wanted to consolidate their place. Particularly, they wanted to make the best album of their profession: an over-inflated Grand Guignol masterpiece; an ostentatiously offensive, flashy, crass and unbelievably costly mixture of Herschell Gordon Lewis and Busby Berkeley positively assured to develop the technology hole to Grand Canyon proportions.
Briefly, they wanted to make Billion Greenback Infants. Following Faculty’s Out was all the time going to be a frightening process, however with band morale at an all-time excessive nobody concerned harboured a shred of doubt that they may not solely do it, but additionally do it in fashion
“I knew we had a fantastic group,” Alice remembers at present, “and if you’re that age you assume you’re indestructible. I don’t assume we actually conceived of how huge Faculty’s Out was. We had been actually flying by the seat of our pants again then. You’d do two albums a 12 months in these days, and two world excursions to go together with them. However, once more, we thought of ourselves indestructible, so we didn’t really feel strain in any respect.” “
We had different folks doing the doubting for us,” Dennis Dunaway smiles. “It was us towards the world, principally. Even after we had been profitable and surrounded by folks telling us how nice we had been, there have been all the time loads extra able to share their opinion that we weren’t.”
Reflecting the dogged buoyancy and inside confidence that stored their spirits excessive within the face of blanket media condemnation – and likewise within the grand present enterprise custom of ‘for those who’ve obtained it, flaunt it’ – the band elected to have a good time their newly elevated standing within the album’s title itself.
“The Billion Greenback Infants idea was merely making enjoyable of ourselves,” Alice Cooper says on reflection. “Right here was a band no person would contact three years in the past, and now we’re the largest band on the planet. We’d take a look at one another and go: ‘We’re like billion greenback infants’.”
“We had been getting voted greatest band on the planet over Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. We’d take a look at that and snicker. I nearly known as up McCartney and stated: ‘Hear, we didn’t vote on this’. Led Zeppelin we might give a run for, however when it got here to The Beatles and the Stones we had been embarrassed to be forward of them in something.
“Billion Greenback Infants was our most decadent album. It was reflecting the decadence of a time after we had been dwelling from limousine to penthouse to the best of every part together with… nicely, the best of every part. We couldn’t imagine folks had been really paying us to do that. We’d have achieved it free of charge, as a result of we had been only a storage band who occurred to be on the proper place on the proper time.”
Regardless of gigging themselves to a digital standstill, showing in each print publication in existence and dealing on a film mission titled Good To See You Once more Alice Cooper (lastly launched in 2005 by way of Rhino House Video), the band had been nonetheless on a inventive excessive and writing songs of remarkable high quality.
“We’d been writing just about continuously since Straightforward Motion,” Michael Bruce recollects. “So by this level we had actually began to return into our personal. We had been on an upward spiral.”
And with this confidence got here a want to push the envelope even additional into the sector of the weird.
“Dennis Dunaway had loads to do with the madness of the band,” Alice admits. “I let Dennis be as surreal as he needed to be. He and I had been each artists in class and had been each actually into Salvador Dali. Additionally, Dennis did much more… let’s simply say experimental stuff, than I did.”
We had been getting voted greatest band on the planet over Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles
Alice
“I used to be all the time the crusader for the avant-garde,” Dunaway agrees. “Something that we might provide you with that appeared like anybody else, I used to be all the time there to alter it. So the songs would all the time be underneath assault from me in the event that they didn’t sound uncommon sufficient.”
Ensuring that the Coopers’ collective imaginative and prescient was realised within the recording studio (irrespective of how uncommon it turned) was a person usually regarded to be the band’s sixth member, producer Bob Ezrin, who had helped to hone the Alice Cooper sound since Love It To Dying.
“It was like two timber rising subsequent to one another.” Alice explains. “Bob Ezrin was prepared to supply a band, and we had been able to get a producer. He was a younger man with a theatrical background, and we had been a rock’n’roll band that needed to be theatrical. Bob Ezrin was our George Martin.”
“I don’t wish to underestimate how necessary Bob was,” Neal Smith cautions, “however I don’t wish to overestimate it both. In getting our sound on file Bob was massively necessary, however Billion Greenback Infants was a group effort. His greatest achievement, I feel, was serving to create Alice’s character. As a result of between Straightforward Motion and Love It To Dying a personality evolves vocally that just about solidifies into the true Alice Cooper, and Bob had loads to do with that.”
