Alice Cooper Court

Detroit to have “Alice Cooper Court”

With just two weeks to go until ‘Detroit Stories’ things are starting to move. During an interview with Detroit station WCSX it was announced that Alice will be getting his own road somewhere in the city called "Alice Cooper Court’. Host Jim O’Brien announced the news as a special birthday present to Coop. The exact location is yet to be decided and they are running a competition to choose the right spot.

There’s a new Alice interview in Spin magazine, and AZCentral has a video of Alice confirming that he and Sheryl have now been vaccinated against the Covid virus, having contracted it themselves late last year. German magazine ‘Rocks‘ (which looks very much like a version of the UK’s ‘Classic Rock’) is another European mag to have Alice on their cover this month.

Variety has a short article about being sober in the music business and it has a few quotes from Alice.

Dennis Dunaway is the star of a new advert for RotoSound strings which should be appearing in musicians magazines any time now. You can see the advert below. DD is also interviewed by Max1on1 which is available via Facebook.

Dennis and Blue Coupe will also feature during the Valentine’s Day virtual tribute show to New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain who died last month age 69. Tickets for the livestream are on sale now here.

Ryan Roxie’s latest ‘In The Trenches’ guest was ex-Alice keyboardist Teddy Zig-Zag, and you can watch what happened here.

Nita Strauss is featured on the January cover of ‘Recovery Today‘ magazine, a "Addiction, Sobriety and Recovery" magazine.

Glen Sobel is interviewed by North Wales Drum Productions which you can watch on Facebook.

Lastly there is a new movie due out on digital platforms in a couple of days called "School’s Out Forever". It’s a comedy horror film which looks amusing, and while the trailer doesn’t feature the song there can be little doubt where they got the title from, so surely it will play at some point?

Social Debris

Alice Cooper posts new track ‘Social Debris’

This morning Alice marked his birthday with the third “single” from ‘Detroit Stories’ which appeared on the official Alice Cooper YouTube account. Written by Alice, Bob Ezrin and Neal Smith, and with an obvious tip of the hat to ‘Elected’, it features original Cooper band members Neal, Dennis Dunaway and Michael Bruce on drums, bass and guitar respectively. ‘Detroit Stories’ is due February 26th, although I’ve heard reports that Amazon in the USA is notifying people who pre-ordered that the special edition box set has been delayed by a week.
UPDATE: You can officially download the song for free here.

In a new interview this week with EW it’s revealed both Alice and Sheryl Cooper were diagnosed with COVID-19 in late 2020 but that both made a full recovery: “We had it at the same time, which was great, because we could commiserate.”

Alice turned up on a new ‘advert’ for Uber Eats, the food delivery. Alice appears twice in the two and a half hour(!) video which features Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, as Wayne and Garth from ‘Waynes World’, watching a list of all the Uber Eats restaurants scroll past on screen, and occasionally doing something amusing. You kinda need to see it to understand, which you can do on Youtube here. This link should take you to Alice’s first appearance, with him turning up again around the 2.20 mark near the end.

Other new interviews have been appearing in the European music press. Alice features on the front covers of ‘Hard Rock’ in both Italy and France (presumably translations of the same article) and ‘Rock and Folk‘ in France. There’s also an article in the new issue of ‘Uncut‘ in the UK.

‘Talkulture interviews drummer Glen Sobel for an hour or so which you can see on YouTube.

Dash Cooper and CO-OP have a new single out. It’s called ‘Lie To Me’ and can be found here, and apparently features a guest appearance from Tommy Henriksen.

Catching Up

New Interviews

Another very quiet couple of weeks in Cooper-world. There’s not been much happening but here’s a few things to check out.

Alice has obviously been doing interviews to lead up to ‘Detroit Stories’ next month and a few have started to appear. AZCentral have a new interview revealing that Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway and Michael Bruce appear twice on the album, on ‘Social Debris’ (co-written by Neal) and ‘I Hate You’ (co-written by Dennis). There’s an article in the March issue of ‘Uncut‘ in the UK and Alice appears on the front cover of the new issue ‘Rock and Folk‘. There also a substantial article in the new issue of ‘Sweden Rock‘, The last two in their local languages of course.

