Dennis Dunaway

Dennis Dunaway helped create the legendary musical icon known as Alice Cooper. While history, the entertainment business and even our very own Grandmother know who Alice is, Dennis Dunaway has faded from our memory banks. This is truly a shame as Alice Cooper began as a band – not an individual. In fact, men named Dunaway, Smith, Bruce and Buxton were equal partners in all aspects of the band. In this interview, Dunaway reflects on the band’s formation while still in high school in Phoenix, Arizona back in 1963. He candidly points out how the band collectively created the Alice image, theatrics and sound. Dennis travels through time and tells stories of gigs in the Arizona desert, hanging out with Jim Morrison in Hollywood and auditioning for Frank Zappa and later Bob Ezrin. This interview is a history lesson into the eyes of Alice Cooper the group, instead of the individual.

Today, Dunaway is a member of Bouchard, Dunaway & Smith. His bandmates are ex-Blue Oyster Cult bass player Joe Bouchard and Alice Cooper founding member Neal Smith. The band has released two albums, Back From Hell and Live in Paris, and is working on a third. Ian Hunter collaborated with the three men on most songs. While it is a far cry from the success Dennis had as a member of The Alice Cooper Group, BDS is still a creative outlet for the muse.

Dunaway seems content with his past, present and future. He is in a good space and enjoying his life. He is, however, bothered about being erased from history. Read on to relive the early days of The Alice Cooper Group and learn the origins of the bands theatrics and classic songs.
 

Jeb:  You seem to involve yourself in projects that could be described as real musical projects.  You are not in it for show. 

Dennis:  My lifeblood is my music and my family; it is pretty much all I care about. 

Jeb:  Is Bouchard, Dunaway, and Smith going to do another studio album soon? 

Dennis: BDS is gearing up to do some songs.  I am also going to do a solo project; it is the first solo record that I have ever done.  I worked on Platinum Gods years ago but I got really disillusioned with the music industry at the time.  I decided that I would only do music in my basement and that I would not share it with anyone else.  It was after the Alice Cooper Band broke up.  I decided that working in the music industry wasn’t fun anymore.  I wanted to get back to the reason I started which was to have fun.  I figured if I only wrote songs for myself then none of the things that had happened would have happened.  The years flew blew and I ended up with a few hundred songs.  A lot of them Neal and Joe have heard and passed on for one reason or another; probably because every time I showed up at rehearsal I had another song.  I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a studio and he said we should record them so that is what we are doing.  Ian Hunter is helping as well.

Jeb:  Why don’t you just bring Ian into the band?  It could be BDSH. 

Dennis:  The great thing about BDS is that we put out a big sound for only three people.  Neal alone is a big sound.  Joe is an amazing workhorse.   He plays all the rhythm and lead parts and he sings most of the songs.  We also have only three, economy wise.  We could not have done our European tour with four people in the band because we could not have fit into the little vehicles we had to ride around in.  Sometimes we had to sit with our suitcases on our laps.  They don’t have SUV’s in Europe.  Some of the cars don’t even look like a real car; they look like a toy.  They are taller than they are wide so they can fit into the nonexistent parking spaces they have.  It is almost like a chair with wheels and a windshield.

We are happy with BDS the way it is.  We can collaborate and make up songs left and right.  We work well together as well.  Joe is a lot of fun.  Neal and I have played together for so long that we don’t even have to look at each other to know what the other one is going to do. 

Jeb:  How many years have you and Neal been playing together? 

Dennis:  The first time I jammed with Neal was probably in 1968.  I knew him before that.  The first time I met my wife, who is Neal’s sister; I was in the audience making fun of Neal because he was in a rival band in High School.  She turned around and yelled at me.  We didn’t get off to a smooth start! 

Jeb:  What is it that keeps you two playing together?

Dennis:  The main reason is that Neal is one of the greatest drummers in the world.  You can’t just go out on the street and find a drummer that is as good as him.  I enjoy that.  We both come from the same background and we both grew up with the same taste in music.  If I were to name my five favorite drummers it would be Gene Krupa, Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and Neal – that is only four, isn’t it.  That is still the same list Neal would give you.  Our relationship shifts.  We have our working relationship but then we also socialize and we get our families together for holidays.  We have our Sunshine Boys moments too. 

The great thing about The Alice Cooper Group was that there was friction but it was good friction; it pushed you towards the goal.  The friction was important because it pushed us.  It kept things from being bland.  We stirred things up all the time.  Everyone wanted it to be the best that it could be.  The common goal was always strong and no one ever took it personally.  We were a democratic system.  We had a rule that we had to try the idea.  You could not throw out a rule unless everybody actually played it.   A lot of times, if we played it then it came out better than what the person actually had in mind and we would take it in a new direction.  We would vote and it couldn’t be an even split because there were five of us.  If my idea lost then that was it.  Nobody held any grudges anything. 

Jeb:  Blue Oyster Cult first opened for Alice Cooper on the Killers tour.  Did you stay in touch with Joe from clear back then? 

Dennis:  Joe lived in the same area, so did Buck Dharma. 

Jeb:  I am a huge Blue Oyster Cult fan. 

Dennis: Did you read the book, Secrets Revealed?  I read the whole thing.  I told Joe, “Now I have read an entire book on you and I still don’t understand a thing.” 

Jeb:  The author of that book is a friend of mine.  Now I am going to have to give him a hard time. 

Dennis:  I read the whole thing.  One time I was over at Donald’s house (BOC’s Buck Dharma’s real name is Donald Roeser) – this must be ten or fifteen years ago.  Donald and I were sitting in a room and he was telling me that Blue Oyster Cult were on the verge of breaking up with The Alice Cooper Group picked them up for the tour.  I told him that the reason we picked them up for the tour and the reason Blue Oyster Cult made it was not because we picked them up for the tour; it was because they were a great band. 

Jeb:  It was a perfect pairing at the time. 