“Bob positively got here alongside on the proper time,” Dunaway says. “Mike Bruce’s songwriting had improved leaps and bounds, Neal and I had improved throughout the board, and Alice’s voice had matured – gotten a lot stronger and fewer nasal than the early days – however when Bob got here alongside we had been nonetheless attempting to suit 1,000,000 concepts into every track. It took him to return in and say: ‘No, this isn’t a track, this can be a entire album’ to lastly focus our route.”
The Billion Greenback Infants album was recorded in three phases. Initially a cell studio from New York’s File Plant was parked up exterior The Cooper Mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the fundamental backing tracks had been laid down. After a few months of furtive recording in between their myriad different commitments, the band flew to London’s Morgan Studios to file overdubs and vocals, then returned to the File Plant for mixing.
Unsurprisingly, given the band’s penchant for partying and their selection of pals, the Morgan Studio classes in London quickly performed host to drunken, after-hours jams that includes among the best – and certainly probably the most indulgent – stars of the day.
“We had entry to loads of the celebs right here,” Alice remembers “The truth is T.Rex, Donovan, Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon are all on that album someplace, however none of us know the place as a result of the session was so drunk.”
“Keith Moon would come down with Marc Bolan,” Neal Smith recollects. “The truth is Alice, me, Keith and Marc had been sitting at a desk one time when Marc stored on pushing at Keith to be in a band with him, which was so humorous as a result of I couldn’t think about a worse mixture of two musicians.”
“Harry Nilsson had a very destructive impact on the session,” Dunaway says. “We may have gotten loads of nice issues out of that group of people jam-wise, and even to be used on the album, if Harry Nilsson hadn’t been there, falling drunk on to the blending board and wrecking it up. The man may hardly stroll, however he’d sit down at he piano and out would come this lovely voice and exquisite melody. Jeez, I by no means figured how he may do this.”
Additionally current on the Morgan classes had been a pair of session guitarist colleagues of Bob Ezrin: Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter who, unknown to many up to date followers, had been typically known as in to cowl for an more and more ailing and erratic Glen Buxton.
“Hunter and Wagner had been positively on the album,” Alice says. “And we needed everyone to comprehend it. We weren’t going to fake like Glen was enjoying every part, and be phoney about it, so we gave them a credit score. Afterward I used them completely for Welcome To My Nightmare.”
“We knew Dick from Michigan,” Michael Bruce says. “There have been all the time musicians that had been higher than us in each studio we went. Having him and Steve on the album wasn’t seen as some darkish portent of issues to return, they had been simply unimaginable gamers. If a library doesn’t have the e-book you need, you simply go to a different library. We’d already used Dick on Faculty’s Out and Underneath My Wheels.”
Whereas in London the band had been photographed by David Bailey for the inside sleeve of Billion Greenback Infants. It offered yet one more golden alternative to gleefully taunt their legion of apoplectic detractors, and the band rose manfully to the problem.
Wearing diaphanous white silk and surrounded by actually stacks of money, the musicians casually caress albino bunny rabbits, as their singer presents to the digital camera a stay human child which is bare apart from a splattering of trademark Alice Cooper eye make-up.
“Any likelihood we obtained to magnify something, we did it,” Alice says when contemplating the revolutionary cowl design of Billion Greenback Infants. “We made an enormous, billionaire’s pockets, and inside it there was a billion-dollar invoice: very American; every part huge and costly. And we used the most effective photographer, the man we had been certain was the man in Blow Up, as a result of we thought there was going to be fashions laying bare across the place… and there have been just a few.
“We introduced in 1,000,000 {dollars} of actual cash from Brinks. What you didn’t see in that image had been the 2 guys with machine-guns who had been guarding the cash. All the things we did was overblown and the British viewers cherished it. They cherished this huge American band that the MPs simply hated. The very fact we had been flaunting it was even higher, as a result of we suffered a lot by the hands of the press.”
“That cowl shoot is definitely a recreation of 1 we did for Love It To Dying,” Dunaway factors out. “We introduced a photographer into the farm we had in Pontiac, arrange a brass mattress in the lounge and posed with some white rabbits that my spouse Cindy had. After all, we didn’t have the million {dollars} then. The truth is the explanation these photographs by no means obtained used was as a result of we couldn’t even afford to pay the photographer’s invoice.”
