The Alice Cooper Thread

[Susan Foreman]

There are some on-line Alice jigsaws here

[Susan Foreman]

Trailer for the new Suzi Quatro documentary, which features an appearance by Alice

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New interview from AXS TV

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New interview at Blabbermouth

"ALICE COOPER Completes Work On 'Detroit Stories' Album

Legendary rocker Alice Cooper has completed work on his new album, "Detroit Stories". The LP, which was once again produced by Cooper's longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin, features contributions by such Michigan talent as the MC5's Wayne Kramer, GRAND FUNK RAILROAD's Mark Farner and Johnny "Bee" Badanjek of MITCH RYDER & THE DETROIT WHEELS. They also used the Detroit Horns and Detroit background singers.

"Every Detroit player, I don't care how hard rock they are, how punk they are, there's a little bit of R&B in it, because it's Detroit," Cooper, who was born in Detroit as Vincent Furnier and moved to Phoenix as a child, told the Arizona Republic. "It's in the DNA."

Cooper said that there's no release date yet for "Detroit Stories". "There's nobody saying, 'Oh, you have to have it done by blah blah blah,'" he said. "The whole world is on hold right now [due to the coronavirus pandemic]."

Earlier in the month, Alice released a new single, "Don't Give Up". Produced by Ezrin using remote technology, the song is a spontaneous reaction to the challenges facing us all right now.

A strictly limited "Don't Give Up" seven-inch vinyl picture disc will be released on August 14 on earMUSIC.

Speaking to SiriusXM's Ozzy's Boneyard, Alice stated about how "Don't Give Up" came together: "The funny thing was Bob Ezrin and I and Tommy Henriksen did an album called 'Detroit Stories', and it's all about Detroit, because that's [my former] hometown. And I decided all Detroit players — Wayne Kramer, Mark Farner; all these guys — will either write or be on the album or sing on the album, but all the songs are about Detroit also. And so the song was called 'Hanging By A Thread', and it was a bit of an anti-suicide song. We're all hanging by a thread, but just don't step off the ledge. Hang in there. And Bob called up and said: 'That song is done. You've already done 'Hey Stoopid', which is an anti-suicide song.' He says, 'Why don't we turn this into what's going on now?' And he says, 'Keep the B section of the chorus,' he says, 'but let's take the verse and you talk it and just write something poetic that's encouraging.

"The idea that I had on it was that we're a lot tougher than this disease," he continued. "We're the blood and guts of the human race. Does it scare us? Yeah. But are we gonna be [too] scared [to move forward]? Hell no. We're gonna live through this. And the whole idea was just don't step off the ledge. Some people are already suicidal, and then this comes along, and this is gonna push 'em off the edge. And I'm just saying don't step off the edge."

Cooper's latest release — the six-track "Breadcrumbs" EP, described as a tribute to the garage-rock heroes of his hometown of Detroit — was released in September via earMUSIC"

[Susan Foreman]

New interview at Yahoo Entertainment

"Alice Cooper on co-starring with Johnny Depp, the Bee Gees, Mike Myers, Gene Wilder, Muppets… and snakes

Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment from his Arizona home to promote his new podcast Alice Cooper’s Vintage Vault, which features classic conversations from his long-running radio show, Alice Cooper grants an epic interview worthy of its own podcast episode. The man is such a rock icon that even his legendary pet snakes — who’ve gone by such marquee-worthy stage names as Cobra Winfrey and Julius Squeezer — have rock ‘n’ roll tales to tell.

“There are so many great stories when you're carrying snakes around, the big boa constrictors, because they were so much a part of the band that you just let them roam around,” Cooper chuckles. “But they'd get loose in hotels. We had one go down the toilet in Knoxville, Tenn., and it came up in Charley Pride's toilet about two weeks later. … Yvonne, she was our biggest snake and the sweetest, she was the nicest one, but if you're sitting on the toilet and a snake comes up between your legs while you're sitting there… Well, you're going to have some kind of traumatic reaction to that!”

A couple of Cooper’s reptilian sidekicks, including one with the movie-star moniker Eva Marie Snake, actually became movie stars, appearing in the famous “I hate snakes!” scene in the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Cooper is no stranger to the screen himself, having acted in everything from the notorious movie musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to Wayne’s World to television shows with the Muppets and Gene Wilder. But who would play him in a Cooper biopic? He readily suggests his bandmate in the supergroup Hollywood Vampires and his onetime co-star in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows.

“If Johnny Depp were just better-looking, he could play me,” Cooper quips. “He would be so good for it, though. … because he really likes to take those characters that nobody else wants to play. And he loves prosthetics. He would get my nose in there and the whole thing. And he knows me well enough now where he could imitate me pretty well.”

But until that biopic happens, Cooper reminisces below about his own most memorable onscreen moments.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

“The thing about it was that I had just gotten out of rehab, and I had a mustache. I had never had a mustache before, but I had this big mustache. And I came out of rehab and they said, ‘We're doing Sgt. Pepper.’ And I said, ‘Oh, with the Beatles? That's going to be great!’ And they said, ‘No… with the Bee Gees." And I immediately went, ‘This is going to be a disaster!’ You're talking about the Beatles' [most] sacred record of all time. … Now, I love the Bee-Gees, I get along with those guys, I had a great time with them. But the general public are not going to stand for that.

