Vampires Tour Ends and Michael Bruce Induction

Vampires Tour Ends and Michael Bruce Induction

The eventful (if you believe any of the endless Jonny Depp clickbait) Hollywood Vampires tour is now complete after a trio of US shows, with the Bethel Woods show seeing a not entirely unexpected guest appearance by Dennis Dunaway for ‘School’s Out’. Reports are that the band were firing on all cylinders this year and better than on any previous tour. The Boston Globe, KNAC, and People have short reviews and/or photos.

Swiss site exlibris, who if I recall correctly were the first site to show images of the forthcoming ‘Road’ album, have again possibly jumped the gun a little with 30 second samples of every track from the new album. ‘Road’ is due to be released on August 25th.

Michael Bruce’s induction video from the Arizona Hall of Fame ceremony can been see here. There was also a report on Channel 3 Phoenix with Michael performing his blues version of ‘I’m Eighteen’ retitled ‘Forever Eighteen’, and further footage here, here, and here featuring interviews with Michael. The show closed with Michael and others performing ‘School’s Out‘.

Nita Strauss has been talking to the SDR podcast and revealed that Alice has been recording with her "other" boss Demi Lovato. She’s also been chatting to KNAC.

Last year Dynamite Comic announced that they would be releasing “Alice Cooper vs The Prince Of Darkness” and we’re still waiting for it. However now they have announced another Alice Cooper title which is due in shops on October 4th. This new 5-issue series is written by Rodney Barnes with art by Edu Menna and has some cool covers.

New US Dates

Alice Cooper Announced More US Dates

Alice Cooper has announced a new batch of US shows in October after the ‘Freaks on Parade’ including three ‘Halloween Hootenanny’ shows with Rob Zombie. Pre-sale tickets and VIP Packages on sale tomorrow with code ‘SICKTHINGS’. General on-sale Friday at 10a local time. The Dates are:

October 4th 2023 St Augustine Amphitheatre, St Augustine, FL
October 5th 2023 Wilson Center, Wilmington, NC
October 7th 2023 Aiken Theatre, Evansville, IN
October 8th 2023 Wesbanco Arena, Wheeling, WV
October 10th 2023 Hobart Arena, Troy, OH
October 11th 2023 Honeywell Center, Wabash, IN
October 13th 2023 The Cason Center for the Performing Arts, Paducah, KY
October 14th 2023 Simmons Bank Arena, North Little Rock, AR
October 15th 2023 Heymann Performing Arts Center, Lafayette, LA
October 17th 2023 Stride Bank Center, Enid, OK
October 19th 2023 Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts, Colorado Springs, CO
October 20th 2023 Rio Rancho Events Center, Rio Rancho, NM
October 21st 2023 AVA Amphitheatre, Tucson, AZ
October 23rd 2023 Vina Robles Amphitheatre, Paso Robles, CA
October 25th 2023 Yaamava’ Resort & Casino – Yaamava’ Theater, Highland, CA – with Rob Zombie
October 26th 2023 Grand Sierra Resort and Casino, Reno, NV – with Rob Zombie
October 28th 2023 Zappos/Bakkt Theater, Las Vegas, NV – with Rob Zombie

The second single for ‘Road’ has just dropped but is again geolocked, so you can`t hear it until midnight YOUR local time. It’s called ‘White Line Frankenstein’ and you’ll be able to see it here or below at midnight.

Not one to sit still Nita Strauss will be hitting the road opening for Mammoth WVH (featuring Wolfgang Van Halen) in November and December. Tickets are available from MammothWVH.com now.


Hollywood Vampires UK Tour Roundup

With the conclusion of the Hollywood Vampires UK dates we can do a quick round up of the press and happenings during the tour. Ronnie Wood and Imelda May joined the band in London for the Jeff Tribute and Train Kept a Rollin’, while Black Sabbath legend Tony Iommi appeared in Birmingham for a unique version of ‘Paranoid‘ with Alice singing it! Not something you see everyday. Jimmy Page was also at the London show (again) but sadly didn’t make it onstage (again!).

Unsurprisingly the tour generated a great deal of press. Also unsurprisingly most of it just revolved around Johnny Depp’s every move or satorial choice. As usual I will ignore all those and concentrate on worthwhile articles or reviews about the band and/or shows.

Firstly there was the surprise appearance of Alice on ‘Good Morning Britain’ on Monday. It was a short interview and there wasn’t really anything new said but nice to see him back on UK TV. You can see a version of it on YouTube., but sadly they have blurred out the images and footage (presumably for copyright reasons). If you’re in the UK the show is currently still available on ITVX. You want Monday 10th July show and Alice appears around  1 hour 56 minutes into the show. 

There’s been various show reviews/photos, including Scarborough: Yahoo, Yorkshire Post, Northern EchoSoundsphere Swansea: WalesOnline  Planet Rock. Manchester: Daily Mail, RamZine, JustJared. London:, Far Out, The Telegraph (paywall), The UpcomingDaily Express, TotalRock, Birmingham: BirminghamLive, BirminghamWorld and here, Express & Star, Metal Planet.