Dennis:  We played at a festival down south.  It was daytime and they were playing.  I remember they had a big backdrop with the symbol on it.  They had these storm troopers who parachuted out while they were playing.  This one guy was coming down and he swung out too far and went into this row of trees.  It could not have been worse; it looked like Wiley Coyote.  It was the loudest sound I have ever heard of a body slamming into a tree.  The other thing I remember about that day was how good Blue Oyster Cult was.  I said that we should get them on the tour with us. 

Jeb:  You played with Joe Bouchard and Neal Smith in Brainstorm.  Why did you change the name to BDS? 

Dennis: I kind of liked that name but we changed it to Dead Ringer.  Charlie Huhn was in that band.  He was with Ted Nugent and is now with Foghat.  Jesse Johnson was a friend of Neal’s and he was in the band.  That project was extremely studio oriented.  Everybody was working and was on different schedules.  The only time the entire band was in the same room at the same time was when the photograph was taken for the promo pack.   In the end, Bouchard, Dunaway & Smith are alive and well.  We have some new songs.  We played a new one recently called “Rattle Your Bones.”  We also want to record “See You on the Other Side” which appeared on our Live in Paris album.  I would love to do a studio version of that. 

Jeb:  I love the first BDS album.  I wondered why Joe Bouchard was playing the guitar though. 

Dennis:  Joe was a guitar player.  With Blue Oyster, the original bass player was unavailable and his brother Albert Bouchard asked him to sit in with them.  Eleven years later we still playing the bass!  I read that in your friend’s book.  Joe and I went to see Jason Newsted’s new group recently.  Jason got Metallica to cover “Astronomy.”  We went backstage and he was like saying how cool it was to meet Joe.  He said that it felt really weird to play Joe’s bass parts.  I said, “Tell me about it.  I am in the same band as Joe and I am playing his bass parts.”  I told him, “I play the bass parts to “Astronomy” the same as you so if Joe has any problems with what you did then you just send him to talk to me.”

Once in a while I will insist on playing guitar at rehearsal and make Joe pick up the bass.  I want to do a two bass thing live onstage like The Move did.  Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne, who started ELO, were in The Move.  They used to do a thing with two bass players onstage.  We have a bass medley on the Live in Paris CD.  I wanted to have Joe join me.  I want to have a bass duel onstage.   

Jeb:  You could do a lot more touring with Bouchard, Dunaway & Smith.  You could really get out there and make the band more known. 

Dennis:  Joe plays all the time.  He plays jazz and he even conducts orchestras.  When I ask him what he is up to I get tired just listening to it.  Joe knows everybody.  He is going to be the talent coordinator for this Red House Jimi Hendrix thing.  They have film footage of Hendrix and rare stuff.  Lots of people are coming out of the woodwork to do this.  Joe is in charge of who is playing and what they are playing so there is no duplication.  Joe is very good at that sort of thing.  He is a bit like Paul Schafer on Letterman.  He is very good at getting a bunch of people onstage and organizing what goes on.  He can make up a set list for a particular room on the spot that is always dead on.  I can do it but I have to put a lot of thought into it. 

Jeb:  Neal is also a very successful real estate agent. 

Dennis: He has been doing that for some time.  There is a very high cost of living where we are at.  When we go out and play at the Whiskey or we go to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame or something like, we make money.  But when we come back, we actually lose money from being away from our business.  Neal is much keener on making ends meat but Joe is more like, “Give me a guitar and show me to the stage.  Give me some money at the end of the show.”  I just basically only care about the music. 

We will be doing more things.  I am sure we will be brining in other musicians to guest on our next album.  We really like it as a trio.  When you listen to Live in Paris, you have to realize that is just a board mix.  A lot of the bottom end is gone but it is still a huge sound.  It sounds bigger than three people.  That was the undercurrent with the Alice Cooper Group.  We had two rhythm guitarists and occasionally Bob Ezrin would play keyboards.  When you have two guitarists then the bass player has to be on the bottom.  I didn’t like to play on the bottom all the time because that is what every other bass player did and I wanted to be different.  The reason that I could get away with playing things like the chorus on “Schools Out” was because of Neal.  The chorus on “Schools Out” ends on a G note.  Every other bass player would play that note on the low end but I played it an octave higher.  The reason I did that was because Neal was pounding on the drums and there was plenty of bottoms already.  I consciously wrote parts like that.  If the toms, bass drums and bass are all on the bottom then it gets muddled. 

In BDS it is the same thing.  Joe gets concerned because sometimes when he is singing there is supposed to be some intricate lead parts that he just can’t do live while he is singing and playing rhythm.  I tell Joe that he doesn’t even have to play anything.  He could drop out and it will sound big.  Joe and I could both drop out and it will still sound big. 

Jeb:  You musical history goes all the way back to the very, very beginning of Alice Cooper. 

Dennis:  In my high school yearbook I have a note from Alice for having the idea to start the band.  It was in 1963. 

Jeb:  I wasn’t born yet. 

Dennis:  I get that a lot.  This kid came up and asked me, “How do I get to be a good bass player like you?”  I replied, “I have been playing since 1964” and he just goes, “Oh.” 

Jeb:  I have heard the first gig was the high school talent show. 

Dennis:  It was a spoof.  As soon as we were onstage then we said, “This ain’t bad.”  I already wanted to be in a band before that.  In 1963, I went to the movie theater to see Hercules Unchained.  Back in those days they had a double feature.  The first movie was Peter Pan by Walt Disney.  Between movies there was an intermission.  I didn’t have enough money to buy popcorn so I stayed in my seat.  Out comes Duane Eddy and the Rebels.  They did three or four songs.  I knew that was what I wanted to do.  The place was rocking.  Music was already in my family.  My dad played music.  We would go over to my Grandma’s house and roll up the carpet and put salt down on the floor to make it easy to do the Two Step.  