Instantly previous to the discharge of Billion Greenback Infants, a promotional flexi-disc single was given away with the February 17 concern of the New Musical Categorical. The B-side was quick excerpts from the album, whereas the A-side boasted the unique monitor Slick Black Limousine.
“That was one of many few songs we had laying round,” Neal Smith explains. “It was alleged to be an Elvis Presley, rock’n’roll type of factor, however in the long run it obtained extra Alice Cooper-ish, with rolling drums and darkish psychedelics.”
Lastly launched in March 1973, Billion Greenback Infants, regardless of being critically crucified for its apparently unprecedented lack of style, entered the UK chart at No.1. Inside days, and with the band already out on the highway selling it to the hilt with their soon-to-be record-breaking Billion Greenback Infants Present, the album had replicated that chart-topping achievement within the USA.
By now the press had been in meltdown. Simply 4 days into the tour Melody Maker introduced that Alice had been killed resulting from a deadly malfunction throughout his I Love The Useless guillotine finale. Virtually as quickly as this story was finally adjudged to be false, yet one more city delusion had arrived to take its place round water coolers the world over: apparently the child within the B$B cowl shot had been rendered blind by incautiously utilized eye make-up. (However earlier than you all rush to inform your mates, clearly it hadn’t.)
The Billion Greenback Infants Present might have been the largest-grossing rock tour within the historical past of mankind, however it was additionally one of the crucial gruelling. Flying from metropolis to metropolis for months on finish is one factor, however being beheaded twice an evening is one thing else once more.
“Once more, you’re indestructible,” Alice explains. “Whenever you’re promoting out six nights every week and each night time there’s 15,000 folks on the market you are feeling no ache. However beneath I used to be eroding. You couldn’t inform by the stage present, you couldn’t inform by my persona, however each night time the alcohol turned a little bit bit extra like drugs and rather less like enjoyable.
“By the point I used to be doing …Nightmare I used to be able to die, go into hospital or have a nervous breakdown. There got here some extent the place each time I noticed my costume I’d nearly begin crying and nearly throw up.”
“The Billion Greenback Infants tour was horrendous the way in which that it ended up,” Mike Bruce grimaces. “It was alleged to be sixty dates in ninety days, however I feel it ended up at nearly eighty.”
“You’re pushing your self on exhaustion,” Dunaway provides. ”You’d be fortunate to get to mattress by 4 within the morning, you then’d must rise up to catch an early flight or drive to the subsequent metropolis. However Alice and I had been long-distance runners – that’s how we met – so we had this keep-going-at-all-costs mentality that pulled us by way of some conditions the place loads of different bands would have given up.”
“It was gruelling,” Smith concludes, “however it wasn’t insufferable… This band lived for the highway.”
And, in fact, road-life did have its moments: “The groupie scene was past something you’ll be able to think about,” Alice leers. “Go backstage now – if you wish to see a bunch of fats guys transfer amps. However again within the seventies for those who went on tour with Rod Stewart and The Faces you’d see something. It was the golden age of decadence.”
After all, over time Alice Cooper has ceased to be perceived as a band in any respect, and is now popularly thought of to be an on-stage persona adopted by the artist previously often known as Vince Furnier – a type of evil Dame Edna, if you’ll; a Mister Hyde-styled alter ego so immensely dominant that it’s all too simple to overlook that Vince’s golf-loving Physician Jekyll even exists. Till he pals as much as Ronnie Corbett on TV, that’s.
But though the previous Furnier retains unique custody of the profitable Cooper model – and legitimately so, because it was he alone who initially coined the moniker – the precise improvement of the finer factors of the Alice Cooper character was very a lot a group effort.
“Alice got here up with the identify,” Dunaway says, “and I assumed it was a genius concept. It shocked me when he first recommended it, however after I ran it by my mother and father and noticed their mouths drop open I knew it was the identify for us.
“The identify did belong to the band, however we didn’t need folks to know that we’d helped Alice develop the character. Nonetheless, the make-up was my concept, the snake Neal’s concept, and the executions had been band concepts.
