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Welcome to Dragontown!

Before Kiss first powdered their noses, before Marilyn Manson reached puberty, before Slipknot and Mudvayne applied garish makeup — there was ALICE COOPER!

This Detroit-born son of a preacher started it all as far as theatrical "shock rock" goes. He was cross-dressing, lynching himself, decapitating himself, cavorting with a boa constrictor and allowing us to peer voyeuristically into his personal nightmares. All at a time when squeaky-clean acts like the Bay City Rollers and Donny Osmond were the norm in America.

To say the least, ol' Hard Hearted Alice was responsible for putting a few extra gray hairs on the heads of our parents with songs like "Raped and Freezin'," "I Love The Dead," "Ballad of Dwight Fry" and the ultimate youth anthem — "Eighteen!"

I relish every opportunity to speak with the man who became a personal hero of my youth (thanks to my seventh grade science partner Tom Crnkovich) and one who so drastically altered the face of rock 'n' roll forever with his imagination.

Still pumped up about my chat with him last year during his Brutal Planet tour, I was thrilled to hear that sardonic voice once again burning up my phone lines. This time Alice was calling to talk up his forthcoming new album — Dragontown.

Here's the highlights of that conversation...

BEAT: Has the Dragontown tour actually started yet?

ALICE: No, it starts the 29th of September in Vegas at the Aladdin. There's five or six new songs put in the show. It's one of those things where we're talking Brutal Planet and adding part two to it now. It flows great.

BEAT: Are you pulling out most older stuff then?

ALICE: No, I'm pulling out a few songs from Brutal Planet and throwing in a few from Dragontown and I'm even adding one song ("Sanctuary") from Brutal Planet that we wanted to do last year, but we just didn't have a place for it. And then there's a few songs I'm pulling. It's a show with 24 songs and I'm working to arrange them so that they all work together. For those who missed seeing the Brutal Planet tour, it gives them much of that show and yet for those people who did see the Brutal Planet show it gives them a whole other look at it, because Dragontown continues the journey. It's part two of Brutal Planet, taking us all deeper into the abyss so to speak.

BEAT: How is the show structured regarding the old hits?

ALICE: Well, the concept part comes first. I always give the audience the concept portion first. Pretty much the first hour of the show is the conceptual part of the show with the newer material. The second part of the show is then party time. That's when you hear hit after hit after hit, but it's still done in the same concept of the show. I mean it's not like they're ever really out of Brutal Planet, but it's certainly a little bit of a relief.

BEAT: What older songs are in the set?

ALICE: This year we're putting in a couple songs we haven't done in a while. We're adding 'Raped and Freezin',' we might be doing 'Nurse Rozetta.' We'll probably take out 'My Generation' and put in 'Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire' I always like to do one classic songs from somebody else that I think Alice could do a good job on. There's so much material to deal with that once you get into the show, teh band has input on what they think would work better here or there. This is not a dictatorship where I go in and say, 'No! It has to be like this!' In the end, I have the final say, but I enjoy hearing other's ideas for the show.

BEAT: How does one get the most out of an Alice show?

ALICE: I give the audience a show filled with energy and activity. That's always been the idea behind what I do, but I think when you come to see Alice, you need to really listen to the lyrics. I always ask people to listen to the lyrics. They'll get a whole different thing out of the show if they just concentrate on the lyrics a little bit more.

BEAT: The stage show from Brutal Planet was designed like the aftermath of a nuclear war. What's this one?

ALICE: It's gonna look like that, only this is gonna be a little bit more Chinese Militant. The idea here is that we saw Brutal Planet and now we're going deeper into the interior, to the capital of Brutal Planet which is Dragontown. The worst part of Brutal Planet is Dragontown. There's a whole new set of characters down there and all of them have the same question — 'How did I get here?'

This place is like a little touch of Hell. It's my personal 'Dante's Inferno'. In fact on this album I took it upon myself to send Elvis, John Lennon and Jim Morrison to Dragontown. Everybody says there must be a great rock 'n' roll heaven... what a great band... and I'm like I don't think so. I think that they're probably all here.

BEAT: Where do Jim, John and Elvis fit in?

