Thirty-five years after the entity Alice Cooper (originally a band, later a nom de rock for Vincent Furnier) was born, Cooper will return to his no-frills rock roots on a CD and tour. Cooper's new album, The Eyes of Alice Cooper, is scheduled for release this fall ("I try to aim for Halloween," he says, "because that's my time of year") and the first leg of his Bare Bones Tour will kick off in Walker, Minnesota, on July 12th, with additional dates to extend into the fall.

And while, true to the tour's handle, regular Cooper concert cast members -- the headless baby, the guillotine, the snake, even the keyboards -- won't be making the trip, he won't exactly be sitting on a stool for an Unplugged-type performance. "No, that'll never happen," he says. "When I do take it down to one tin spot, it's usually a garbage can I'm sitting on . . . with a ballerina dressed up like a nurse that's all beat up behind me. When we said 'bare bones,' we didn't mean no show. My least show would be more theatrical than anybody else's full show."

In addition the temporary retirement for the old props, the tour will find Cooper and Co. performing their classic songs in their original album versions. "We had to totally relearn them," he says. "Over the years, we've made such a distortion of the songs. We make longer guitar solos, because that's what was happening in the Eighties and you'd shape the song to the form of every era . . . except disco, of course. It was always hard rock but it took on these longer forms. But when I listen to the radio and hear the Vines, Hives and White Stripes and everybody, I think, 'Geez, that's us in 1968.' So Bare Bones means back to original forms. We just couldn't think of any clever way to say that [laughs]."

Cooper attributes the shift in direction to sessions for Eyes and America Idol. Of the former, Cooper says that he and his band set up the studio in an old-style garage fashion, and he offered each member only one chance to overdub on the record. "There are places where you can hear beats being dropped," he says, "but that's what gives it reality. It's really a backlash against American Idol. I like the kids on American Idol; they're nice kids, but people are calling it rock & roll, and it's not rock & roll."

Cooper and his band had been rehearsing the new songs for Eyes when he bumped into producer Andrew "Mudrock" Murdoch (Godsmack, Powerman 5000). Murdoch listened to the new tunes and suggested the band record the album in the same stripped-down manner. "I said, 'Mud, you've got to do this album,'" Cooper says. "Within a day, I'd signed him." Cooper's longtime producer/collaborator Bob Ezrin also chipped in on the back end. "I don't go into any project without him having a role in it," he says of Ezrin. "He'll be straightforward and say that something is just half a song or that something else is really good. He's sort of our Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Alice Cooper tour dates:

7/12: Walker, MN, Moondance Jam
7/14: Toledo, OH, Zoo Amphitheater
7/15: Fowlerville, MI, Fowlerville Fair
7/16: Youngstown, OH, B&B Amphitheater
7/18: Cadott, WI, Rock Fest
7/19: Waukesha, WI, County Fair
7/20: Clear Lake, IA, Surf Ballroom
7/22: Chicago, Navy Pier
7/25: Minot, ND, State Fair
7/27: Winter Park, CO, Fox Hawgfest
7/29: Tucson, AZ, Anselmo Valencia Amphitheater
7/31-8/1: Los Angeles, House of Blues
8/2: Las Vegas, The Joint
8/3: Lake Tahoe, NV, Harvey's Casino
8/5: Boise, ID, Big Easy Concert House
8/7: Surgis, SD, Buffalo Chip
8/9: Three Forks, MT, Rockin' the Rivers

ANDREW DANSBY
(June 24, 2003)