Alice Cooper isn't letting the COVID-19 pandemic or the resulting shutdowns slow down his plans for the future.
Following the release of his latest album, Detroit Stories, which features the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper Band, the shock rock icon says his next album will come together on the road.
Cooper has been unwavering in his certainty that he will tour again, since early in the pandemic cancellations. He made his latest comments during a recent 'band meeting' on his guitarist Ryan Roxie's podcast, In the Trenches with Ryan Roxie.
"...[W]e've gotta think what's next. And what's next to me is showing off this band," Cooper said. "And I think that the only way to do that is to take it on the road — write songs now — but rehearse them during soundcheck on the road, and at some point, on the road, record the whole album live in one of the venues that we're doing."
He continued: "With this band, the whole idea is to show off how tight the band really is. So if we write the songs, rehearse them on the road, record it on the road, and call the album The Road or just Road, really, that would be the concept for the whole album — and stories about the road."
Alice's current band features guitarists Roxie, Tommy Henriksen and Nita Strauss, alongside bassist Chuck Garric and drummer Glen Sobel.
If the next Alice Cooper album unfolds how the frontman has envisioned, it would be his first album of new material to feature all the members of his current live band.
Alice's album previous to Detroit Stories, 2017's Paranormal, featured a number of special guests, including producer Bob Ezrin, U2's Larry Mullen Jr., Deep Purple's Roger Glover, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and many others. Bonus live tracks from Paranormal featured Alice's current band, which has been in place since Strauss joined in 2014.
The last Alice Cooper tour wrapped up in Europe early last year, just as COVID-19 worry began to boil over. The singer has previously recalled the anxiety he felt as officials in Europe began to paint a clearer picture of how widespread and potentially lethal the virus was.
Alice and his wife, Sheryl, are eagerly awaiting their second and final dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. The pair has done a handful of interviews in recent weeks to encourage other eligible people to schedule their vaccine as soon as possible.
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