Jeb:  I have heard that you were really bad when you started out as a band. 

Dennis: When we were the Earwigs, we didn’t even play instruments.  I borrowed my dad’s guitar but I didn’t know any chords.  Alice borrowed his dad’s ukulele but he didn’t know how to play it.  John Stewart borrowed somebody’s guitar and pretended to play it.  We had another guy play that was on the track team sit in on drums.  We actually did two performances as the Earwigs.  The second time we actually played.  In a very short period of time we learned how to play.  We got Glenn in the band because he actually could play the guitar.  We would go over to Glenn’s house everyday after school and learned mostly Rolling Stones songs. 

We ended up becoming a really good copy band.  When we decided to go solo I really pushed for the abstract.  I met Alice in art class.  We shared a love for surrealistic art.  I wanted to make our music sound like an abstract painting.  I pushed to get to the point where it was not even chords; instead it was just sound collages.  We were headed in that direction about the time of Pretties for You but there was one thing that kept it from happening: lack of food. 

We were extremely experimental.  A lot of the ideas from those early experiences really planted the seeds for what was to come.  Things didn’t happen overnight.  When we got the idea for Alice to become a dark character it took years to perfect.  It started when we wrote the song “Fields of Regret.”  When we were a copy band, Alice was fine.  He would do his own thing but in his mind he was Mick Jaggar or Paul Butterfield.  When the band decided to do only originals then Alice lost his confidence.  Everything would be fine at rehearsal but for a brief period when we went onstage he would turn his back to the audience.  He was not able to face them because he didn’t know what to do as himself.  I came up with the idea of making each song a different character.  The song “Nobody Likes Me” was about a kid who had no friends.  We wanted Alice to sing through a window.  We got a screen door instead because the budget wasn’t really there then.  Alice was confident with that.  “Levity Ball” was where Alice began to shine.  Alice would image that there were ghosts dancing in the room.  Alice still does the same type of thing onstage – he looks around the stage and up in the air like he sees something in the room but there is nothing really there. 

The song “Fields of Regret” had a biblical theme to it.  The song started out with really big chords and then it went down to a bass note and then Neal hits a drum and then the guitar player hits a note.  It goes into this repetitious thing where one guy does one thing and it is followed by the other guy doing another thing.  Alice then does this thing about how evil can affect your minds.  On that song, Alice became a darker character.  As soon as we went onstage in Hollywood and started playing people would start yelling insults and head for the exits because we were too weird.  Give me a break!  Everyone is Hollywood is weird. 

Jeb:  So you were too weird for Hollywood! 

Dennis: Go figure.  On this particular song Alice would do this dark character.  We would have maybe ten fans still there and they would stay till the end.  I said, “Alice, we have to make more songs like that.  That is what works for you.  That is what you do best.”  I wrote “Black Juju” to reinforce that.  All the way back at the time of Pretties for You the seeds were sown.  It didn’t happen on the next album, Easy Action because we were on the road and barely even had any songs when we went into the studio to record the album. 

Jeb:  I think that really shows on that album. 

Dennis: No doubt.  It was one of those things where management decided we had to fulfill a contractual obligation so we wouldn’t get our brains sued off. 

Jeb:  That is where that eating things comes in. 

Dennis:  The eating thing didn’t happen because of that album! 

Jeb:  In the beginning, wasn’t Alice Cooper the name of the group and not the name of the singer? 

Dennis: If someone came into the room and started addressing Alice as Alice then he wouldn’t acknowledge them.  Back then they weren’t hip to the band because Alice Cooper was five guys.  The song credits say Alice Cooper wrote the songs but that meant that all five of us wrote the song and all five of us got the royalties.  We figured the public would pick up on it but no one did.  It was fine with us but the thing that is not fine is the fact that it has been erased from history. 

Jeb:  In retrospect, how did you expect the public not to look at Alice and think, “That’s Alice Cooper.”   

Dennis:  That’s fine as long as I am not erased.  Hardly anybody under the age of 40 even knows I existed.  When I say I was in Alice Cooper then they think I was just one of the 50 guys who have been in his band over the years.  Those guys are good musicians and there is nothing wrong with what they are doing.  Neal actually has the contract that is signed by Alice that says we all own the name.  I have mine and he has his but he has Alice’s too.  We are still friends; we didn’t start suing everybody when things went down. 

Jeb:   How early on did you use theatrics in your live performances with Alice?

Dennis:  The first gig we did as The Spiders was at our high school in 1964 on Halloween.  We put cobwebs at the side of the stage that we made out of close lines.  Alice and I were writers in journalism class and this other guy who was in the same journalism class built a GEOTEEN  We built a coffin out of cardboard.  Another friend of ours from the track team would go into the coffin.  We would finish playing a song and while we were deciding what song to play next – we didn’t know anything about a set list in those days.  Anyway, while we were deciding what to play he would come out of the coffin and do some silly shtick as a ghoul.  He had white face and dark eyes.  Once he was done with his routine then he would go back in the coffin and we would play the next song.  That was our first real gig where we played through a whole set and those elements remain to this day in Alice’s show. 

Jeb:  Did you decide to continue that sort of thing right away? 

Dennis:  We really began to develop it when we were hired at a local club.  The man hired us and told us that he really liked us but the name the Earwigs had to go.  He actually thought of the spiders.  We all liked the name and we decided that we would all wear black.  He then told us that we would be playing in the Spider’s Lair.  We decided to build this stage that had this spider web in front of it and that we would play behind it.  He had a lot of connections with the local DJ’s so the airwaves would be blasting about the show at his club featuring the Spider’s Sanctum.  We were listening to the radio and we heard that and we asked the club owner where the Spider’s Sanctum was.  He said that was up to us.  We were like the three stooges – we were like the six stooges trying to build this set that had to be done by the next weekend.  Some places just had carpet and no wood underneath so you had to be careful where you stepped.  It worked out great.  It would be all dark on our end of the room.  The house band would be at the other end of the room onstage and everyone would be facing that direction.  When they would be done paying the lights would just start to get brighter at the other end of the room and the Spider Sanctum would come to life. 

