BIO
Without Alice Cooper, there might never have been the NY Dolls, KISS, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Motley Crue, Slipknot or Rob Zombie ... maybe not even David Bowie, or at least not Ziggy Stardust. The iconic hard rocker, who literally invented the concept of the rock concert as theater, returns to what he does best on Along Came a Spider (SPV Records), the 25th studio album of a long and illustrious career which began in 1969 with the release of Pretties for You on Frank Zappa's Straight label.
With a schedule that includes six months of every year on the road, Alice Cooper is bringing his own brand of rock psycho-drama to fans both old and new, and enjoying it as much as the audience does.
Known as the architect of shock-rock, Alice (in both the original Alice Cooper band and as a solo artist) has rattled the cages and undermined the authority of generations of guardians of the status quo, continuing to surprise fans and exude danger at every turn, like a great horror movie, even in an era where CNN can present real life shocking images.
With the Stones-like swagger of songs like "Catch Me If You Can" and "I'm Hungry," Alice plumbs his roots in twisted garage-band rock & roll. "Before we recorded a single note as Alice Cooper, we were playing stuff we learned from the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Who and the Stones in bars," he recalls. "There's always a lot of their influence in my songwriting."
Of course, if you ask Alice about HIS influence on so many artists, when you recount the story of how a young Johnny Rotten auditioned for the Sex Pistols by singing "I'm Eighteen," or you try to list the many bands that have followed through the doors he opened, you might get told "don't blame me for all of them!"
As he heads back out on the concert trail again this year now that "Along Came a Spider" is unleashed, Alice insists he's still motivated to continue touring and making albums, as well as making time for such side projects as Cooper'stown (his Phoenix-based restaurant/sports bar), his Alice Cooper: Golf Monster book, and his Nights With Alice Cooper nightly radio show, syndicated domestically and worldwide on over 100 stations.
"If there's nothing standing in my way, why not?," he shrugs. "It's what I love doing. And no one puts on a show as good as ours, musically and visually. I'm glad to be an elder statesman, and a healthy one. I look to guys like Ozzy, Iggy and Steven Tyler as fellow survivors. We're carnivores, not dinosaurs. We eat whatever bands are in our path."
With his influence on rock & roll long since acknowledged, there is little that Alice Cooper hasn't achieved in his remarkable career, including platinum albums, sold-out tours and any number of honors and career achievement awards.
Along Came a Spider, the 25th album of a remarkable career with uncountable highlights, may require him to make more room on the mantelpiece for yet more hardware.