“The Alice character was born of necessity; within the early days of Pretties For You Alice was shy. He had a short lived case of stage fright, the place he’d stand together with his again to the viewers for the entire set, and we weren’t certain what to do about it. Then at one rehearsal, when the band was nonetheless ravenous in California, I recommended that he develop a distinct character for every track, as a result of he didn’t have an issue when he was on stage being Keith Relf or Mick Jagger, it was solely after we began doing unique materials he was at a loss as to who he was and what he needed to mission.
“So throughout No person Likes Me he was a lonesome man singing by way of a window; for Levity Ball a type of Gloria Swanson, Sundown Boulevard character that developed into a robust a part of the Alice Cooper persona. We had a track known as Fields Of Remorse that had this kind of dirge-like sermon within the center that I feel was influenced by Alice’s father being a minister, however Alice turned this darker, extra sinister character for that specific track. And folks cherished it, so I stated: ‘We must always write extra songs which have that character in them’. It didn’t occur in a single day, however by the point we obtained to ‘Love It To Dying’ that idea of the Alice character had actually taken root.”
Alice, in the meantime, has rationalised his want to achieve Cooper-ism thus: “Alice got here out as a result of there have been all these Peter Pans and no Captain Hook.”
He additionally admits to having primarily based Alice’s singular sense of fashion on Anita Pallenberg’s sadistically seductive Black Queen character from Roger Vadim’s traditional cult fantasy Barbarella: “I noticed the Black Queen and went: ‘That’s Alice proper there’. Black gloves with switchblades on the finish, black make-up, with the eyepatch over her eye… that’s so good. Then I’d see one thing else in a comic book e-book. And as I sewed all these characters collectively, fairly quickly there he was.”
Considerably surprisingly, Alice Cooper had been by no means actually perceived as a drug band. “We had been approach too American for that,” Alice insists. “Too mid-West and too healthful. We drank, watched soccer, baseball and horror films, known as our mothers, had Thanksgiving dinner and had been probably the most all-American, homespun guys you had ever seen in your life. All on the monitor group, cross-country group, lettermen, we had been simply as healthful as you may get. Church on Sunday…”
Okay, sufficient already. However is Alice’s reminiscence fully dependable?
“Put it this fashion,” Neal Smith says: “Alice is the one who went by way of rehab. I attempted every part that was ever round in these days. Michael, Dennis, Glen and I all did. You didn’t have to purchase it, anyplace we went it was all the time there. However I by no means preferred something as a lot as ingesting beer, and we in all probability consumed extra alcohol than some other band on the planet.”
Alice had began ingesting in Los Angeles and had drunk continuously ever since. He and Glen Buxton would normally break up a case of beer a day, and Alice would by no means take to the stage with lower than a six-pack inside him. However, as luck would have it, he was an uncommonly ‘purposeful’ drinker.
“I may rise up, drink beer all day, however when it got here to interviews I’d by no means slur a phrase and when it got here time to do TV I knew each line.”
“Alice was an actual skilled drunk,” Mike Bruce agrees. “He was all the time the place he was wanted to be, and by no means complained. So it was a little bit of a shock to me when he spoke of his alcoholism. I imply, he was all the time actually skinny and ghastly trying, so it didn’t actually sink in.”
However whereas Alice had his ingesting underneath some extent of management, the identical couldn’t be stated for his ingesting companion. “Everyone was fearful about Glen,” Alice has stated, “as a result of Glen was simply not progressing. Everyone gave the impression to be getting higher at what they had been doing and Glen simply needed to have his drink, his cigarette and simply type of float.”
Shortly earlier than the Billion Greenback Infants tour, Glen Buxton’s alcoholic overindulgence prompted his pancreas to ‘explode’. And following life-saving emergency surgical procedure the guitarist returned to the Cooper Mansion in Connecticut to recuperate. With common substitute Dick Wagner unavailable guitarist Mick Mashbir and keyboard participant Bob Dolan had been introduced in to stick over gaping cracks within the band’s stay sound.
As has already been established, the battery-recharging sabbaticals loved by at present’s main stars had been merely not an choice within the Seventies, and consequently the severely debilitated Alice Cooper quickly discovered themselves again on the recording treadmill. On this event, nevertheless, not solely was Buxton’s contribution severely under par, however Bob Ezrin – who had already dedicated to producing Lou Reed’s Berlin – was additionally out of the equation.