“But it was one of those movies that ended up being so bad that it was great. …It was consistently horrible to the point where it was great. And they told me, ‘You get to beat up the Bee Gees. There's a fight scene where you actually fight with them, and you get to work with George Martin.’ Now, that was the reason that I did the movie, because I wanted to work with George Martin. And here we are, doing the Beatles' prettiest song. It’s the prettiest thing the Beatles ever did, ‘Because.’ And somehow at the end of it, George Martin says, ‘I can't believe that you could turn the Beatles' prettiest song into a threat!’ I said, ‘Well, the character is a villain. … He's not going to do it nice. He's going to be this horrific character doing it.’

“And [Martin] sent it to John [Lennon], and John loved it. Lennon loved it because he thought it was just the opposite of what it was supposed to be. … John and I were pretty good friends; he was an original Hollywood Vampire, and so he was in the drinking club. … And George Martin produced it well, so that kind of greasy, horrific voice really popped out. It really was playing against the prettiness of it. So, John said, ‘Ah, yeah, I would expect that from Alice.’”

The Muppet Show (1978)

“I never had so much fun in my life as doing The Muppet Show. You rehearsed for a week in London, and after a while these Muppets were people. You were talking to them: ‘What are you going to have for lunch today?’ ‘Oh, I don't know. I was thinking about going to...’ You'd catch yourself talking to this piece of felt like it's real, because they would react exactly the way a person would react. Miss Piggy would say, ‘Do you want a Diet Coke? Because I know that you're not drinking now.’ … They'd come into your dressing room. ‘Hey, you want some lunch?’ ‘Yeah, Kermit. I'll be right there.’”

Wayne's World (1992)

“I got there, and I was supposed to do ‘Feed My Frankenstein.’ That was the big deal. They were going to go see Alice backstage, and that's all that was going to be. As soon as I got there, Mike Myers says, ‘You're an actor. Here's six pages of dialogue.’ And I said, ‘When are we shooting this?’ And he goes, ‘About two hours from now.’ So, I memorized about a quarter of it and then just riffed on the rest of it.

“[I was lecturing about] Milwaukee. It was like, ‘Oh, the governors and the mayors of Milwaukee were Socialists, and actually it was all the fur traders are coming down from Canada.’ I was sounding like I was in Jeopardy. … I was just starting to make things up out of nowhere. And what you didn't see on camera was you had Mike and Dana [Carvey] doing everything they could to make me laugh. And I picked a spot between them and delivered all the lines, [looking] in between them. But if you would have heard the outtakes on the ‘We're not worthy!’ [scene], it went on for about seven or eight minutes and it got vile. It just got vile. … I guarantee you Mike or [producer] Lorne [Michaels] has [the outtakes]. But if that ever gets out, I'm not in trouble — but they are.”

Something Wilder (1995)

“I did a show with Gene Wilder. It was a comedy where it was live in front of an audience, like a play. I was his noisy next-door neighbor. And he ends up going to this party, coming home, but he's got my eye makeup on and he can't get it off. It was a good 10 minutes of just Gene Wilder and I doing schtick, but I had to know timing — I had to know where I was going, where he was going. It was a live audience and they couldn't redo it, they couldn't reshoot it. And I'm telling you, when you get to work with Gene Wilder, I doubt that you can get better than that.”"

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman

"ALICE COOPER will be with us all weekend at London Film & Comic Con. Following on from the success of Meatloaf’s appearance we are so pleased that Mr Cooper is joining us. Alice is no stranger to the world of comic books as he first appeared in print in Marvel Premiere #50 in 1979, and later worked with Neil Gaiman on a graphic novel titled The Last Temptation.

The iconic singer songwriter will be signing and taking part in photo ops at the event which takes place at Olympia London 24-26 July. Tickets available to book here *"

* NOTE - It would appear that the tickets only allow entry to the event, and additional costs are needed for 'meet and greet' sessions:

Guest Appearance Information

• Attending: Friday, Saturday & Sunday
• Autograph Price: £65
• Photo Shoot Price: £75
• Diamond Pass (Autograph, Photo Shoot, Gift): £175

This has now been officially postponed until November 20th - 22nd

Alice is still noted as appearing 'subject to contract', BUT it now seems unlikely because rescheduled live shows for the US have already been announced, and they cover these dates

[Susan Foreman]

Total Guitar's Top 100 Guitarists

[Susan Foreman]

Date unknown

[Susan Foreman]

There is a new short interview with Alice at Ultimate Guitar

"Alice Cooper Addresses Idea of Retiring as He Turned 72 This Year

"If I come into your town and put on a show and nobody shows up, well, then I know I'm done," the musician said.

During a conversation with KZZK, Alice Cooper was asked if the ongoing lockdown has made him consider retirement seeing that he turned 72 this year.

Cooper replied:

"Not in the least. That word doesn't exist in my vocabulary. A long, long time ago, I said if I come into your town and put on a show and nobody shows up, well, then I know I'm done.

"That hasn't happened. At 72, I was not expecting to be in two touring bands. And the [Hollywood] Vampires are just like my band - everybody in that band are best friends.

"You've got Johnny Depp, Joe Perry and myself - three alpha males - and we've been together six years and I have never heard one argument. Everybody just goes, 'OK. Good idea. Let's try that.'"

Back in 2018, Alice told Q103 Albany when asked about retirement

"I've always said this: If we do a tour and nobody shows up, then I'm retired. That's never happened. In fact, we're doing better business now than we've ever done.

"More people are coming to the show now, and I've never felt better, so I don't see any reason to retire at all. I know a lot of guys are quitting, but a lot of guys still smoke and drink.

"They're probably tired. I'm not tired. People always say, 'Well, you could just play golf every day,' and I say, 'I play golf every day anyway!'""

[Susan Foreman]

Originally Posted by Susan Foreman