ALICE COOPER On Hard Rock: 'It's The One Music That Has Gone For 50 Years Without Losing Its Edge'

In a new interview with Riff X's "Metal XS", legendary rocker Alice Cooper spoke about how his sound has evolved over the past five and a half decades. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I just can't get away from the sort of the classic rock from the '70s only because it just still works. It's a sort of a classic configuration of music where we're all sort of based in early BEATLES, ROLLING STONES, YARDBIRDS, and then you take it off in your own direction. Almost every good hard rock band goes all the way back to Chuck Berry, 'cause that was the basis of that 4/4 beat, with the backbeat. And then you find your way to make it Alice Cooper, the way that GUNS N' ROSES found a way to make it GUNS N' ROSES, and AEROSMITH found a way to make it [their own]. It's all in how you perform it and really your personality coming out in it.

"Somebody once said, talking about music is like dancing about architecture," he continued. "It's almost impossible to talk about it. You have to hear it and then either you like it or you don't like it. But it's basic hard rock, and it's the one music that has gone for 50 years without losing its edge. Grunge, punk, hip-hop, disco, they've all had their moments, but hard rock has been the middle. It's always been there, and it always will be. LED ZEPPELIN will always be LED ZEPPELIN. And you play LED ZEPPELIN for a 16-year-old kid and they go, 'Oh, yeah.' There's something about that kind of music that will not die."

Cooper and Rob Zombie kicked off the 2024 leg of the "Freaks On Parade" tour with special guests MINISTRY and FILTER on August 20 in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Isleta Amphitheater, with stops throughout North America including Saint Paul, Milwaukee, Boston and Austin, before wrapping up on September 18 at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.

Cooper pioneered a grandly theatrical brand of hard rock that was designed to shock. Drawing equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock, the group created a stage show that featured electric chairs, guillotines, fake blood and boa constrictors. He continues to tour regularly, performing shows worldwide with the dark and horror-themed theatrics that he's best known for.

In a recent interview with the 96.1 KLPX radio station, Cooper stated about how his stage show has evolved over the years: "It's so funny because it used to be easy to shock an audience in the '70s. Now nobody's really trying — we're not really trying to shock an audience. I don't think anybody is 'shock rock' anymore, but those elements still remain in the show because they're fun to watch. It's still fun to watch the guillotine and the fact that you really buy in to it because of what happens before that. You're really concerned about this character Alice up there, what happens. And that's what I like about it. I want the audience to get involved in the show. We don't do a lot of lasers. We don't do things like that, because I want the emphasis to be on the character Alice, what happens to him and what he what exactly he's doing. But all that happens during all these songs that everybody knows — 'Feed My Frankenstein' and 'Poison' and 'No More Mr. Nice Guy' and, of course, 'School's Out' at the end."

Fresh from the success of his latest album "Road", a concept album about the thrills and spills of touring, Alice is accompanied, as always, by his long-running live band of Ryan Roxie (guitar),Chuck Garric (bass),Tommy Henriksen (guitar),Glen Sobel (drums) and Nita Strauss (guitar).

With a schedule that has included six months year in and year out on the road, Cooper brings his own brand of rock psycho-drama to fans both old and new, enjoying it as much as the audience does. Known as the architect of shock-rock, Cooper (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 his influence on rock and roll and popular culture long since acknowledged, there is little that Cooper hasn't achieved in his remarkable career, including platinum albums, sold-out tours and any number of honors and career achievement awards.