Consequently, Muscle Of Love, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Billion Greenback Infants – was a industrial, in addition to inventive, disaster. That’s comparatively talking, in fact – it nonetheless succeeded in shifting 800,000 copies. However the band ought to have been ready for the worst – that they had been warned.
“Bob Ezrin heard the songs and went: ‘Guys, this isn’t as much as par’,” Alice admits. “However we had been swimming in recognition at that time, we may do no unsuitable. So it was an ideal instance of a band being over-confident. The songs had been okay, however put all of them collectively and it didn’t work.”
“We merely needed to do an album of nice songs,” Neal Smith shrugs. “We’d additionally heard that there was a brand new James Bond film arising, so we wrote The Man With The Golden Gun particularly for that (the band’s contribution was in the end handed over in favour of Lulu). The main distinction with Muscle Of Love was that because it wasn’t an idea album, we didn’t have a present primarily based round it. The earlier 4 had all come full with an accompanying stage present. I suppose we simply couldn’t determine one other solution to kill Alice.”
“Glen’s issues took precedence,” Dunaway provides, “so we weren’t in a position to work on songs as we had earlier than. We had completely different musicians coming in, and the entire album sounded way more secure as a result of Bob Ezrin wasn’t there. He’d all the time been very tolerant of my curiosity in pushing the avant garde, however that’s not likely Jack Richardson’s fashion.”
“As a producer, Jack Richardson was about as shut as you may get to a Bob Ezrin,” Mike Bruce gives. “He additionally got here from Nimbus 9 Productions in Canada, and had even engineered a few our earlier albums alongside Bob Ezrin. So it wasn’t as a lot a matter of what went unsuitable with ‘Muscle Of Love’ as what didn’t go proper.
“We’d insisted on packaging it in a cardboard carton; that was one other downside. Once we toured it there was a truckers’ strike, so we couldn’t use our regular stage set; we might typically simply flip up and play.”
With their lead guitarist plummeting into oblivion and their gross sales figures apparently embarking on an identical course, the Alice Cooper group determined to take a year-long hiatus that has thus far lasted for 3 a long time. A minimum of that’s how three of them see it.
“The blokes had been bored with spending all the cash on the present,” Alice says. “I perceive that, however it’s what obtained us there. They usually needed to put on Levi’s. So I stated: ‘If that occurs I can’t be a part of it. I can’t be the lead singer in Creedence Clearwater right here’.
“Ultimately everyone needed to do their very own album. So I went: ‘If that’s going to occur, I’ve obtained to let you realize proper now that I’m going to take each penny that I’ve and make investments it within the subsequent album [which was Welcome To My Nightmare]. In the event you thought Billion Greenback Infants was the largest factor you could have ever seen, I would like this to be larger’.
“So, fearful about having to observe all of their cash go down the drain, they stated: ‘You’re by yourself’. So I stated: ‘Okay. No onerous emotions’. A minimum of we knew the place everyone stood. No person argued, no person yelled, everyone simply went, okay.
“So all of them did their albums, and I took Bob Ezrin, our supervisor Shep Gordon and stated: ‘Let’s roll the cube. We’re both going to be completely broke after this or we’re going to be actually, actually huge’. And that’s after I began writing …Nightmare with Dick Wagner.”
“Nicely it’s not true,” Dunaway insists. “Mike, Neal and I did the ‘Battle Axe’ present [billing themselves as The Billion Dollar Babies] after that, and I feel spent extra on that than we had on the earlier Alice Cooper tour. So no, that wasn’t the explanation in any respect. I additionally hate that spin about how we refused to put on stage costumes. I imply, who would imagine that? Simply strolling down the road we seemed extra outrageous than most bands.
“I didn’t like the concept of bringing in schooled dancers. I assumed it could make the present too slick and take away the uncooked edge that was our energy. Neither did I like the concept of huge, fluffy monsters; I needed one thing extra gritty – the chopped-up model method.”
“Nicely, Alice says that stuff,” Mike Bruce says, “and it’s like he believes it a lot that it’s grow to be his actuality. However no, it wasn’t that the band didn’t desire a stage present, we simply needed to tone it down a little bit, make it right into a funkier, West Aspect Story type of factor versus a giant, lavish, Billion Greenback Broadway Babes kind of factor. We had additionally been touring to the purpose the place we would have liked to again off on the throttle and let momentum carry us. The highway had taken its toll: bodily talking, our cheques had been cashed and the financial institution was notified.”
