Between 1969 and 1973, Alice Cooper put out seven records. Everything released between 1971 and 1973, or five of the seven records, have gone either gold or platinum in the United States. Then 1975 rolled around and Alice Cooper went solo for the remainder of his career, though all the albums from 1969 to present day have said Alice Cooper on the cover and the group in the 70s didn't have a separate name.
Now that hit-churning group is back in 2016! That means Alice Cooper on vocals, Michael Bruce on guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Neal Smith on drums. Unfortunately lead guitarist Glen Buxton passed away in 1997.
Here's what Cooper had to say about the new stuff in an interview with The Weekender.
“I’ve always liked the idea that Alice Cooper has always been a Detroit rock band. We’ve always been a hard rock band, guitar rock, and I’ll never give that up,” Cooper said. “But every once in awhile, though, there’s just a flavor of what album do we want to go to here to give it that flavor. And it seems to be going toward the ‘Killer’ album. And I kind of go, that album, let’s revisit the sound of that album and what we were kind of thinking. You can never go back and totally recapture it, but you can certainly look at the elements that made that album work the way it did.”
“I wrote three or four songs with (Alice Cooper Band drummer) Neil Smith and (guitarist) Mike Bruce,” Cooper said. “And so we worked together in Phoenix for about two weeks just writing songs and demoing songs. And you never know which ones are going to make the album, but I said let’s do that.
“Dennis Dunaway (bassist in the Alice Cooper Band) wrote two or three things,” the singer added. “We haven’t seen those yet, but I know Dennis has always written great stuff. It’s fun to go back and work with guys you haven’t worked with in awhile. It’s not trying to recapture your youth. It’s trying to recapture a sound. And it’s a very elusive sound.”
I mean, these are the dudes responsible for writing "School's Out" and "I'm Eighteen," among others, so we'll see how well this goes!