ALICE: When you hear the song 'Dragontown,' that's pretty Jim Morrison-ish. A song like 'It's Much Too Late,' is very much John Lennon. And then you know, 'Disgraceland' is definitely Elvis! Now the unique thing is that I knew all three of these guys. In fact, I drank with every one of them, so I have that advantage over the audience, that I actually knew these guys.

BEAT: You did a DVD/Video of the Brutal Planet tour. You are a master at making concert films.

ALICE: The fun thing about this show is the fact that it does take me back to Welcome To My Nightmare a little bit. The actual show as far as the physical part of it and the visual part of it does echo back to the big productions of Welcome To My Nightmare and Billion Dollar Babies and those shows.

BEAT: Brutal Planet was the first part. Dragontown is the second. Will there be a third part to this? Will it be a conceptual trilogy? I ask because on past albums like Welcome To My Nightmare, Goes To Hell and From The Inside, you always escape at the end. On Dragontown, are we all still trapped there at the end of the album.

ALICE: Interesting you noticed that. Brutal Planet and Dragontown really sound as if they're connected at the hip. And yes, tucked in the back of my mind, somewhere in a deep crevice, there is a possible Part Three. I don't know for sure, but there could be a third installment. You're right though... I've kept everybody there. It's not like I said — 'Okay, it's time to wake up and everybody's home.' — like I've done on most other albums. Everybody is still there. There's a little bit of a tension about — 'Ummm Alice, aren't you supposed to take us back to earth now?'

BEAT: You co-wrote Dragontown with Bob Marlett who worked on Brutal Planet. He again produces.

ALICE: Yes. When you find somebody that really is fun to write with and you can site down and write two songs a day... that's pretty special. There is a real connection between us creatively.

When we sat down together it just was very easy to write with him. The one thing that really is consistent through all 26 of the albums I've done is that they're all guitar driven rock 'n' roll albums. This is the first time I've ever done two albums where every single song is a stage song. There's not one song on any of these two albums that couldn't be done well on stage. I can't say that about Last Temptation or even say that about School's Out. Some songs, good as they may be, are just not stage songs.

BEAT: Anymore acting in your future? Prince of Darkness was a pretty solid film.

ALICE: Yeah it was pretty good... I just did one called The Attic Expeditions which is an independent film coming out with Seth Green. It's a SCI-FI movie where I play a mental patient. It's not a big part, but it's a fun part because I didn't have to play Alice Cooper.

I just saw a piece of it at the SCI-FI convention down in Atlanta and I was surprised at how creepy the movie is. The movie is actually pretty scary, I thought it was gonna be a SCI-FI comedy thing, but's it's not. I'm sort of the comic relief in this movie, but the rest of it is pretty strong.

BEAT: How much fun was Wayne's World?

ALICE: Wayne's World wasn't even work. We were just ending an American tour and were on our way to Europe, and they asked us if we could delay our European rip by one day so I could come in and do 'Feed My Frankenstein'. When I got there, all of a sudden they were like — 'We'd like you to learn this whole dialogue thing about Milwaukee.' I couldn't learn all the dialogue in a day, so a lot of the stuff I did was just riffing and improv.

It was a lot of fun. I've got Dana Carvey and Mike Meyers standing in front of me and I've got to look right between them and deliver these lines and they're doing everything to break me up. They're doing everything except taking their pants off to make me laugh. I had to look really serious you know. You'd think that they'd want that, but they just kept trying to break me up.

BEAT: Of your body of work what do you reflect most fondly on and point to as high water marks?

ALICE: I would say... if somebody was going to say what's your best musical album I would say From The Inside was one of the best musical albums we did. If you were gonna say what album most represents early Alice I would say Love It TO Death and if you were gonna say the most consistent stuff I would say probably Brutal Planet and Dragontown.

BEAT: How would you like to be remembered in the music history books when it's all said and done?

ALICE: You know a lot of people say I'm the Busby Berkley of rock 'n' roll or the Vincent Price of rock 'n' roll... That's not bad. I did bring theater to rock so I think that's kind of what I'd like to be acknowledged for doing.