This summer, the original Alice Cooper Group will release their first new album in more than five decades. While awaiting the July release of “The Revenge of Alice Cooper,” fans can compile a notable collection of songs the four surviving members have collaborated on over the past 14 years.
The Alice Cooper Group was formed in 1968, consisting of singer Alice Cooper, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, guitarist/keyboardist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neil Smith. The group, known for albums such as 1972’s “School’s Out” and 1973’s “Billion Dollar Babies,” amicably disbanded in 1974. Cooper continued to perform under the same name as a solo act, beginning with 1975’s “Welcome to My Nightmare.”
“This wasn’t your typical mudslinging split,” Cooper explained in 2021. “When bands break up, they generally hate each other, and they don’t want to talk to each other. We didn’t hate each other at all, we actually loved each other.”
Following Buxton’s death in 1997, the surviving group members reunited for a performance in his honor two years later. They have since made several joint appearances, including a 2015 in-store event released as “Live From the Astroturf, Alice Cooper.”
Beginning with 2011’s “Welcome 2 My Nightmare,” Dunaway, Bruce, and Smith started co-writing and performing on Cooper’s solo albums. “Those guys have got an open invitation at all times, and they know it, to write songs and submit songs,” Cooper told UCR contributor Gary Graff in the book “Alice Cooper @ 75.” “And when they do submit songs I kind of insist on it being the entire band playing it live in the studio. If we’re gonna do an original Alice song, I want it to sound like the original band… it has a darker sound, and a heavier sound. It’s a very different personality, and I even sing differently when I sing with those guys.”
