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Alice Cooper Returns to Houston

The indisputable "Master of Shock Rock," Alice Cooper will be returning to Houston this month in concert on Friday, August 18th at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Alice will be co-headlining this show with Deep Purple, who are continuing their "Long Goodbye Tour," which has been rumored to be the last Deep Purple tour ever.

Alice is touring in support of his new album, "Paranormal," which is his first album of original material in six years. "PARANORMAL is like 12 great episodes of The Twilight Zone," laughs Alice Cooper, "each song tells its own twisted little tale."

The album is produced by long-time producer, Bob Ezrin, who has been with Alice from nearly the beginning of his career. Bob Ezrin started his Alice Cooper experience by producing the 1971 masterpiece, "Love It To Death." Since then, Ezrin has produced several Alice Cooper albums, including "Killer," "School's Out," "Billion Dollar Babies," "Greatest Hits," and "Alice Cooper Goes To Hell," to name a few. His work on the newest Alice Cooper masterpiece, "Paranormal" is unmistakable.

In addition to Bob Ezrin's participation on the album, Alice is also joined by a few guest stars. Appearing on the album is our own hometown hero, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Billy plays guitar on the song "I've Fallen In Love And I Can't Get Up." Alice insisted that Billy perform on his song. He said, "If Billy doesn't play on this, we shouldn't put this one out," 'cause, 'I mean, it is so much him." He says that Billy's reply was something along the lines of "I've got the flu, but man, this song make me feel better. On a May 5th episode of the SiriusXM radio show, "Trunk Nation," Alice revealed quite a bit about these sessions.

He also went on to reveal that Bob Ezrin suggested bringing in U2's drummer Larry Mullen Jr. to perform on drums. An idea that Alice definitely decided would help change things up a bit for the songs. Of course, he didn't really know how much until he talked to Larry about it. Alice says that Larry's response was "I wanna see the lyrics," which surprised Alice. "Yeah, I play to the lyrics, I don't play to the bass." Alice's response was "That is so cool, just the idea that you're interpreting the lyrics on the drums... So that totally makes the album another album."

Also participating on the album is Deep Purple's Roger Glover, who can be found on the album's title song, "Paranormal."

From this album, Alice and Ezrin decided to go with something different. Instead of a concept album, they decided to just put together some great memorable songs. "Bob Ezrin and I wanted to break the mold," says Alice. "I said, let's get 20 great different ideas from 20 different places, put our spin on them, and go with whatever turns out the best."

So with that, they decided to break the norm, and go for something out of the box. They did however go with the theme 'paranormal.'

"My definition of paranormal is something that is 'other than normal' or 'alongside of normal'," says Cooper. "You could say my whole career has been that. I would look at what was normal and step left of it. That's what gets people's attention. They'd listen to our music and see our show and say, 'That's so strange... oh yeah, that's so Alice."

The songs on the album range from weird to weirder, but they are definitely songs that you will be remembering for a long time. There is encounters with the devil ("Dynamite Road"), songs about the end of the world ("Fireball") and even something really weird... How about a transgender hero ("I Want a Genuine American Girl"). This songs was spawned by Alice and of all people, members of the original Alice Cooper Band.

That's right, the original Alice Cooper Band featuring Neal Smith on drums, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Alice's old writing buddy, Michael Bruce on guitar. Wow, what a reunion! This is something that old die-hard Alice Cooper fans have been waiting on for years. They all get together for two of the album's show-stopping songs, "I Want To Be A Genuine American Girl" and "You and All Your Friends." Long time Alice Cooper fans will unmistakably notice the familiarity of the style of those songs.

"When the original band broke up in 1975, there was no bad blood," explains Cooper. "There were no lawsuits-we just burned out the creative process. We had gone to high school together and had recorded some things like five Platinum albums in a row. We were never our of sight of each other for 10 years. Everybody just went their own way. Neal, Dennis and I always stayed in touch. Mike disappeared for a while and Glen Buxton passed away in 1997, which was a big blow."

"But last year Neal called me up and said, "I have a couple of songs.' I said great, bring 'em over. Then he said Mike was stopping by, so I had them come to my house and we just worked on a few things for a week. Then Dennis called up and said, I got a couple songs. So, I thought, hey let's do this! When you listen to this record, it just fits right in."

Besides the 12 new songs on the album, Alice has also included a special bonus for the fans. He had included some live versions of classic Alice Cooper songs performed by his current band. Those songs include "No More Mr. Nice Guy," Under My Wheels," "Billion Dollar Babies," "Feed My Frankenstein," "Only Women Bleed," and "School's Out." Now here's a great selection to groove to.

Yeah, this is an album that Alice is extremely proud of. As he puts it, "This album is like the sideshow at a circus. It's a little creepy. There's a three-headed monkey and the snake woman, but you're intrigued. That's where Alice lives, and it's been the place to go for 50 years. Alice doesn't have a problem being scary. He likes to be a villain, but he also has a slapstick side. He'll threaten to slit your throat, and then slip on a banana peel."

Join Alice Cooper this month at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on August 18th and help him celebrate his newest masterpiece, "Paranormal." As you can expect, this will be more than an Alice Cooper concert... It will be an Alice Cooper experience.