ALICE COOPER Talks About Touring With ROB ZOMBIE, Upcoming Studio Album

TorontoSun.com recently conducted an interview with legendary rocker Alice Cooper. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

TorontoSun.com: Is there a friendly rivalry between you and Rob [Zombie]?

Alice: I think we both know who's the student and who's the teacher (laughs). But I really do respect Rob — I've always said his show is like a tattoo parlour coming to life. And what I like about Rob that I don't find in anybody else's show is a sense of humour. The only other band I can think of with a sense of humour is GWAR. Most of the other bands are trying to be so heavy and so scary. We can be scary too, but there's humour. It's a good match.

TorontoSun.com: What can the crowd expect from you this time?

Alice: This is a brand-new show. It's actually the most produced show we've done in quite a while. Rob Roth, who did "Beauty and the Beast" on Broadway, directed it. I asked him to shake it up and put me in situations where I have to stretch. So the first thing he did was for the song "Only Women Bleed". At the end of the song, a nurse is laying in my lap. I throw her off, rip off her uniform — including her wig — put it on, and end up standing on a garbage can with a noose around my neck. And then I sing "I Never Cry", standing on the garbage can. And at the end, I sing the very last line: "And you know I never cry, I never ..." But before I can say the last word, she kicks the garbage can out and I hang. It's my favourite part of the show.

TorontoSun.com: Is that the only time they kill you?

Alice: They kill me four times — they hang me, they cut my head off, they put a giant hypodermic needle in me, and they put me in this box with these giant spikes that go through me. And of course, Alice keeps coming back.

TorontoSun.com: You're one of the only people who could put on such a violent show without being protested.

Alice: It's so vaudevillian. And what makes it work is that the songs are done sincerely. I've told the band to look dead serious. I don't want any smiling up there. The humour comes from the absurdity of what we're doing.

TorontoSun.com: Any plans for a new album?

Alice: Ten songs are written already. It's going to be called "The Night Shift". The concept is, it's a really dark radio show where I'm the disc jockey, and every song I play will be by a different fictitious band. At some point, you'll realize this disc jockey is a little bit more than that. And I'm sure there will be some kind of a twist ending.

Read the entire interview from TorontoSun.com.