Frank Zappa had already set a certain standard when it came to recording music that was a bit out there. It took Alice Cooper to show him a musical hand of cards that left the genre-bending composer and producer almost speechless.
“He listened to us play, and he went, ‘I don’t get it.’ He says, ‘Well, you’ve got five songs that are two minutes long, and each song’s got 23 changes in it, and they don’t even go back and repeat the changes,” Cooper recalled in an interview on Rock & Roll High School With Pete Ganbarg.
“And I went, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I don’t get it.’ And I said, ‘Well, is that bad?’ And he goes, ‘No, I’m Frank Zappa. I don’t get it. You know, of course, I’m going to sign you, right?’ And then he says, ‘Where are you from, San Francisco or New York?’ I said, ‘No, I’m from Phoenix, Arizona.’ He goes, ‘Now, I really don’t get it.'”
Frank Zappa’s Plan for Alice Cooper
Thanks to Zappa and his label, Straight Records, the band the world would come to know as Alice Cooper had its first record deal. As it turns out, he had very specific designs on how he wanted to capture the group’s music in the studio. He told Cooper that they’d be recording the songs live off the floor.
“He listened to us play, and we could play those complicated little songs live, perfectly,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee remembers now. “He says, ‘Nobody’s going to believe that a band can play this complicated kind of stuff live. So I want to record it that way.’ We recorded Pretties for You, I think in two days, because all we did is just set up and we played.”
After Pretties for You was released in 1969, the group recorded just one more album with Zappa, 1970’s Easy Action. They made a key shift with 1971’s Love it to Death, teaming up with producer Bob Ezrin.
Ezrin would go on to produce the group’s next three albums, helping to firmly establish the future for Alice Cooper. Though the first two albums seem like the weird ones in the band’s catalog compared to what came later, time has given music fans a different perspective.
“Now, people listen to Pretties for You and they go, ‘That’s so Beefheart,” he says. “It’s Captain Beefheart…[but] we never heard of Captain Beefheart [at that time]. This was truly original stuff for us [when we recorded it].”
Listen to Alice Cooper on ‘Rock & Roll High School’
What’s Next for Alice Cooper?
2025 brought a reunion of the original Alice Cooper band for a new album, The Revenge of Alice Cooper, which marked their first studio record together since 1973’s Muscle of Love. As they have in the past, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith have joined Cooper and his current band on stage in recent times.
Last July, they made a surprise appearance at London’s 02 Arena to jam on “School’s Out” during the encore. They also teamed up with Cooper this past December for a special set at his annual Christmas Pudding benefit concert.
Cooper has hinted that the band might deliver another album at some point on the heels of Revenge and he’s also got a new solo record in the works as well. But 2026 begins where it often does, with a decent amount of road work on tap.
The godfather of shock rock made UCR’s list of the hardest working artists for the year, playing close to 100 dates in 2025. He’ll begin his next round of touring in March with a series of concerts in Las Vegas with illusionist Criss Angel. European dates will keep him busy in the early part of the summer starting in June and he’ll reconvene Hollywood Vampires for their first shows in three years beginning in August.
As he told Ganbarg during the Rock & Roll High School interview, there’s nowhere he’d rather be. “We could have all retired 30 years ago financially, you know,” he said, mentioning fellow icons like Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. “But it’s what I love to do. And actually, it really keeps me healthy. I get up and do 90 minutes a night, 200 times a year. I feel great. I mean, if you’re not on drugs, you’re not drinking [and] you’re not smoking cigarettes, it’s a pretty healthy lifestyle.”
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