Rolling Stone have published a great article about the legendary 1971 press party at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles that was used to launch Alice Cooper on the unsuspecting public.

Neal Smith is interviewed by ‘ChurchOfRock’ on YouTube, while Dennis Dunaway was chatting to ‘IndiePower’ which is also up on YouTube. And to complete the original band make sure you didn’t miss Michael Bruce chatting to Ryan Roxie for ‘In The Trenches‘. In related (pun intended) news Calico Cooper has been talking to ‘Metal From The Inside’ which you can find here.

Happy New Year

The one and only Michael Bruce will be Ryan Roxie’s guest on the first ‘In The Trenches’ episode of the new year. The show will air on January 5th at 5pm UK time/12pm EST via facebook and YouTube

‘A Paranormal Evening At The Paris Olympia’, the 2017 footage included in the forthcoming ‘Detroit Stories’ box set, appears to be airing on German TV’s 3Sat on New Years Eve
at 1AM local time. Unfortunately it’s likely to be geo-blocked outside Germany, but they do have a watchable trailer for the film on their site.

Nita Strauss was on ‘Rob’s School Of Music‘ discussing her solo material, Fitness and being on the road with the Alice Cooper band.

Calico Cooper turned up on Portland TV channel KATU2ABC chatting about Beasto Blanco and growing up with Alice as a father.

Alice, Slash and others turn up in a trailer for the forthcoming ‘Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp’ documentary ‘Rock Camp: The Movie’ which will receive a ‘virtual cinema’ release on January 15th before going to on demand from February 16th.

Weekly Catchup

Detroit Stories Splatter Vinyl

It’s been very quiet this past week with only a few small things to cover to stay up to date.

Good Records in Texas, the guys behind the ‘Live From The Astroturf’ reunion album, will be releasing a exclusive ""Spider Eyes Splatter vinyl" version of ‘Detroit Stories’ in February and it’s available to pre-order now. This version comes with an 12" x 12" silkscreened art print of the band at Pontiac Farm in 1971 (from the Dunaway’s archive) and Alice Cooper trading card.

The official Alice Cooper social media pages have also posted a photograph showing the contents of the ‘Detroit Stories’ box set which you can see below.

SkyArts in the UK (now also on Freeview) will be showing Alice’s appearance in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar‘ on Wednesday evening (23rd) at 9pm. As far as I know this will be the first time it has aired in the UK.

Ryan Roxie is now offering gift certificates for his ‘System-12 Guitar Method’, the perfect gift for your budding guitarist relation. All the info is here.

Dennis Dunaway’s ‘Cold Cold Coffin‘ has won yet another award. This time it’s won the ‘Best Music Video’ at the Shockfest Film Festival in Hollywood.

New Single Released

Alice Cooper releases new single

Today sees the release of the second single from ‘Detroit Stories’ and this time it’s ‘Our Love Will Change The World’, originally by Detroit band ‘Outrageous Cherry’. It’s streaming live in Europe now on Spotify and Youtube, but it could be delayed in your timezone if it isn’t yet midnight where you are. The official video can be seen below.

The Hollywood Vampires have announced an additional show date for their European tour next year. They play Romexpo in Bucharest, Romania on August 31st. Tickets go on sale Monday.

As mentioned a few weeks ago Alice was the first guest on a new webshow by Kesha (‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’) and they have posted an 8 minute preview of the episode on YouTube. The full 30 minute podcast can be heard via various streaming sites found here.

Radio station WCSX interviewed Alice a few weeks ago and have posted video on YouTube. The ‘Halloween Special’ they keep referring to in the interview appears to just have been the Halloween episode of ‘Nights With Alice Cooper’.

SkyArts in the UK are currently running a show called ‘ICONS: Music Through The Lens’ and Alice pops up occasionally to comment.

The Sunday Times (UK) had a short article last Sunday with Alice talking cars which you can see here (subscription required).

