Legendary rocker Alice Cooper will release his new studio album, “Detroit Stories”, on February 26 via earMUSIC. Named for the city that launched the original Alice Cooper group on the road to success, it follows 2019’s “Breadcrumbs” EP as a modern-day homage to the toughest and craziest rock and roll scene there ever was.
Speaking about his inspiration for “Detroit Stories”, Alice said (see video below): “Well, I was born in Detroit, and Detroit was the, is the hard rock capital of the United States. Los Angeles had THE DOORS, and they were kind of a sexy rock and roll sound. San Francisco had THE GRATEFUL DEAD. New York had THE YOUNG RASCALS. Detroit had THE STOOGES, the MC5, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Ted Nugent. We were all hard rock — guitar-driven rock and roll bands. And, for some reason, that just became the home of hard rock. And it was in the same place as Motown, which was interesting. We had, actually, two musical movements going on at the same time — Motown and hard rock — and they both got along very well together.
“So, I said, ‘Let’s do an album that basically celebrates Detroit, since I was born there and I owe a lot to Detroit,” he continued. “But let’s not just do that. Let’s go in there and record there, write the album there, only use Detroit players, and make it pure Detroit.’ So that was a bit of a discipline for us, because we like to use different players and everything. The only one that wasn’t from Detroit was Joe Bonamassa; he was our guest in there. But everybody else on the album was Detroit rockers.”
“Detroit Stories”, which was once again produced by Cooper‘s longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin, features contributions by such Michigan talent as the MC5‘s Wayne Kramer, GRAND FUNK RAILROAD‘s Mark Farner and Johnny “Bee” Badanjek of MITCH RYDER & THE DETROIT WHEELS. They also used the Detroit Horns and Detroit background singers.
“Detroit Stories” will be available on CD, CD+DVD digipak, CD box set (including CD, Blu-ray, t-shirt, face mask, torch light and 3 stickers), and 2LP gatefold.
The DVD and Blu-ray will show the incredible live performance “A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris” for the first time on video. With the whole concert culture being shut down due to covid-19, Alice Cooper felt the need to share one of his latest shows with his fans as he cannot wait to get back on the road — better than ever.