I noticed that every band that was hired to play at this club would be really popular for about a month.  He chewed them up and spit them out.  I told the guys, “I think that every time we show up we should do something different so they audience never gets tired of us.”  Every weekend we would come up with a new thing that nobody had ever seen before and then it would be gone the following week.  We made this giant wheel out of plywood and we painted it with florescent paint.  It would spin so fast it would give off a wind.  We called it the Color Wheel.  It escalated to the point to where we were playing two nights a weekend so we did something different for each night.  Finally, it got to where we would do something different for every set and we did three sets a night.  All of the things would just be spontaneous at the last minute.  One night we all came onstage wrapped in toilet paper and we were throwing toilet paper at the audience.  The next set we discovered an old iron bathtub in the back room because they had put in a new bathtub in the club, which actually a facility for the Jay Cees in Phoenix, Arizona.  So Alice gets in this old tub and starts pointing like George Washington crossing the Delaware and we are heave-hoing it all the way out to the stage. 

Jeb: Were any of the house bands famous?

Dennis:  The Yardbirds played there.  Nobody there knew who the Yardbirds were but we did.  We went on first that night and we played an entire set of nothing but Yardbirds.  They  couldn’t believe it.  The part that I think is really hilarious is that at that point we were a copy band but nobody knew any of the songs we played.   We only played album cuts and we never played the hits.  Everybody thought that the Yardbirds were copying our music.  When Glenn came out of the back room he had all of the silverware out of the tray and we stuck forks in our hair.  Glenn was playing slide guitar with a spoon – which he continued to do from that day on.  He played on “Black Juju” a slide guitar part with a spoon.  Jeff Beck saw that and he went and took Glenn’s silverware and used it during the Yardbirds set. 

Jeb:  No one was doing anything like that then were they? 

Dennis: Well, this was back in 1966. If you want to call that sort of stuff theatrics then we were doing theatrics.  The Who were smashing their instruments at the time.  Hendrix lit his guitar on fire because he followed the Who.  Jim Morrison did a lot of theatrical stuff a bit later. 

Jeb:  It often got him arrested. 

Dennis:  The Doors were our friends.  When Pink Floyd did their very first tour with Syd Barret, they stayed at our house.  We actually had a  séance  when the band lived in Topanga Canyon.  Jim Morrison participated in the séance.  The rest of the Doors were there and Alvin Lee was there.  We would go to the studio when the Doors recorded. 

Jeb:  Looking back, that has to just be so cool to have experienced that. 

Dennis:  The camaraderie was great.  This was before bands started getting so competitive.  Bands stuck together back in those days.  Do you remember The Tubes?

Jeb:  Sure I do.

Dennis:  The first time I jammed with Neal was out in the desert.  The very last telephone poll had two electrical outlets.  We would bring two amps and Neal would bring a snare drum.  At night you could see the Milky Way with no trees in the way.   The picnic tables were still warm from the sun beating on them all day and the stars would go all the way down to where the mountains were.  You would look out and see all these cats’ eyes.  Wild cats were out there waiting to get to all the stuff the picnickers left behind; we had an audience of eyes the desert.  People started hearing about what we were doing and they started showing up.  It got to be such a big party that we couldn’t really jam anymore.   

Phoenix musicians would go out there and jam.  All the guys from The Tubes were there.  Back then they called themselves the Beans. Fee Waybill was actually a roadie for the band.  He became the singer one night when the singer didn’t show up.  Fee Waybill and The Tubes used to make fun of us for doing theatrics.  Fee, in particular, used to make fun of us. 

Jeb:  He may have been making fun of you but I think he was taking notes.  At what point did you decide to go for it?

Dennis:  We decided to go for it when we left Phoenix.  We were a big fish in a fairly small pond.  When we went to LA there were thousand of musicians who couldn’t even get a gig.  You would walk down Sunset Boulevard and you would see the Doors playing in one club, Buffalo Springfield playing in another club and Hendrix in another.  You could be at any club on any night and Hendrix would walk up onstage and plug in and play with you the rest of the night.  It was really hard to make any money back in those days.  Luckily, a girl saw us play who booked this club called the Cheetah Club.  The was an old movie called They Shoot Horsed Don’t They that took place in this old ballroom.  The club was where this place used to be.  It was the kind of place they had marathon dances back in the 20s and 30s.  It was actually out on a pier over the ocean next to Pacific Ocean Park.  It was a grand old building that they tried to make state of the art by putting up these giant sheets of stainless steel and this crazy, elaborate lightshow that hung from the ceiling.  They had this double stage that was made of stainless steel.  One stage was four feet off the ground and right next to it was a stage that was five feet off the ground.  The line up was always a funk band, us and the Doors.  Janis Joplin played there.  Buffalo Springfield played their final concert there.  The first time I saw the Doors was there.  It was one of the best shows I have ever seen.  They pretty much played their first two albums back-to-back. 

Jeb:  When did Frank Zappa come into the picture? 

Dennis: Well, we were starving…

Jeb: Back to no food! 