Alice is also seen very briefly in the new Frank Zappa documentary by Alex Winters simply called ‘Zappa’. They show some photos, short clips from the Toronto ’69 film, and Alice talks about Frank for a few seconds. In all less then a minute. He pops up one more time later to comment about Zappa writing “hit” singles. Of course Alice Cooper isn’t a huge part of Zappa’s life and the film IS a pretty good overview of Zappa’s career with some interesting home movie footage. (thanks Jeff for info)

New Monsters Cruise Announced

Alice Cooper has been announced as the headliner of the ‘Monsters Of Rock Cruise: Operation Monster Beach’

Alice Cooper has been announced as the headliner of the ‘Monsters Of Rock Cruise: Operation Monster Beach’ which is set to take place between May 26th and 31st 2021 in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Other bands scheduled to play include Winger, Beasto Blanco, John Corabi, Electric Boys and LA Guns among many others. Tickets for the shows go on sale on December 1st at 2pm eastern time. It’s safe to assume that this is all subject to the pandemic situation in May, and how safe you think it will be by then! For full info on the event check out monstersofrockcruise.com.

The early 70s movie ‘Diary Of A Mad Housewife’, which featured an early film appearance by the Alice Cooper band, is due to be officially released on DVD and Blu-Ray on December 15th. While there have been unofficial releases in the past (apparently taken from an old VHS copies) this seems to be the first proper release on DVD and Blu-Ray. It comes with a audio commentary track.

Ultimate Classic Rock has a short chat with Calico Cooper about the period of time she joined the ‘Brutal Planet’ show in 2000.

‘Rock Meets Classic’ have released footage of Alice and Tommy Henriksen performing ‘Bed Of Nails’ back in March, before the tour collapsed due to the pandemic.

Ryan Roxie was on ‘TalkCulture’ earlier today and you can watch the hour long show on YouTube.

Friday Update

Alice Cooper Appears On Kesha Podcast and other news

Alice will be at guest on the first episode of pop star Kesha’s supernatural podcast ‘Kesha and the Creepies‘. Alice and Kesha first came together one ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ and have appeared onstage together a couple of times. The podcast launches today via iHeartMedia.

Goodyear has partnered with Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers for a live streamed concert tomorrow, November 21st, between 5pm and 9pm local time. For local bands will take part, and it’s always possible Alice will make a brief cameo appearance as well.
In other Solid Rock news the opening of the second teen center in Mesa, AZ has been delayed due to the pandemic and is now hoped to open in late January.

A few posts ago I mentioned that Alice shows up singing on a children’s record by ‘Splash & Boots’ called ‘Heart Parade’. Well now there’s an article in The Star explaining how it came about with quotes from Bob Ezrin.

‘Nights With Alice Cooper’ has a new video in which Alice chats to Jimi Hendrix producer Eddie Kramer and Hendrix bassist Billy Cox about the new Hendrix film "The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live In Maui" which is out soon.

The Marc Bolan tribute show which Dennis Dunaway took park in a couple of weeks ago will be repeated on November 29th at 8PM eastern time (1AM UK time) at iheart.com. Dennis chats about the legendary Morgan Studios jam session near the end of the show.

Rolling Stone gets Alice to name his top 10 albums of all time in a new video.

Local Spins recalls the night Alice Cooper played the Civic Centre in Holland, MI in 1972.

According to an article in the Worcester News UK Cooper fan Chris Sutton has a book about "Alice Cooper in the 70s" on the way via publisher ‘Sonic Bond‘. It’s due in March 2021 and seems to part of a series of books concentrating on bands at their peak in the 70s.

Detroit Single Tomorrow

Since posting yesterday the official announcement of ‘Detroit Stories’ has appeared. Here’s what it says:

Named for the city that launched the original Alice Cooper group on the road to success, “Detroit Stories” follows last year’s “Breadcrumbs” EP as a modern-day homage to the toughest and craziest Rock n Roll scene there ever was.
In 1970, fledgling producer Bob Ezrin walked into a farmhouse on the outskirts of Detroit to work with the Alice Cooper band. Abandoning flower power Los Angeles, because they were the opposite of the hippie peace and love ideal, Alice had brought his decidedly darker gang back to his birthplace to the legendary rock scene that gave birth to hard rock, garage rock, soul, funk, punk…and more.
“Detroit Stories” will be available on CD, CD+DVD Digipak, CD Box Set (including CD, Blu-ray, T-shirt, face mask, torch light and 3 stickers), and 2LP Gatefold on earMUSIC.
The DVD and Blu-ray will show the incredible live performance “A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris” for the first time on video.
"Detroit was Heavy Rock central then,” explains Alice, “You’d play the Eastown and it would be Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, the Stooges and the Who, for $4! The next weekend at the Grande it was MC5, Brownsville Station and Fleetwood Mac, or Savoy Brown or the Small Faces. You couldn’t be a soft-rock band or you’d get your ass kicked."
“Los Angeles had its sound with The Doors, Love and Buffalo Springfield,” he says, “San Francisco had the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. New York had The Rascals and The Velvet Underground. But Detroit was the birthplace of angry hard rock. After not fitting in anywhere in the US (musically or image wise) Detroit was the only place that recognized the Alice Cooper guitar driven, hard rock sound and our crazy stage show. Detroit was a haven for the outcasts. And when they found out I was born in East Detroit… we were home.”