While in Manchester Alice was out and about shopping and was spotted buying a T-shirt for Johnny Depp. This, of course, also made the news.

The Arizona Republic has an interesting article about the early days of the band in Phoenix and their mentor Jack Curtis, who will be inducted into the ‘Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame’ on Sunday, with comments from Dennis Dunaway.  They also have a new article on Michael Bruce’s induction into the AZ Hall of fame on the same day.

Nita Strauss made her solo show at the Whisky in LA special by geting engaged to long time boyfriend and band drummer Josh live on stage. Congrats both! Naturally it was caught on video which you can see here. There’s also new Nita Strauss interviews this week from Metal Global,  and the Mistress Carrie Podcast.

If you remember back in April 2022 Solid Rock announced there would be Alice Cooper Arizona car license plates, and then it all went quiet. But now it appears they are finally available to order and it also appears anyone can order one! On top of that $17 from each sale goes to Solid Rock.

New Nita Strauss Album Released Today

New Nita Strauss Album ‘The Call Of The Void’ Released Today

The new Nita Strauss album ‘The Call of the Void’ is out today and there’s a new animated video for ‘Digital Bullets’ featuring Chris Motionless from Motionless in White who opened for Alice a few years ago. You can check out the video here or below. Nita will be live on ‘Rock Feed’ on Sunday at 9.30pm which you’ll find here.

The Northern Echo has a review of Wednesday’s Scarborough Hollywood Vampires show.

The ‘Talk Louder Podcast’ has a long interview with Neal Smith promoting his new ‘Killsmith Goes West’ album. Check it out here.

Lastly, just a note to say that I know the Twitter feed on the news page is currently broken. For some reason Twitter have disabled/broken their own embed code, so there isn’t much I can do. Hopefully they will fix it but with the mess Twitter is in at the moment who knows. If it isn’t fixed after a while I’ll search for some alternative.

New Interviews

New Interviews

Michael Allen, author of the excellent ‘Living And Touring with Alice Cooper & Other Stories’, will be appearing on 959 The Rat’s ‘Electric Ballroom’ tomorrow at 8pm ET to chat about the book and his experiences in the earliest days of Alice Cooper. You can listen live here.
Mike will also be appearing at the Peregrine Book Company in Prescott, AZ on July 8th at 2pm to chat about the book and sign copies.

Michael Bruce is to be inducted into the Arizona Music & Entertainment Hall Of Fame on July 16th at 4pm. The event takes place at the Madison Center for the Arts in Phoenix, AZ.

Rock and Roll Globe have an interview about the recent deluxe reissues with liner notes co-author and former Creem editor Bill Holdship.

Goldmine has Ryan Roxie listing the ’10 albums that changed my life’

Nita Strauss is still doing the promotional rounds for ‘The Call to The Void’ which is released next week. She’s been chatting to the ‘Talk This Way Podcast‘ and ‘Radioactive with Mike Z‘ which includes some chat about the new Alice Cooper album.

Billion Dollar Babies on Blu-Ray

Rhino Records have released a new version of 1973s ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ album on Blu-Ray Audio. It’s the first proper re-release of the original quadraphonic (early surround sound) mix of the album and is not the same as the surround mix released on the DVD-A some years ago, as that was a completely new mix especially for that release. It’s currently only available directly from Rhino themselves in the US, but it seems it will be available in the UK from ‘Dig’ from August 4th with pre-orders available now. Ordering from them in the UK is likely to be substantially cheaper than ordering from the US and avoids the risk of addition import and VAT charges when it arrives in the country.

Electric Eye have a review and lots of photos from the Hollywood Vampires Paris show a few days ago.

Nita Strauss spoke to 97.7 QLZ this week which you can listen to via YouTube, where there is also fan-shot video of her full show from Mechanicsburg, PA last week.

More US Dates Added

Alice Cooper adds five shows in August

Alice Cooper has announced five more headline shows in August with tickets going on sale tomorrow. The new shows are:

August 6th – 1st Summit Arena at Cambria County War Memorial, Johnstown, PA, Johnstown, PA
August 15th – Juanita K Hammons Hall, Springfield, MO
August 19th – Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center, Midland, TX
August 20th – The Buddy Holly Hall at Helen DeVitt Jones Theater, Lubbock, TX
August 22nd – Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, San Antonio, TX

The Hollywood Vampires show at Hellfest almost didn’t go ahead after their equipment was stuck in traffic at the French border. Luckily thanks to Kiss and their crew, who were also at the festival, they managed to put together enough gear for them to play the show.

Dennis Dunaway will be appearing on ‘Voodoo Radio’ tomorrow at 7pm UK time. Anyone can listen in to this via the stations website here.

There’s a new 90 minute interview with Chuck Garric thanks to the ‘Mama Tried Show & Flat Out Friday’ Youtube channel which you can check out here.

Hollywood Soapbox has a short interview with Neal Smith talking about his latest solo album ‘Killsmith Goes West’.

Nita Strauss jumped up on stage with Demi Lovato again the other night, on a night off during her current tour, to guest on ‘Heart Attack’. Blabbermouth have videos.