Dennis:  Kate Hudson’s character in Almost Famous was based on Pamela Debarge, who wrote I’m With the Band.  She was a famous groupie but she also had a band called The GTO’s.  Pam was in the band with Miss Christine and Miss Marcy – there were others but I can’t remember them all.  Alice was going out with Miss Christine.  The GTO’s lived in the basement of this old log cabin on Laurel Canyon Boulevard that was built by the old cowboy star Tom Mix.  Frank Zappa lived there but he was always on the road.  Moon Unit was an infant who was crawling around all the time and Miss Christine was the babysitter.  Alice and she looked so much alike that when they walked down the street it looked like a couple of freak twins.  They both had the same posture that made them look like a couple of question marks.  We loved the GTO’s.  We would go and hang out at the log cabin but Zappa was never there.  We would tell the girls to tell Zappa to come out and see us play.  We figured he was the only guy who was weird enough to get what we were about.  We also knew he had a record label.  He would promise to come and then he would not show up.  Finally, one day he came to a gig.  We had made up one of our stage sets called The Cage of Fire.  We built this frame that had these colored, plastic flags all around it.  Our roadie – who was actually Pink Floyd’s roadie when they did their first tour that fell apart when Syd Barrett when nuts.  Anyway, the roadie stayed with us and became our roadie.  He was supposed to light the flags.  When the plastic dripped it would make this cool sound and leave this little trail of smoke.  This was a great effect if you were about two or three feet away but we were in front of a baseball stadium and it was windy.  He couldn’t even get the flags lit.  We had talked Alice into getting into this think that we were going to light on fire but nothing happened.  We burnt it all to the ground after the show because it didn’t work.  Zappa was there but he had to leave before our set. 

We went over to see Miss Christine and demanded to know when he would be home.  She told us he would be home the next day and that we should come over at nine o’clock.  We walked all the way from Hollywood all the way to Topanga Canyon.  People who lived in LA could not believe we actually walked that far but we did.  Don’t forget that Alice and I were on the cross country team in high school.  I did have holes in my shoes from the walk. 

To get off the subject for a second, Jim Morrison was over at our house one day and Glenn was showing him how worn out our shoes were from walking all the way to Hollywood.  That night when Morrison left our house – we lived on the side of this big mountain – he decided that he would walk to Hollywood and to up the ante he took his boots off and threw them over a cliff and headed off into the darkness.  The next day we were down in Santa Monica.  There are these old cable car tracks right by the Doors offices.  It was broad daylight and here comes Morrison walking up the tracks.  He comes up and says, “Where can I get some shoes?”  We told him about this place that had some cool boots but you had to cut the buckles off.  We went there and he bought some boots and Glen had a switchblade and cut the buckles off. 

Back to Miss Christine:  Alice and I were walking back from Zappa’s and Alice goes, “I can’t wait to get back and tell the guys that we have to be at Zappa’s at nine in the morning.”  I am thinking that she didn’t say anything about the morning.  By the time we got back to Topanga, Alice had me convinced.  We stayed up all night running through our set and boiling our strings because we couldn’t afford to buy new ones.  We drove up to Zappa’s house and we knock on the door right at nine in the morning.  Miss Christine opens the door and goes into shock.  We barged into the house and set up our equipment right where she said not to set it up – right in front of Zappa’s bedroom.  We started playing and the door opens.  We don’t even see his head.  All we see is his hand motioning to stop.  He comes out and says, “Let me have my coffee and I will listen.”

He liked us and he singed us.  He had two days to finish Pretties for You.  He produced us for the first day but on the second day, he had the flu so we ended up trying to get a horrendous sound to sound good.  Zappa had decided that he didn’t want any baffles to be put up.  He wanted the bass amp to be right next to the drums because he wanted someone driving down the street to think they heard a garage band rehearsing – which is pretty much what he got!   I would say there was too much bass so I would pull the fader all the way down and the bass was still there.  It actually made it onto the charts.  It was way down on the charts but it was on the charts.  The album had the cartoon of the girl with her panties showing.  Woolworth’s said they would not sell them with that cover.  They pulled them all off the shelf and put stickers on them. 

Jeb:  In a relatively short period of time you went from that to Love It to Death. 

Dennis: We left LA after Easy Action came out.  We were pretty much living out of suitcases on the road.  We actually kind of left with our tails between our legs because we had two albums and neither one made it.  The one area that seemed to keep calling us back was the Detroit area.  We were doing what I called the Zorro method of touring.  We would play Seattle, Boston, Phoenix and Florida.  We were not able to pick and choose where  we were gong to play.  It always ended up being in a Z.  Sometimes it would be an N but that is just a sideways Z. 

Detroit welcomed us with arms wide opened.  Once we showed up the Iggy Pop started wearing glitter and the MC5 sort of glammed out.  What we got from them was high energy.  San Francisco is renowned for loyalty to their hometown bands but Detroit was really so into their bands.  Everyone in the audience had their fists in the air and they were stomping their boots.  If you didn’t play high energy then you were out of there.  We learned to play with a harder edge from that. 

Jeb:  You didn’t get Ted Nugent to glam out. 

Dennis: Back in those days, he was wearing a loin cloth where his balls would swing out!  The Stooges, however, were doing something different.  That was the first punk rock band.  There was no mosh pit back then.  Iggy would jump off the stage and everyone would move out of the way and he would hit the floor.  We were lucky to be accepted as a Detroit group. 

Jeb:  Did “I’m 18” get popular in Detroit first?

Dennis: “I’m 18” broke out of Canada.  A female disc jockey broke the song.  Neal and I went out to Phoenix and sat in with him when he got a local award for community service.  Neal and I played “Schools Out” with Alice that night.  I went back to the bar that night as it was the only place you could get food that late at night.  I was sitting there at the bar by myself waiting for my sandwich when this guy comes up and asks me to join his table.  He tells me that his mother is Rosalie Trombley.  She is the disc jockey who played “I’m 18.”  I spent the entire evening drinking martinis and talking to Rosalie. 

