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Cooper Gets His Motor Running

Veteran rocker ditches blood-soaked guillotines and live snakes as he returns to rocking roots

HE BECAME famous for a stage show that features live snakes and guillotines dripping with fake blood. But underneath the theatrical horror, Alice Cooper has always been an old fashioned rock and roller.

He cut his musical teeth in his hometown of Detroit — and returns to the Motor City oil on a new album bristling with purpose.

Detroit Stories is his salute to the place that gave him a break in the 1970s. It was in an old barn on the outskirts of town that Cooper and his original band first teamed up with producer Bob Ezrin. Drilling them for ten hours a day, Ezrin persuaded them to simplify their long, complicated songs and cut to the chase.

Those sessions ultimately led to hits such as School's Out and Elected, kick-starting a career that's still going strong, 50 years on.

And Alice, 73, teams up with Ezrin in a Detroit studio again here, cementing his ties to the city by adding a supporting cast of storied Michigan musicians, including veteran MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer and jazz bassist Paul Randolph.

'Detroit was the birthplace of angry hard rock,' says Alice of the 1970s, citing local hotspot the Eastown Theatre as the place where a blue-collar crowd could see his group play on the same bill as fellow locals Ted Nugent and Iggy Pop.

Detroit Stories is lively and entertaining. Amid the crunching riffs, there are detours into slinky funk, blues and punk. Producer Ezrin keeps the guitars crisp and clean, making this a pop record as much as a rock one.

Inveterate showman Cooper adds a few hammy touches but, on the whole, doesn't take himself, or his material, too seriously. It opens with a cover. The Velvet Underground's Rock And Roll is a song associated with New York, but it was covered by the Detroit Wheels in 1971, and Alice's strutting, bar-room version features a contribution from Wheels drummer Johnny 'Bee' Badanjek, backing vocals by the singer's wife Sheryl and daughter Calico, and honky-tonk cow­bell from Ezrin.

THERE are two further covers — Bob Seger's East Side Story and MC5's Sister Anne — but most of the songs are new and original. Go Man Go is a turbo-charged account of a hell-for-leather road trip. Our Love Will Change The World is Cooper's satirical take on today's cancel culture.

He also reunites with the three surviving members of his original 1970s band on Social Debris and I Hate You. The latter features Alice, guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith trading playground insults before reflecting on 'the empty space you left on stage' — a reference to original lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died in 1997. Cooper dials down the tempo on $1000 High Heel Shoes — with Sister Sledge and the Motor City Horns adding soulful sway — and even branches into rap on Independence Dave.

Not everything hits the spot: Drunk And In Love is a formulaic blues number, and there's filler elsewhere in Wonderful World and Shut Up And Rock. But the singer, whose songwriting once drew praise from Bob Dylan, knows the importance of a good tune, and there are enough of them to make this a rewarding return.

Out today on CD (£11), CD/DVD (£15), double vinyl (£28), and as a box set that includes a black face mask (£50), it's a fitting tribute to the city that inspired him.