ALICE COOPER Wanted 'No Overdubs' On His Upcoming Studio Album

In a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, legendary rocker Alice Cooper discussed some of the new music he has been working on. He said: "Well, there's a new album coming out with my touring band right now. I wanted to show off the touring band, so we wrote songs, went in the studio, and I said, 'Here's the deal on this album: No overdubs.' I said, 'Everything has to be done in the studio live because the whole idea of this album is showing off how good this band is live.' So when you hear this album, it sounds like a studio album, but it's actually them playing live in the studio. That album will be coming out."

Alice also confirmed that he has worked on new material with some of the other members of the original ALICE COOPER band, guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith.

"The thing with the original band is when we broke up, we never broke up with any bad blood," Alice explained. "We went to high school together, we were on the cross country and track team together, things like that. There was never bad blood between any of us, and we always ... I mean, I would ask Dennis, 'Dennis, could you come in and play bass on this song?' 'Yeah. Could you sing on this song? I've got a thing going on with this band that I'm in.' 'Okay.' So there was never that like, 'Oh, I'm never gonna talk to him again,' or 'I'm never gonna work with him again.' So we've always been writing. Neal Smith will send me three or four songs and I'll do some writing lyrics on it and send it back to him, and he has his own band. Dennis is in two or three bands. Mike, they're always working musicians. So when we write 10 or 12 songs, I don't know exactly what that's going to be, but I know that those songs exist now. So I'm thinking about in the future, that would be kind of a cool thing."

Last year, Cooper told Germany's Rolling Stone that he was working on two new albums with longtime producer Bob Ezrin. "A lot of those were born during the plague," he said. "We couldn't go touring for 18 months, so what's a musician gonna do? Well, they're going to write songs. Everybody has a studio in their house. So we were writing songs and doing demos. And at the end of this whole thing, I got in touch with Bob and said, 'Here's 30 songs.' And we decided, 'Okay, let's do two albums.' But the two albums are definitely two different angles of coming in to Alice Cooper. One is very hard rock; the other one is hard rock but it's twisted. And that's all I can say about it right now, because there's a couple of really important things about both albums."

Cooper previously spoke about his new music during an appearance in January 2022 on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". "I'm working on two albums right now, actually — two studio albums," he said. "They're two entirely different kinds of albums, but they're Alice Cooper pure rock and roll albums. The two albums will really be hard rock albums."

At the time, the now-75-year-old singer expressed hope that the first of his new LPs would arrive later that year. "It's kind of like the old days when you're touring and putting out records at the same time," Alice explained. "It kind of takes me back to when you're doing 'Love It To Death' and then you tour for 'Love It To Death'. While you're doing 'Love It To Death', you're writing 'Killer'. When 'Love It To Death' is over, 'Killer' comes out and then you go support that. And while you're doing 'Killer', you're writing 'School's Out'. So we're kind of piggybacking everything. And I kind of like that. It keeps everything moving. I don't like those big chunks of time when there's nothing going on."

Released in February 2021, "Detroit Stories" was recorded with Ezrin, mostly in Royal Oak with Detroit musicians and featuring a mix of original material alongside covers of songs by Bob Seger, the MC5, Mitch Ryder's DETROIT and OUTRAGEOUS CHERRY.

In 2018, Cooper issued "A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris", a recording of his December 7, 2017 concert at the world-renowned Olympia venue in France.

Alice also released two albums with HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES, 2015's "Hollywood Vampires" and 2019's "Rise".