The radio station she worked for was in Windsor, Canada, which is right across the river from Detroit.  At that time Canada was kind of shunned by America.  Until Jack Richardson kicked the doors open with the Guess Who nothing really happened here.  The station new there was a lot of good Canadian bands so they decided that they were only going to play songs with Canadian content.  Bob Ezrin and Jack Richardson produced Love It to Death so it qualified as a record with Canadian content.  Rosalie said that she sat down and listened to the opening lines and she knew the song was a hit.  Back in those days, the disc jockey has some leeway to break a band.  The other jocks would all come to her and tell her that she could not play the songs because we killed chickens!  She had a feeling about the song so she kept playing the song.  On the third day, everybody at the station came to her control room and told her to stop playing the song.  She told me the timing could not have been more perfect as the phones were ringing off the wall.  She told them, “You want me to stop playing the most requested song in the history of the station.”  I told her that the phones were ringing because it was all of us calling in to request it!  She told me that was not true and that the station ended up putting it into heavy rotation just like when the Beatles broke big.  They were playing “I’m 18” every fifth song.  They played the song so much that even I was getting sick of it. 

Jeb:  Where does Bob Ezrin come into the Alice Cooper story?

Dennis:  We thought the Guess Who had great singles.  Back then AM and FM were two different animals.  AM played the hit singles while FM played longer album cuts.  You had to get on AM to get people to buy the albums in masses.  We decided that we like the Guess Who sound so our management, Joe Greenburg and Shep Gordon called Jack Richardson wherever he went.  If Jack went to Chicago then the phone would be ringing in his hotel as soon as he showed up.  They bugged him to death.  I am not sure that anyone in the band knew the extent of it, really.  Jack didn’t want to have anything to do with us because of our image and reputation.  Jack had this young kid who wanted to become a producer named Bob Ezrin.  Bob was really very young at the time.  Jack told Bob to come see us play live and tell us that they were going to pass so we would stop calling all the time.  Jack Richardson says that is not how it went down.  He says that he told Ezrin, “Let’s go see what they sound like.”  Bob has told us the truth! 

We used to play a lot of places where people would leave.  Bikers loved us but everyone else hated us.  If the crowd didn’t leave then we would throw a chicken at them and then they would leave.  We played at Max’s Kansas City in New York.  We arrived and there were only five people in the whole place.  We were at rock bottom.  We were really getting frustrated with the whole thing at that point.  Everybody except me deiced that we were not going to play that night.  I used to say, “The smaller the crowd the bigger the rumors!”  Glen said, “Why don’t we not play and start a rumor that we did.”  We were really going to not go onstage but in the end it was not really our style so we went on.  We played the most vicious, pissed off set that we had ever done.  We were total destruction that night.  We turned the volume up to 11.  As it happens, one of the five people there that night was Bob Ezrin.  He comes up and says, “I am Bob Ezrin and I am producer.  You guys have something and I am going to see if I can get you a record.” We were like, “We have never heard of you but whatever.”  Bob especially liked the song “I’m Edgy.”  We didn’t want to break the news to him that the song was called “I’m 18.”  That goes to show the level of animosity we had towards him.

The next thing we knew Bob shows up at the farm.  That particular night I was dressed up like a frog.  Cindy used to always say I looked like a frog when I smiled.  My bass that I used on Love It to Death was green and I called it the frog as well.  It is now in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.  Anyway, that night she had brought home this frog mask that covers your entire head.  I put it on and I put on all green and I decided that I wasn’t going to talk until Cindy kissed me and then I would turn into a prince.  Ezrin shows up and the only person to greet him is a big frog.  All I would say was, “ribbit.”  Bob says, “Mr. Frog is there anybody else home?” 

Bob Ezrin was absolutely necessary for that period of Alice Cooper.  We knew we needed to get some good songs after we flopped with Easy Action.  Michael Bruce started coming up with some great riffs and we all got better as players across the board.  Bob showed up at the right time.  Alice keeps saying that Ezrin re-taught us how to play but that is not true.  We were already getting better as a band and Bob just showed up at the right time.  “I’m 18” was a sprawling number that went on for over five minutes.  Bob took it down to a commercial hit.  Ezrin was totally invaluable in that aspect, plus he was the only one who could come in the next day and remember what it was we played the day before.  We couldn’t record a tape recorder and then when we finally got one we couldn’t afford tape!  We lost a lot of great ideas because we could not remember what we had played.  Bob would come back in and tell us what it was we actually played.  Neal and I were extremely experimental.  We would both start in outer space.  We would twenty possible things for the intro to each song before we decided what we were going to play.  By doing that, we created a lot of chaos.  Everyone was asking me and Neal to put something down but we were twelve ways to Sunday.  I think anyone else would have told us not to play.  Ezrin would let it happen.  I would be playing all these crazy things and at some point he would jump in and say, “That’s it.  Change this note and then do this but that is it.”  He would help us decide what the ultimate part was.  I really liked working with him.  Bob lives right by me now.  He travels a lot but Neal and I see him from time to time.  I could literally throw a rock and hit his house. 

Jeb:  Timing was perfect for The Alice Cooper Group to break big. 

Dennis:  The timing was right.  If we were have been doing Pretties for You at the stage that we did Love It to Death then we would not have made it.  We always tried to reflect the things that were going on around us.

Jeb:  At what point did the persona of Evil Alice begin to take over?

Dennis: On Love It To Death.  We had “Black Juju” and “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” and other songs where Alice had demented things to sing about.  I don’t think it became a passion play until Killer.  The image was strong onstage at that time for sure.  Another element that nobody knows is that Charlie, who did our lights, was very innovative.  People would come see our shows and the next thing you know the Rolling Stones would be using Charlie’s ideas in their live performances.  Charlie was so far ahead of his time it was unreal. 

The lights really helped to develop Alice’s persona.  Once Alice got the direction then it developed very powerfully.  One of the reasons it was so powerful was because we would catch people off guard.  One of my favorite show we ever did was this little place up in Oregon by the seaside. It was a little club.  We showed up and the club owner was like, “Who are these girls?”  He told us we could only play for a half an hour.  We decided to put everything we had for our entire set into a half an hour.  Before you knew it their were chickens everywhere and we were out the door and on the road before the feathers had settled. 

