Alice Cooper Talks ‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’ Album and Lady Gaga
When the original Alice Cooper Group dismantled in 1974, Alice Cooper stepped out as a solo artist to shock the world with his debut, 'Welcome To My Nightmare.' The album has gone on to become one of the biggest sellers in his catalog. Naturally, doing a sequel is something that has been in the back of Cooper's mind for quite some time.
After much anticipation, 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare,' the follow up to Cooper's first solo masterpiece, has been completed. "[It's] done, and I am so proud of this album," Cooper recently told Noisecreep.
Noisecreep: What can we expect from 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare?'
Alice Cooper: It will be out next year. We have to do the whole festivals tour first which will be South America, Australia, Europe, Canada, all over the States. That's going to be a big kind of heavy Alice show. But the [tour] after that will be Welcome To My Nightmare Part Two – 'Welcome 2 My Nightmare,' and it's going to be a full-out nightmare so I almost can't wait for that one. The next show is going to be fun. The show after that, the nightmare show, is going to be unbelievable.
Are you going to whip out the guillotines and all of that?
Oh yeah. The magic screen – everything.
Do you have a favorite stage prop?
Well you know when you're going to kill Alice, you can't kill him slow. You have to do something that is going to make the audience go 'Ahh.' The guillotine gets that reaction every night. The hanging gets that reaction. The electric chair doesn't. You know, the electric chair is just too slow of a death. You have to get something that makes people go 'Uhh.' You know, when you see the head actually come off and roll off. You go, 'they actually killed him -- they killed him' [laughs].
I've heard everyone from Lady Gaga to Metallica say that you've influenced their career. How does it feel to have such an impact on such a wide range of artists?
A lot of these bands came after us. I think with Lady Gaga, it was more the spectacle. You know, more of the idea that if you're gonna do it, do it. Don't just do it, do it. She took that to heart and became the Elton John/Liberace of that genre. In the old days she would have been Mae West, or she would have been Sophie Tucker. There were these certain women through history that were so outrageous. They were more outrageous than men because they were women doing in. Lady Gaga is in that world, you know.
She just keeps outdoing herself. Did you see she came to the Grammys in an egg?
I loved it. I thought it was great. And you know the thing about it? She can back it up. She can sing, she writes her own songs. To me, she is a cut above all the other girls. I mean I like Shakira too, because Shakira is a rocker. She gets up there and rocks. But I think Gaga really has brought a whole [new] dimension to it.
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