I’m Alice

‘I’m Alice’, the first single from ‘Road’ has just dropped in Australia on Spotify and Youtube but due to the time difference it won’t be playable until midnight in your local time. But when it is it should be playable below!
UPDATE: The official video has now appeared which you can see below or here.

There’s also a new show added into the schedule in Madison, WI at the Overture Center on August 10th. This is a headline show between the dates on the Motley Crue/Def Leppard tour and tickets are already on sale direct form the venue.

Alice Hits The Road

Alice Cooper hits the ‘Road’ with new album

While we’re still waiting for the official press announcement, details of the new album have been surfacing over the last few days from various retailer listings and the appearance of the short video teaser above [since removed for some reason] suggests a full announcement won’t be long coming.
What we know so far is that the album is entitled ‘Road’ and it will be released on August 25th by earMusic in various combinations. There are *at least* three different CD versions: CD, CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray. Then there are also *at least* three double vinyl versions, in black, red and orange, which also come with the DVD. There will also be a deluxe limited edition vinyl+CD+Blu-Ray+merchandise version. The DVD contains last years Hellfest performance which was streamed live at the time. (I’ll post order links up once both AmazonUK and US have finalised their listings)
The album was produced by Bob Ezrin and features the current live band (Tommy, Roxie, Nita, Chuck, Glen) plus guest appearances by Kane Roberts, Tom Morello, Keith Nelson (Buckcherry) and Wayne Kramer (MC5) who all also co-write at least one song. The track listing as listed on Amazon is:

  1. I’m Alice
  2. Welcome To The Show
  3. All Over The World
  4. Dead Don’t Dance
  5. Go Away
  6. White Line Frankenstein
  7. Big Boots
  8. Rules Of The Road
  9. The Big Goodbye
  10. Road Rats Forever
  11. Baby Please Don’t Go
  12. 100 More Miles
  13. Magic Bus

Amazon.com has the following description:

“The road will make you or break you. To survive it, you need to be as tough as asphalt and move fast enough to make the competition eat dust. Throughout 2022, Alice collaborated closely with the members of his touring band as well as long-time producer Bob Ezrin, putting together what would become his brand-new studio album “Road.” You can feel the energy and lightness that the band brings with every riff and hear the story behind what inspired them. Bringing everything full circle, it channels the spirit of old school Alice with instantly recognizable grit and plenty of gusto. It’s everything you’d hope for from him and more. And this time his trusted longtime bandmates— Ryan Roxie [guitar], Chuck Garric [bass], Tommy Henrikson [guitar], Glen Sobel [drums], and Nita Strauss [guitar]—are riding shotgun. Kane Roberts (a touring and recording collaborator with Alice’s in years past who briefly rejoined Cooper on the road in 2022) makes a special guest appearance, contributing the raucous and rip-roaring “Dead Don’t Dance.” Other special contributors to the album include Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, who co-wrote, and plays and sings backing vocals on “White Line Frankenstein,” and Buckcherry’s Keith Nelson and MC5’s Wayne Kramer, who also co-wrote new songs with Alice.”

Obviously I’ll post the full release information as soon as it’s released

In other news, Nita Strauss has released another track from her forthcoming second album. This one is called ‘Victorious’ and features "Dorothy" on vocals. Nita says: "Victorious is the anthem I always wanted, a song about inspiring change, marching forward relentlessly, being willing to save yourself instead of waiting for someone to do it for you, and never backing down from a fight, Dorothy was the perfect powerhouse voice and personality to stand and deliver, and knock this one out of the park.” You can see the video below.

Radio Eksen in Istanbul, Turkey have posted a short interview with the Hollywood Vampires which you can check out here. It’s in English. The band began their European tour a couple of days ago with a similar set to the last tour but with a couple of nods to Jeff Beck added in.

The "Sally Steel Rocks! Show" has posted the second part of her interview with Alice talking about being on Hollywood Squares, what he feels his best song was, what he was like in high school. You can check it out here.

Beasto Blanco have signed a deal with COP International for two new singles later this year followed by a new album in 2024. You can read the full press release here.

Vampires Donate To Disaster Relief

The Hollywood Vampires have announced that all income from the June 10th show in Istanbul will be donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee

The Hollywood Vampires have announced that all income from the June 10th show in Istanbul will be donated to the Disasters Emergency Committee to help with aid after the devastation earthquakes in Turkey recently. They have also released ‘Raise The Dead‘ from the ‘Live In Rio’ album/DVD which came out Friday.

The News-Gazette have an interesting article which claims to show the contents of the Alice Cooper Tour Rider, that is, the part of a concert contract that shows what must be provided at each venue on the tour for the band’s comfort during their stay at the venue. While there’s nothing particular weird on there it does offer some insight to how things are done on the tour.

Alice is on the front cover of the latest issue of ‘Rock’n’Roll‘ magazine in Sweden.

Nita Strauss is interviewed by UltimateGuitarTV on YouTube and ‘The Rock Experience‘ about her new album.