Another great gig was up in Canada at this place called The Rockpile.  We had played the peace festival with John Lennon earlier – that is where the chicken incident happened.  Everyone thought we killed a chicken but in reality someone in the audience killed it.  After that gig, we went to this little club.  At the peace gig there was this guy telling everyone they could go to this club and crash and there would be folk artists performing.  He thought Alice Cooper was a folk artist.  We showed up and he said, “Where is Alice?  You guys are not playing.”  We said, “We promise that we will really tone it down.”  We broke our promise.  Everyone in the audience was sleeping in sleeping bags when we took the stage.  Alice began hammering on the microphone stand with a hammer and you would see one head pop up and then another head pop up.  It looked like people coming out of their cocoons.  By the end of the set we decided to hit them with the features and the CO2.  By the time we were done nobody was asleep.  The club owner decided he wasn’t going to pay us so Shep went up to him and said, “You want people to know that this band that just played with John Lennon, you thought were a bunch of female folk singers?  You want to be the hippest club in Toronto and you don’t even know who is playing with John Lennon?”  The guy paid us and he actually had us come back a couple of weeks later.  When we showed up there were still feathers lying around. 

Jeb:  After Love It to Death didn’t the whole thing become more of a business? 

Dennis:  Killer was when everyone was at the top of their game.  That album was the first one that we ever made where we knew that people would be listening to it.  We had no idea if anyone would ever hear Love It to Death or not.  Success is a powerful incentive  for creativity.  We had so much momentum that we were bursting out. 

Jeb: Some of the tracks on Killer had to make record company say, ‘No way.’

Dennis:  Our management had gotten us total artistic control.  The Alice Cooper Management was kind of like the Alice Cooper band in that people don’t know us but they all know Alice.  Shep Gordon is the guy in the management that everyone knows.  They don’t know Joe Greenburg but they were partners.  We had control over everything.  We decided what our album cover was going to be where most bands at that time didn’t even know what the cover would look like until the album came out.  Some artists didn’t even know what there name was going to be.  John Mellencamp didn’t know he was John Cougar until he saw his album. 

Our management was very good.  They would be nervous in the studio because we joked around a lot.  We did that on purpose.  To me, there are four things to doing what we did.  Number one was writing songs.  Number two was recording the songs.  Performing the songs live and our theatrical productions.  We designed all of our stage sets.  The original band really were equal partners.  I am the one who told Alice to wear makeup.  Neal is the one that thought of the snake. It was a band.  I am not trying to take away from what Alice contributed but people have a tendency to think it was all Alice’s idea.

Jeb:  How did you handle the public’s backlash towards the Alice Cooper Group?  Everyone thought you guys were from hell.

Dennis: When we were in LA we had people in the business that really hated us.  We would read interviews where they would make fun of us.  When we started making it then a lot of them started going out of their way to help us.  Maybe they didn’t want to everyone to know that at one time they thought we sucked. 

Jeb: I was thinking more of the parental outcry where people did not want their kids to listen  to Alice Cooper.  Were you surprised at that reaction?

Dennis:  I thought they misunderstood songs like “Dead Babies.”  The song was about parental neglect.  We were really working under strict censorship at that time.  We had an album killed because there were panties on the cover.  It really did surprise me.  We had to be shocking but we had to be shocking within the confines of heavy censorship.  If you went too far across the line then your album would only be available under the counter. 

Television stations didn’t want to know about us because they were afraid their advertisers would pull their money.  We played a concert in Cincinnati that was the first live broadcast of a festival.  We played along with the Stooges, Grand Funk Railroad, Mountain and lots of others.  Iggy actually walked on the hands of the audience that night.  We played on a national broadcast and in the middle of our set we were pulled on most of the affiliated stations during our set.  It was the first time a program had ever been pulled in the middle of a commercial.  Neal was wearing blue eye makeup and he was blowing kisses at the camera.  We had an element of humor behind it all.  People took it way more serious than we generally intended. 

Jeb: So you didn’t let it bother you at all?

Dennis:  We were used to having people hate us; we really were.  We were used to being hated from way back.  We were still on the high school cross country team when we decided to grow our hair out.  It was only as long as the Beatles so it was till pretty short but people would see us and they would try to run us off the road in their pickups.

Dallas Taylor was the drummer who played on the first Crosby, Stills & Nash album.  He was in a Phoenix band that played at this place called JD’s that was half owned by Waylon Jennings.  Linda Rhonstad broke out of there.  Upstairs was Country & Western with sawdust on the floor and people that liked to fight.  Downstairs was called The Psycodelic Dungeon.  Whenever there would be a break, everybody would have to go up the stairwell and out the same door into the parking lot.  There were always major fighting going on.  The cowboys would be beating up the longhairs.  One night a guy in Dallas Taylor’s band was killed.  He moved to LA after that and got a gig with CSN. 

We grew up with things like that.  In the local Phoenix paper there world be stories that said, “On the lighter side, a cowboy caught a longhair on his property and gave him haircut with sheep sheers and accidentally cut off part of his ear.  Isn’t that funny!”  So, we were used to being hated.  The elements of rock n’ roll are that it has to be high energy, controversial and parents can’t like it. 

Jeb:  Who wrote the lyrics to “No More Mr. Nice Guy?”

Dennis:  Michael Bruce. 

Jeb: Were the lyrics specifically designed to have the Alice Cooper persona in it?

Dennis: When Michael wrote songs, he wrote them from a personal point of view.  When people hear Michael Bruce sing live they say that he sounds a lot like Alice Cooper.  The truth is that Alice sounds like Michael.  In the early days, the songs would get changed beyond recognition but “No More Mr. Nice Guy” was actually pure Michael Bruce from the riff to the lyrics.  Ezrin didn’t even change any of it.  The song was right.

Jeb: What about “Schools Out.?”

