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Alice Cooper Backs National Album Day

Renewed popularity of the much-loved format continues to grow.

ALICE COOPER HAS thrown his weight behind the first ever National Album Day, an initiative to celebrate all aspects of the UK's love of the album. The event, planned to mark the 70th birthday of the format, is endorsed by the BBC. At precisely 3.33(r)pm on Saturday, October 13, the British public is invited to play their all-time favourite record. A social media campaign (see @AlbumDayUKand #NationalAlbumDay) asks people to nominate and share the album, across all genres of music, that has most inspired them.

In 2017, 135 million albums, or their equivalent, were either purchased on CD or vinyl, downloaded or streamed — up 9.5 per cent on the previous year.

Alice spoke to Classic Rock to voice his support for the campaign, the concept of the album being fundamental to the veteran singer, a recording artist since 1969, and he doesn't expect that to change.

"It would be very hard for me to do something that didn't follow the format," he says. "It's hard for me to simply write twelve songs. It's in my nature to connect them somehow."

Thankfully, however, the statistics seem to confirm that the album isn't going away any time soon.

Exactly. It's really neat that this post-millennial generation is buying albums again. I'm from a period in time where the release of a new album was an important thing: you stood in line, you bought it, you invited round a bunch of friends, you opened it up, and there was a smell to the vinyl. You checked out the sleeve to discover who was on it, who wrote it. You placed the needle down — it was a ritual.

I love the fact that the current generation seems to be tired of buying air. [With downloads] you pay your money but don't get anything. An album allows you to keep the music — you own a little piece of the band.

I do a lot of comic conventions, and I find that the things I'm asked to sign are [vinyl] albums — of every ten, seven are LPs. I sign very few CDs but I sign a lot of albums. People look at them as being a piece of art.

Do you also stream music?

No. I'm a technotard. Anything that involves turning on a phone or a computer is beyond me. Phones are for making phone calls [laughs]. But I do have a fifty-five-hundred-dollar turntable. When I buy an album, I buy vinyl.

Is storage for your collection a problem?

It isn't. Certain important things in your life, you just make room for.

Which was the first album you bought?

All Summer Long by the Beach Boys [1964]. It was a great album. It had I Get Around and all those great Beach Boys songs. It led me to Meet The Beatles!, and from there I bought England's Newest Hit Makers by the Rolling Stones [US editions, released in '64]. Those are the reasons that there is an Alice Cooper right now. And I've still got those original editions.

Streaming certainly presents issues for the artist. You'll have seen Peter Frampton's recent tweet: apparently he received just seventeen hundred dollars for fifty-five million plays of Baby I Love Your Way. Something will have to change.

And I think it will. I know that Paul Williams, who is the head of ASCAP [the American Society Of Composers, Author And Publishers] is planning to change the legislation on that. It will change a lot. People will pay for what they play, and it will help a lot of guys from the 1960s and 70s — the type who had a couple of hits and then, sadly, were done. They're going to start getting cheques again. Which I think is great.

You've just released a live album, A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris. As well as all the usual formats, it's also available as a double gatefold on white and red vinyl.

Oh yeah. If you're going to do vinyl, then go all the way and make it special. We've never been known to be subtle.

Tell us about your future plans.

I can't believe I'm seventy years old and still so incredibly busy. I've just toured Europe with the Hollywood Vampires. Over the next year I'm going to have four albums coming out. There's the Part live album with my band, and I'm writing a new studio album from Alice Cooper. There will also be a live album from the Vampires recorded in Montreux, and a second studio album.

And each of those will be available on vinyl?

[Laughing] Yeah, of course.

Unlike some artists, you don't release a record of each tour, so why record that Paris show?

There was no real reason. I'm very critical of live albums. I want them to sound like a live album, and that means leaving in the mistakes — all bands make those. But I've never been prouder of a live album than I am of A Paranormal Evening. Bob Ezrin's mix is truly unbelievable.

See nationalalbumday.co.uk for full details of National Album Day and how to participate. Alice Cooper's A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris is available now via EarMusic.