'My oldest friends': Alice Cooper back in the 70s with original band

With his mix of shock rock, theatrical performances and stage shows evoking horror, cabaret and even circus, Alice Cooper caused a massive sensation in the early 1970s.

Originally, it was the name of a band, but eventually frontman Vincent Furnier became the name Alice Cooper. Before starting his solo career in 1975, the band recorded seven studio albums. Fifty years later, the ageing musicians have reunited for an eighth.

"The Revenge of Alice Cooper" brings together Alice Cooper — the singer who now goes by this name in his passport — with Michael Bruce (guitar), Dennis Dunaway (bass) and Neal Smith (drums).

"They were my oldest friends from high school," the shock rocker says in high spirits during an interview with dpa in London.

'No bad blood'

"When the band broke up, we did not divorce as much as we separated," he says. "There was no bad blood. Nobody was suing anybody. Nobody was angry with anybody. Everybody just went in different directions." The band also stayed in touch, he says.

Bandmates Bruce, Dunaway and Smith, who like Cooper are now veritable grandfathers of shock rock in their late 70s, had already made guest appearances on his recent (solo) albums.

It seemed only a matter of time before more came of it. "Finally, I just said, 'Why don't we do something nobody's expecting? Let's do an album'." Cooper’s long-time collaborator, successful producer Bob Ezrin, was immediately on board as well.

"He was the one that was the captain of all of our big hit albums," Cooper said of Ezrin, who was responsible for successful albums such as "Love It to Death" (1971), "School’s Out" (1972) and "Billion Dollar Babies" (1973), and later produced several solo records.

"What George Martin did with the Beatles is what Bob Esrin did with us," said the singer, adding that Ezrin was largely responsible for his successful career.

An accidental 1970s album

Songs like "Black Mamba" (featuring Doors guitarist Robby Krieger as a guest), "Wild Ones" and "Kill The Flies" are reminiscent of the early works of the band Alice Cooper, although this was not initially the plan.

"We accidentally made a 1975 album," Cooper laughs. "I think it's just because it's the way we play."

One person was missing in the studio: lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died in 1997. And yet he can still be heard on the song "What Happened To You" thanks to an old demo recording from Dunaway’s archive and modern technology.

"We took a riff of Glen Buxton's from an old tape, and we isolated it," Cooper explains, "and then we wrote a song around that so that Glen could be on the album."

The lyrics, as usual with Alice Cooper, are ambiguous, witty and often macabre. Almost every song tells a story. "One Night Stand" is about a serial killer who meets a woman in a bar and goes home with her, only to discover that she's also a serial killer.

"Blood On The Sun" is a small stroke of genius with lyrics consisting entirely of old film titles — mainly war films and spy thrillers. "It sounds very poetic and it sounds very mysterious," Cooper says, laughing.

A surprising change in voice

Surprisingly, the vocals of frontman Alice sound different from those on albums of recent years or decades — a bit rougher and a bit darker. It’s hard to describe exactly, but Cooper has noticed it himself.

"It’s so strange," he says. "When I work with the original band, I automatically switch to a different voice. I don't know why. I honestly don't even try to do that. It just happens. It's unconscious, but I noticed it myself."

It’s no coincidence that the illustrated album cover is reminiscent of 1970s horror films, complete with the self-ironic slogan: "The return album the world was afraid of." But fans have nothing to fear. Quite the opposite.

The new LP musically, sonically and spiritually ties in with the early classics of the band Alice Cooper, even if the production is more modern. Apart from that, "The Revenge Of Alice Cooper" is indeed like a 1970s hard rock album — in the best sense.