{"id":15876,"date":"2019-01-11T05:30:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T10:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15876"},"modified":"2019-01-03T12:48:14","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T17:48:14","slug":"alice-cooper-the-musoscribe-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/11\/alice-cooper-the-musoscribe-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Cooper: The Musoscribe Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the title of yesterday\u2019s feature<\/a> indicates, Alice Cooper is the Grand Old Man of shock rock. Nearly a half century after the release of the debut album Pretties for You<\/i>, Cooper remains busy as ever; he\u2019s been recording and performing with supergroup Hollywood Vampires, and his most recent album, Paranormal<\/i>, finds him reuniting with the original Alice Cooper Group on a few tracks.<\/p>\n

The members of the lineup that gave us \u201cSchool\u2019s Out,\u201d \u201cElected\u201d and Mo More Nice Guy\u201d parted ways in 1974, but on new tracks \u201cGenuine American Girl\u201d and \u201cYou And all of Your Friends,\u201d it sounds like they never left. On the eve of the latest tour leg in support of Paranormal<\/i>\u2014Cooper\u2019s most commercially successful release in years\u2014I spent a few moments in conversation with the shock rock pioneer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You hadn\u2019t played with the members of the original group in years. How and why did you decide to get back with them for the one-off performance and the studio tracks that are included on Paranormal<\/i>?<\/b><\/p>\n

You know, it\u2019s funny. With the original band, when we broke up, we never broke up with any bad blood. There were never any lawsuits or anybody angry with anybody. It just was sort of a natural separation. So, Dennis [Dunaway, bass], Neal [Smith, drums], and I always stayed in touch with each other. Mike [Bruce, guitar] was hard to find because he moved to Mexico for a while, and Glen [Buxton, guitar] had passed away. <\/p>\n

So, putting the original band back together was getting a little harder, and Mike was having some physical problems where he wouldn\u2019t have been able to tour, I don\u2019t think. But it wasn\u2019t really much of a stretch when we did find Mike and I said, \u201cLet\u2019s put the original guys back together, write some songs, and see what it sounds like in the studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut let\u2019s not overdub anything.\u201d I said. \u201cI want it to sound like the original band live.\u201d So, when we went into the studio, we played like that and it sounded great. The coolest thing was that you couldn\u2019t hide the fact that it was the original band.<\/p>\n

We did the same thing with Hollywood Vampires. When we were in Berlin, we did a couple of tracks and we cut it all live in the studio. In fact, we cut one track live to vinyl! But there\u2019s only one vinyl copy of it. I listened to it and it sounded great, so I said, \u201cHey, I want one of these.\u201d \u201cWell, we have to do it again, then. They don\u2019t make any copies of it.\u201d So, Johnny [Depp] got it.<\/p>\n

Paranormal<\/i> also found you working, once again, with Bob Ezrin. Was it like old times working with him again?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, I never stopped working with Ezrin. Bob and I are so connected at the hip that even when I\u2019m working with a different producer, I\u2019ll write maybe five or six songs and I send them to Bob. And then Bob kind of goes through them and says, \u201cOkay. This is good, this is good, I don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going here, you need a better bridge here, this chorus is weak at the end,\u201d and he sends them back. And then I rewrite them! So, he\u2019s sort of my editor. It\u2019s extremely natural to be working with him. He\u2019s sort of my George Martin.<\/p>\n

How would you characterize the difference, collectively, between the Paranormal<\/i> songs and what you\u2019ve done in your last few albums?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bob and I like to mix up the musicians a lot. Because when you\u2019re doing that, all of a sudden, you start adding a lot of different flavors. So, using U2\u2019s drummer brought something to it that was really different. He doesn\u2019t go to the high hat and snare; he\u2019ll go to the tom tom and and high hat, and it really creates something that you can\u2019t just get out of another drummer. <\/p>\n

And then you add a different guitar player, and he brings in a different flavor, and you let that turn into what it\u2019s going to turn into. This combination of players on this album just happened to spark something different; you can\u2019t put it into words. There\u2019s an old saying that talking about music is like dancing about architecture. It\u2019s very hard to explain why that works and this doesn\u2019t work. You just sit there, and you listen to it, and you look at each other and go, \u201cWell, that works great,\u201d and then you don\u2019t question it. You just let it go.<\/p>\n

You brought theatricality to rock in a way that very few before you had. Following you, there have been much more extreme acts: Marilyn Manson a couple decades back, GWAR and so on. How much do you think artists like them owe to you for pushing the boundaries?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh, I mean, they\u2019ve all come to the shows. They\u2019ve all done their \u201cI\u2019m not worthy\u201d thing.<\/p>\n

Now, Kiss took it in a different direction, and Marilyn Manson definitely took it into a much more high tech, cerebral type of place. Slipknot even added a bit of rap to it, and then Rob Zombie had his version of it. But yeah, they\u2019ve all come to me and said, \u201cWhen we were kids, we saw what you did and it inspired us to take it in a different direction.\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s great.\u201d I almost look at it like a surrealistic movement where Salvador Dali started something and then a bunch of other artists saw that and said, \u201cWell, let\u2019s do our version of that.\u201d <\/p>\n

I never felt I was really in competition with David Bowie or GWAR. GWAR had a great sense of humor; I went to their factory and saw how they built all their costumes and everything. Rob Zombie\u2019s one of my best friends. Marilyn Manson, even though we don\u2019t see eye to eye on any religious level, he\u2019s still somebody that I tour with and I really get along with. He\u2019s a very creative, very stylish guy.<\/p>\n

At the end of an evening, how would you characterize the difference between a good show and a great one?<\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll tell you the truth. I surround myself with the very best players. Two of the people in my band got voted best in their field: Glen Sobel got voted best drummer in rock and roll, Nita Strauss got voted best female guitar player in rock and roll. And it shows me that I have good taste in picking people. Once you get these people in the band, it\u2019s a show unlike any other. Once it starts, it moves like a freight train; every single song has its own theatrical signature. And in the end, the audience is going to love it. Even if they hate you, they\u2019re going to love the show because it never gives you a chance to not<\/i> like it. And that\u2019s great. <\/p>\n

We have what we call fliers, where a great show becomes an incredible show, when you sit there and you go, \u201cWhat was that?\u201d Even when somebody would make a mistake, it was a mistake that actually works. So you say, \u201cRemember that, when you fell over that amp? Yeah, do it again tomorrow night. They loved it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the title of yesterday\u2019s feature indicates, Alice Cooper is the Grand Old Man of shock rock. Nearly a half century after the release of the debut album Pretties for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,62],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-15876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-alice-cooper","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15878,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15876\/revisions\/15878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}