Alice Cooper says he’s ready for a little more Revenge.
Back in July the shock rocker reunited with his bandmates in the original Alice Cooper group for The Revenge of Alice Cooper, the first full album Cooper, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith (and, via technology, the late Glen Buxton) have made together since Muscle of Love in 1973 — although there have been collaborations on several of Cooper’s albums during the past 14 years.
The Revenge… charted around the world — including Top 20 on Billboard’s Independent Albums and Top Rock & Alternative Albums charts — and was greeted with rave reviews.
And, as far as Cooper’s concerned, it will happen again.
“I think we’ll probably do another album,” he tells UCR in the midst of his current Too Close For Comfort tour with Judas Priest and Corrosion of Conformity. “I can’t see why we wouldn’t. This one did so well, we might as well do another one. I talked to (producer) Bob Ezrin the other night, and he said, ‘What do you think about…doing another album?’ It’s great with me. We haven’t talked to the guys about it yet, so it’s certainly not a done deal. But I’d be willing to do it, for sure.”
Read More: ‘The Revenge of Alice Cooper’ – Album Review
It would certainly be surprising if the others weren’t game. “It’d be great,” Dunaway said before The Revenge… was released. “When I was with Alice recently, he mentioned he didn’t think (the album) was a one-off. He thought we had more albums to do together…That perked me up.”
Cooper’s busy touring schedule with his own band has limited what the original lineup has been able to do in the wake of The Revenge’s… release. The four, along with Ezrin, held a livestreamed album release Q&A on July 24 in London, and before Bruce, Dunaway and Smith joined Cooper and company — as well as Cooper’s Hollywood Vampires mate Johnny Depp — on stage the next night at the O2 Arena for “School’s Out.”
Dunaway has popped up at a couple of Cooper shows since, and the quartet will regroup for his annual Christmas Pudding concert on Nov. 15 in Phoenix to benefit his Solid Rock Foundation teen centers there.
“It was interesting the album took off as much as it did…which is great for an album that’s 53 years old,” Cooper notes with a laugh. “The funny thing was we accidentally made a 1975 album. We didn’t try to make it sound like 1975, but when we all got into the studio and started writing and started doing it, it just turned out 1975. There’s so many young bands trying to sound like 1975, or the 70s sound, and we weren’t even looking to do that. But it ended up being that, ’cause that’s what we sound like when we get together.”
Cooper, who’s also writing songs for another album of his own, is understandably not playing any of The Revenge… material in his own shows, but his new stage show — modeled after his Alice’s Attic syndicated radio show — is digging deep into the catalog for rarities such as “Who Do You Think We Are,” “Spark in the Dark,” “House of Fire,” “Caught in a Dream,” “Dangerous Tonight” and “Brutal Planet.”
“Everybody loves the fact that we’re doing those songs,” Cooper says. “We just kind of went through and said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ Somebody said, ‘What about ‘Dirty Diamonds’ and I went, ‘Oh, that’d be good. That would be a great stage song. let’s try it,’ and it was just perfect. Then, ‘What about ‘Dangerous Tonight?’ I said, ‘I`ve never done that one on stage,’ so we did it and it really turned into a great little piece of theater.
“It’s great for us. It’s just one of those things where the band loves getting into music that they haven’t played before, ’cause when it you get on stage it gives you that, ‘Oh, man, we’re doing that new song’ and ‘Oh man, we’re doing that song!’ or ‘Oh, boy, we’re gonna do that?!’ Of course we’re doing ‘Poison’ and ‘I’m Eighteen’ and ‘School’s Out,’ but I dropped a couple of the standards just to put some new stuff in.”
Some earlier shows also included a version of Black Sabbath‘s “Paranoid” in tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne. “We felt that for at least a week or two weeks (after his death) we should do a tribute to Ozzy, and we made sure we did the song really, really well,” Cooper explains. “I think every band out there did a tribute to Ozzy, as they should.” Cooper was unable to participate in the Back to the Beginning Osbourne/Sabbath farewell festival on July 5 because, like Judas Priest, he was performing at Scorpions’ 60th anniversary concert the same night in Germany. But he did have a friendly relationship with Osbourne and his family.
“It’s a brotherhood,” Cooper acknowledges. “You’re both lead singers. You both know the ropes. We know how it all works. When you see each other, the funny thing is you never talk about music, just, ‘How you doing? How’s the family?’ Of course I’ve followed his kids; I’ve known Jack (Osbourne) for awhile. I think basically we talk like fathers more than we talk like rock stars, which is cool. Everybody’s proud of their family.”
There’s a similar bonhomie with Judas Priest on the Too Close For Comfort tour; Cooper and Rob Halford, who both reside in the Phoenix area, are friends, and the former reports that the two bands — who alternating closing each night — “get along very, very, very well. It doesn’t matter who opens and who closes; they’re two different things. They’ve got their own theater, the way they do it. They’ve got their own image. they’ve got their own army (of fans) out there, and luckily both armies like both bands. So it doesn’t matter to anybody who opens or closes; they’re gonna get a double barrel shotgun blast of both of us.”
At one show the Cooper camp even set up a proper English High Tea in Priest’s dressing room, complete with scones and china. “They’re on the road and they miss England…(so) we made it very pleasant for them,” Cooper says.
Too Close For Comfort runs through Oct. 26, wrapping up in Houston. After Christmas Pudding Cooper heads back to Germany for Night of the Proms shows in December, then breaks for the holidays before another European trek in January.
