Alice Cooper Reunites With His Original Band For ‘Detroit Stories’

Alice Cooper has reunited once again with his original band members Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway and Michael Bruce for two tracks on his 28th album ‘Detroit Stories’.

The Alice Cooper Band released their first album ‘Pretties For You’ in 1969 and broke up after their seventh album ‘Muscle of Love’ in 1973.

Alice tells Noise11.com that ‘Muscle of Love’ “was the first album we did without Bob (Ezrin). I felt, and the band felt, (without saying it) that we were scattered. And you have to remember that ‘Love It To Death’ (1971) through to ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ (1973) was our most successful period. We never stopped. We toured for five or six years without stopping and we were burned. We had already broken the Rolling Stones records for attendance. The records were all platinum. By the end of that we went to do this next album ‘Muscle of Love’ and it was scattered. This song went this way, this song went that way. We didn’t have Bob to glue it together. As good as the album was we all looked at each other and went ‘wow, that wasn’t what it should be’. It wasn’t the producer’s fault, it was our fault. Everybody in the band felt like, time to separate, not divorce, but to separate. There was no bad blood at all. We just separated from each other but we all stayed in touch. Finally, Glen (Buxton) passed away and that was like having Keith Richards pass away if you were the Rolling Stones. He was such a big part of the sound. Then it was harder and harder to get back together. Everyone was doing their own projects. I did ‘Nightmare’ and then ‘Hell’ but in the last 10 years we have been doing a lot of work together”.

Watch the Noise11 Alice Cooper interview:

Dennis, Mike and Neal finally got back together on ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ (2011). They recorded together again for ‘Paranormal’ (2017) and now the new album ‘Detroit Stories’, (coming 26 February 2021). “It is very productive that we are still writing songs. On this new album we wrote a song called ‘Social Debris’ together and a song called ‘I Hate You’. It was funny because we don’t hate each other but each guy took a shot at someone in the band. Mike (Bruce) wrote a verse about Neal (Smith), Neal wrote a song about me, Dennis (Dunaway) wrote a verse about Neal and we all roasted each other on that song”.

Alice Cooper had a birthday last week. “I’m 73. I deserve every year of that. I feel like I’m 40, I feel great. When this whole Covid thing is over I can’t wait to get back on tour. Between my band and the Hollywood Vampires both bands are ready to go. We are like racehorses at the starting gate’.