“We had come again from Europe,” Neal Smith says. “And since Michael had some materials that he needed to file himself, all of us determined to take a 12 months off to do our varied solo tasks. Michael did In My Personal Means, I did Platinum God and Alice did Welcome To My Nightmare. Alice discovered success on his personal with …Nightmare and, what with the persevering with Glen state of affairs, we by no means obtained again collectively once more.”
And have the previous Billion Greenback Infants been left harbouring regrets? Nicely, as you may count on, some greater than others.
“I actually would’ve cherished to have continued with the band,” Smith admits. “I want that after we’d achieved our solo tasks we’d have honoured what we’d acknowledged and gotten again collectively to file the ninth Alice Cooper album. And who is aware of, possibly we are going to at some point.”
“If I needed to do it over once more,” Bruce displays, “I’d in all probability attempt to preserve it going longer than it did.”
“I simply want we’d recorded extra,” Dunaway says, laughing. “We by no means had a tape recorder, and in consequence we misplaced loads of actually good songs just by forgetting how they went.”
“I want I’d seen a bit extra of these days sober,” Alice confesses, “so I may keep in mind extra. Each every now and then I’ll get a flashback – like, as a result of that’s all I can keep in mind: I used to be driving, Steven Tyler had a gun and we had been on some mission. We ended up at my home, however all I keep in mind is a Rolls-Royce, Tyler, a gun and loads of alcohol. Did we shoot somebody and bury them? I do not know.”
Satirically, whereas Glen Buxton’s untimely dying from pneumonia in October ’97 successfully rendered a fully-fledged Alice Cooper reunion unimaginable, it might nicely have made it simpler for the 4 surviving members to lastly regroup. In spite of everything, the band was as a lot Glen Buxton’s because it was anyone’s, and whereas he was not in any situation to tour, for his bandmates to have reunited with out him would have been merely unthinkable.
However now that their former sparring companion has lastly been laid to relaxation arguably there’s actually no impediment to the quartet sharing the identical stage as soon as extra. The truth is they’ve already achieved so: at Alice’s Cooper’stown restaurant in Phoenix throughout the course of the second annual Glen Buxton Memorial Weekend in October ’99.
So may this on-going détente between Bruce, Cooper, Dunaway and Smith in the end become one thing a little bit extra substantial?
“I’d work with these guys in a second,” Alice asserts, earlier than cautiously stipulating, “if it was the best mission. I don’t know the way we may ever do it authentically with out Glen. Mike… [Alice briefly sucks thoughtfully on a tooth] Nicely, Neal and Dennis are simple. I’ll simply say that. They each nonetheless play nice, however I don’t know if they may do a complete tour. I imply, I’m in actually fine condition, however we’re not twenty-eight any extra.”
“I can’t say whether or not it’ll ever occur or not,” Neal Smith says, “but when it does it is going to be one thing that every one 4 of us will determine upon democratically. It gained’t merely be Alice saying: ‘Hey, guys, let’s get collectively’. And if that point ever does come there could be no person happier than me.”
“I stated to Shep Gordon on the night time that I performed on Faculty’s Out with Alice at Wembley in 2002,” Mike Bruce recollects, “that it could be good if we obtained collectively to redo the Billion Greenback Infants Present for Europe – do the songs on the identical stage set, with Mick Mashbir and Bob Dolan. We by no means toured Europe with that present.
“I’d like to see one thing occur with the 4 of us, however it’s as much as Alice to suss it out and put it into his recreation plan, as a result of he’s the figurehead. The affect of something that we did could be most felt by him. If it had been successful the critics would say he ought to have achieved it sooner, and if it had been a failure it could be: ‘So, you don’t have it any extra, huh?’. So I suppose Alice is between a rock and a tough place.”
“Nicely,” Dennis Dunaway concludes with a sigh, “Neal and I’ve been making that provide to Alice for thirty years now. I imply, he was alleged to sing on the Battle Axe album, however we couldn’t get a return cellphone name. It’s actually not Michael, Neal or I, and even Glen, which have stored this band from ever getting again collectively. That half I do know.”
This function was initially revealed in Traditional Rock 67, in April 2004. In 2025 the Alice Cooper Band introduced a brand new studio album, their first collectively since 1973. The Revenge Of Alice Cooper will probably be launched on July 25.