Alice Cooper talks Hall of Fame, reunion, Golden Gods and Nightmare 2

“The really great reward about it is the fact that you’re being voted in by those guys,” says Alice Cooper. “It’s the very guys who taught you how to play music.” The original shock rocker isn’t going into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame quietly this week – and he’s not going in alone. Before adopting the “Alice Cooper” moniker for his solo career, he was the frontman for a seventies rock band of the same name, and it’s the original five piece outfit which is being inducted into the hall. He’s using the occasion to get the old band back together, and their first live performance in a generation will come at next month’s Revolver Golden Gods awards ceremony, an honorific event which focuses squarely on the hard rock and heavy metal genres.
At the press conference announcing the upcoming 2011 Golden Gods festivities, Cooper was on hand and sat down with Beatweek to discuss his thoughts on the Hall induction, how it feels to have his old bandmates back in the fold, and his plans for the new Alice Cooper album Welcome 2 My Nightmare – which will also feature contributions from his old band. The new album seeks to pick up where Cooper’s 1975 solo debut Welcome To My Nightmare left off.

“It’s an extension of Alice’s nightmares thirty years later,” said a relaxed and leather clad Cooper, sans his trademark facepaint, of the new material which is due out later this year. “We figured if Alice had this nightmare at this time, what would his nightmare be now? So you’ll find that there are tentacles of music that connect up the two. You’re hearing this new song and all the sudden you hear this little piano piece that’s Steven or The Awakening or something like that. It’s almost an audio hallucination, but it ties you right back to the first album. So I think that nightmares go on forever. That doesn’t mean there’s gonna be Nightmare 28 or 29 or 30. But it was a perfect opportunity to work with Bob Ezrin again and to work with two of the guys, Hunter and Wagner, who were both the two guitar players on that album, and the original guys.”
On the subject of how long he’s been hoping to see himself inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an occasion which finally takes place this week, Alice is reflective. “You don’t even suppose that you will when you realize that there’s The Beatles and The Stones and those bands in there.” But while younger generations may not even be aware that Alice Cooper was a band first, the Hall’s decision to induct the band rather than simply the individual has given the four surviving members (guitarist Glen Buxton died in 1997) the opportunity to reunite nearly four decades after parting, something Alice says he’s long seen coming.
“When we broke up in ’74, we never broke up with any bad blood at all. Everybody went on and did their own projects and everything like that. We always stayed in touch with each other. And we always knew there would be a reunion at some point. We just didn’t know when it was gonna happen. This was the perfect opportunity to put the original band back together, and do some shows other than just the Hall of Fame. Go out and do some other shows together. It would be a lot of fun. Everybody plays great. Neal, Dennis and Mike are all great players. We put Steve Hunter in to replace Glen Buxton, who’s pretty irreplaceable, but Steve Hunter is about the closest thing to him. So it’s a great band.”
Alice Cooper was his affable self at the Golden Gods launch event, cheerfully pretending to choke the life out of host Chris Jericho as cameras rolled for an event promo video. The man and the band will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow night, and it’ll air on the FUSE network on March 20th. The Revolver Golden Gods awards will take place April 20th at Club Nokia in Los Angeles. Tickets are on sale now.
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