Tomorrow (Friday) will see the release of the first single from the album. Called ‘Rock’n’Roll’ it’s a cover of an old Velvet Underground song that Lou Reed supposedly wrote in Detroit.

Needless to say the news of a new album has been covered by all the major outlets, all unavoidably repeating the same information. You can check out the following for the occasional unique quote. NME, Ultimate Classic Rock, Consequence of Sound, and Rolling Stone.

Alice is among the names announced for Joe Walsh’s virtual ‘VetsAid’ show on December 12th. The online event is the fourth ‘VetsAid’ but obviously the pandemic has prevented a proper live show. The bill includes a diverse list of artists and tickets to watch the stream are available now from vetsaid.org.

Rolling Stone have posted a long interview with guitar legend Steve Hunter which hits on all the major working relationships Steve’s had over the years including Alice Cooper and Lou Reed.

Beginning on November 29th Ryan Roxie officially launches his ‘System-12’ twelve week guitar challenge. ‘System-12’ is Roxie’s guitar tuition course which aims to get even novices playing real songs in a matter of days and includes videos, transcripts and live lessons from Ryan and his team. Get all the information of how to join here.

Ultimate Classic Rock speak to Calico Cooper about life on the road with her dad.

Nita Strauss has partnered with D’Addario strings to release the ‘Nita Strauss Guitar Maintenance Kit’ which includes the same products Nita uses to keep her guitars show ready. Included in the kit are a "string height gauge, flashlight, 9V battery, multi-tool, Eclipse tuner, hydrate fingerboard conditioner, XLR8 string cleaner and lubricant, fret polishing system, micro-fiber polishing cloth, pro-winder, travel case and instructional manual."

Legendary Cooper photographer Bob Gruen has a new book out called ‘Right Place, Right Time: The Life Of A Rock & Roll photographer" which is sure to contain some Cooper related anecdotes. It’s out now via Abrams Press.

Detroit News

Lots more ‘Detroit Stories’ info has been surfacing over the last 24 hours or so. AmazonUK and AmazonUS have now added pages for various editions of the new album to be released on February 26th. The first single will be ‘Rock’n’Roll’, a Velvet Underground cover, which will be released on Friday. There seem to be the following editions (so far and subject to change):

  • A double album on red vinyl
  • A double album on black vinyl
  • A double album on purple vinyl (Townsend exclusive)
  • A double album on blue vinyl (JPC exclusive)
  • A double album on clear vinyl (500 copies)
  • 1xCD edition
  • 1xCD+1xDVD edition which adds the previously unreleased film from ‘A Paranormal Night At The Olympia, Paris’
  • 1xCD+1xBlu-ray box set including t-shirt, face mask, torch light and 2 stickers. Blu-Ray is the previously unreleased film from ‘A Paranormal Night At The Olympia, Paris’

The main album track list is as follows:

  1. Rock’n’Roll
  2. Go Man Go (album version)
  3. Our Love Will Change The World
  4. Social Debris – A Neal Smith Song
  5. $1000 High Heel Shoes
  6. Hail Mary
  7. Detroit City 2021 (Album Version)
  8. Drunk And In Love
  9. Independence Dave
  10. I Hate You
  11. Wonderful World
  12. Sister Anne (Album Version) – MC5 song
  13. Hanging On By A Thread (Don’t Give Up)
  14. Shut Up An Rock
  15. East Side Story (Album Version) – Bob Seger song

Detroit Stories