Dennis:  There was  a more collaborative effort on that one.  When it came time to solidify the lyrics the whole band was in the room.  I remember that we got stuck on one certain line.  We sat there the whole afternoon trying to come up with this one line.  Finally, we said, “We can’t even think of a word that rhymes.”  It just worked out like that.  If we were in a restaurant then we were all talking about what our next stage set should be like.  If we were driving around it the station wagon then we were all talking about what our next costumes should look like.  

Jeb:  Now Donavan was the guest vocalist on “Billion Dollar Babies” and we all know Dick Wagner was brought in to play lead on some songs.  Were there any other notable guests who played on classic Alice Cooper songs?

Dennis: Rick Derringer played the lead on “Under My Wheels.”  One of the first gigs that we had in New York City was at Steve Paul’s Scene.  We opened for The McCoy’s for six days.  Rick and his brother were in that band.  We were star struck at being in New York City.  Rick took us to Time Square and told us that we had to have a Nathan’s Hot Dog.  We told him we were vegetarians.  Next they decided that we needed to go around the restaurant and loosen all of the ketchups and mustard bottles.  Rick doesn’t remember doing that but we did.  Rick lived down the street from our management offices.  Rick hung out there more than we did.  When we were in town we would see him there.  We were recording the Killer album and Rick called up as he heard we were in the studio.  We told him to come down and bring his guitar.  “Under My Wheels” just happened to be the track we were working on and he came in an nailed it right away.  I really liked the fact that he played on it but I liked what Glen played on it as well.  I was disappointed that Glen’s solo didn’t make it on the record.

Jeb:  How did the end come about? 

Dennis:  It is complicated.  The band was supposed to be on the cover of Newsweek magazine but we got bumped because of the news of Watergate.  Explaining Watergate is kind of like explaining the complexity of how the band broke up.  There was a wedge being driving by certain people.  There was a lot of resentment that the band was being pushed out of the picture.  People were being hired that would screen us from Alice.  The rest of the band were fighting to just keep it together.  There was a lot of powerful stuff going down.  Personally, it was getting to the point to where I didn’t want to have anything to do with it.  I was really the only one who fought tooth and nail to keep the band together.  Michael had already decided to see the light that the future didn’t include him.  He had a lot of songs that were more like “Yesterday” by the Beatles.  If he brought a song to the band called “I Love You Girl” then we would change it to “I Want to Kick My Puppy.”   Michael just wanted to record his songs without them being changed to fit the image.  Michael came and said that he wanted to do a solo album and then Neal said he wanted to do a solo record.  The band actually agreed to take one year off because we had been out on the road and recording non-stop.  Most bands might put out an album a years at best.  We were putting out two albums a year plus we were coming up with new concepts and building stage sets all the while we were touring more than anyone else who was around.  People were being driven to the point of insanity.  If we had two days off it was a miracle.  If we had a day off we usually had to travel to get to the next gig. 

Bands don’t make money on their first recording unless it is just a mega success.  You make your money when you can come back and renew your contract with your label or go to another label where you can go shopping.  You have to be successful enough to have the clout to negotiate a killer deal.  The band just happened to be at that point.  The management partners and the light show guy was gone.  Instead of splitting the money being split between managing partners, lighting guys and band members, it was much more  lucrative to split it two ways: Alice and Shep. 

Jeb:  Would you have gone with Alice if he would have invited you?

Dennis:  When we decided to take a year off I said, “Alice, anytime you need a bass player, call me.”  I never got the call.  Neal, Michael and I cost a lot more than hiring back up guys.  It is not easy to all of a sudden have five people saying that they think their idea is the best.  You have to hash everything out and let the truly best idea win out.  It is much easier to go, “I want to do this” and have everyone go “Okay boss.”  We didn’t have a boss.  We had five people collaborating from the heart.  The innovation was going hand over foot.  We were the first band in the history of Rock ‘n Roll to take our own lighting rig on the road.  We were the first band to wear glitter and we were one of the first bands to have hair down to our asses.  We were the first band to take our own stage on the road with us.  Nobody did it before us but everyone did it after us, to this day. 

Jeb:  Why wasn’t Glen able to cope with life after Alice?

Dennis:  At the end, Glen was doing well.  He would call me on the phone and play me songs that he had written and we would talk for hours. 

Jeb:  What about Michael?

 Dennis: Michael puts on a great show.  When you hear him play you notice how much he sound like Alice.  Nobody can play his riffs the way he does.  Glen and Michael did radically different things on the guitar.  One guitar was like an angry hornet while the other was playing really cutting clean parts.  Michael played the clean parts while Glen’s parts were disturbing and very emotional.  They were very important to the sound of the group.  Glen could change the direction of the song with one note.  When you have two guitar guitars that are that different and they work so well together it is rare.  There were only one or two songs in our career where it is hard to tell who is who.  Michael always has the riff while Glen is always disturbing.  They both complimented each other.  Once guitar is doing one thing and the other something different then at some point they are both playing lead harmonies. 

 Jeb:  Is there any resentment that Alice Cooper has become a part of American pop culture while the band that helped create the whole thing has not gotten the same treatment?

 Dennis: Of course there is.  The things that bother me are not financial, they are artistic.  When I hear a story about something creative that I did and the credit is given to somebody else then that is worse than financial to me.  I hate the story that says Alice had no choice but to move on without us because we refused to wear costumes and have theatrics.  We are the ones that were doing the theatrics.  I was the one who was hammering everyone over the head to do the theatrics.  I like Alice.  I think he is extremely talented.  I think anytime anyone pays to get into his show they are going to walk out feeling they got their money’s worth.  He commands the stage like nobody else.  When three quarters of the show is basically what we did then I want to know where the new innovation is.  The innovation stopped with the initial group.  Name me one thing that is as powerful as the snake or the straight jacket or the guiotine that has been done since the original band.  It is a really good retro band.  Alice has an extremely accomplished set of musicians that are trying to recreate something that somebody else did.  Most of the people in the audience don’t know the difference.  To me it is not the Alice Cooper Group without the originals.   

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