Darryl Sterdan of QMI Agency recently conducted an interview with legendary rocker Alice Cooper. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
QMI Agency: How does this “No More Mr. Nice Guy” tour differ from the last Canadian tour you did with ROB ZOMBIE?
Cooper: It’ll be different visually again. But we’re playing all the hits. We’re kind of in the same position as classic rock bands like THE WHO and THE STONES are – out of 28 songs we play, 20 are songs you have to do or the audience will be really disappointed. The audience wants “School’s Out” and “Billion Dollar Babies” and “18” and all those songs. But for the real Alice fans, I try to find four or five songs they’re not expecting. And we’re going to do a couple of songs from the new album that nobody’s heard.
QMI Agency: That’s my cue to ask what “Welcome 2 My Nightmare” is all about.
Cooper: Basically, we wondered, what would happen if Alice had another nightmare 30 years after the last one. I had contacted Bob (Ezrin) about producing a different album — I wanted to finish “Along Came A Spider” — but we got to talking about “Nightmare”, and we just immediately started writing songs. Pretty soon Bob said, “We have to do Part 2.”I’ve tried to get as many people from that album back. I got Steve Hunter, who played all the solos. Dick Wagner and I wrote some songs. Dennis, Neal and Mike are on it. Then I added a bunch of people you would never expect, like Vince Gill, who plays lead on two songs. He’s the Jeff Beck of country. He made my head spin.
QMI Agency: Are we heading for a full-blown reunion tour of the original band?
Cooper: I don’t think so. We are doing shows together, but in a limited way. It’s really hard to do 100 cities – doing five shows a week and going around the world is physically draining for me, and I’m in really good shape. So we’re just doing a few things. I would like to do some clubs. I would like to go back and play the Whisky [A Go Go in Hollywood] with the original band. I think they’re up for that. You know, it was a very unique situation with the original band: When we broke up in ’74, there was no animosity or lawsuits or “I hate that guy.” We just drifted. We called it a hiatus, and that became a breakup. But we were never out of touch. We knew there would be a reunion someday; we just didn’t know when. The [Rock And Roll] Hall Of Fame thing became a great opportunity.
Read the entire interview from the QMI Agency.
