Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Alice Cooper Bassist Dennis Dunaway [Episode 338]

Transcript

Alice Cooper Bassist Dennis Dunaway [Episode 338] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll Hall of Famer Dennis Dunaway basis for
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the original Alice Cooper Group. He's here to talk about
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the recently released new album from the Alice Cooper Group,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: their first in fifty two years, called The Revenge of
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Alice Cooper. He's got the stories behind the Alice Cooper classics,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I'm eighteen, schools out, billion dollar Babies and more. He
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: also had a memoir out in twenty fifteen. We'll talk
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: about that book and what the future holds for the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Alice Cooper Group. It's all coming up next on Booked
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: on Rock.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm li I know Dialogue. How's a fountain? The conversation right,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: that's a geyser? Interesting, interesting, as provocative for Daddy Man's
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: back man.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll. Welcome back to book Don Rock, the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: podcast for those about to read and rock Americ Senich.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: We're back with another chapter in the Dialogue series of
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: chill and Chat with authors, fellow podcasters, musicians and more.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: And boy do we have a great guest today. Our
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: guest is rock and roll hall of famer He done Away,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: bassist for the legendary Alice Cooper Group, who just recently
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: released their first studio album together in over fifty years.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I believe it's fifty two years exactly. The Revenge of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Alice Cooper. Also, his memoir titled Snake's Guillotines electric Chairs
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: just recently reached its tenth anniversary. Dennis, thank you so
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: much for being on the show. This is great.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Oh sure, Eric, it's been a while.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: It's been a while. I was just saying, before we
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: started recording here, a long time ago, it's probably early
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: two thousands, I interviewed you and Neil Smith. It was
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: a gig you were playing with the Bouchard brothers in Danbury, Connecticut. Yeah,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: it's a while back. A gig that well, first it
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: was Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith, That's what it was. And
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: then and then that was Joe Bouchard, okay, and then
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it changed to be Blue Coop, which was Albert Bouchard
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: on drums. Yep, I saw that's a recent project. Is
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that project still going?
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we've been going for like geez ten years
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: or so now, But everybody's got other irons in the
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: fire at the moment. But we released a DVD with
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: a bunch of music videos and also we added an
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: extra disc of what we thought would be outtakes and
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: unreleased demos, but it turned out to be another album.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: So that's called When Legends Collide and you can go
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: to bluecoop dot com and find that cool.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I think you can also access it through your website,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: which we'll we'll get to that a little bit too.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the album, which is fantastic. It is
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: classic Alice Cooper sound produced by Bob Azern. It feels
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: like you're in the room.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: You know that that is what it sounds like, because
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: that's what it was. We were in the room recording
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: all together, you know, Alice standing next to me and
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Neil to the other side, Michael right in front of me,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: so and that's how we used to records. So that's
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: how we wanted to do this. But normally the bass
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: would have maybe a couple of takes where I nailed
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: it on the bedtrack, you're really just going for the
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: drums and you can add everything else. But this album
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: is almost entirely drums and bass. As they went down
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: in the studio and then some of the Michael redid
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of his guitar parts because he had his
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: own amplifier at home that he can dial in exactly
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: what he wanted, and Alice rewrote some of the lyrics
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: and stuff in him and Bob Ezern added things. And
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: then this young guitar player, Jozy from Nashville, who's an
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: amazing artist in his own right, very glam very early seventies. Well,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: he added a lot of guitar parts throughout the album.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool. And you had to keep this a
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: secret from quite a while. I think from one of
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the interviews I saw this is back in twenty twenty
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: one when you guys got together and started working on
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: this and you had to keep it under wraps for
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: a while. You had recorded with Alice on various tracks
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: throughout the recent years, but this time a full album
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: with the band. How did that all come together?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I think? I mean there were a lot of steps.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, being inducted into the Rock Hall and playing
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Alice's Christmas Pudding shows to benefit for the teen centers
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: that him and his wife are involved in and out
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: in Phoenix, Arizona. We did that in twenty ten, twenty nineteen,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: and we just did win a couple of weeks ago.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So those would bring us together in the rehearsal room
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: and on stage. But I think the final thing was
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: that Neil and Michael had been getting together out in Phoenix, Arizona,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: and then when Alice was in town, he joined them
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: and they came up with some songs that they were
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: excited about. So then we decided, well, it's about time,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: let's do it.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it just happened from there. So it's Alice yourself, drummer,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Neil Smith, Michael Bruce on guitar. But what's so cool
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: is that on this album there are tracks featuring recordings
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: by the late great Alice Cooper group guitars Glenn Buxton,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: who sadly passed in nineteen eighty seven. There are three
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: tracks on this album, including the lead single, Black Mamba
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and what Happened to You, which those day back to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the early seventies.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Actually, Black Mamba was a newer tune that we kind
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: of made happen in the studio for this album. But
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: what Happened to You is a song that uses guitar
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: recording that I've had of Glenn Buckston for all these years,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: since nineteen seventy three. And so I told Bob Bes,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: and I said, this can be cleaned up with today's technology, right,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: and he says, send it. So in the studio we
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: laid down a track that we thought Glenn would like
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: that went with the guitar riff, and we use his
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: actual recording on the song. And like you say, there
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: are other songs. There's a song called see You on
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: the Other Side, which was written by Neil started writing
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: it right after he heard that Glenn had passed in
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: ninety seven, and then and then he played what he
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: had for me, and then him and I finished it.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: And then there's a song called what a sid which
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: is kind of a jazzy thing that I wrote as
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: a follow up to Blue Coop from I Mean to
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Blue Turk, which was on the School's out album, a
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: jazzy kind of pseudo jazzy thing, and Alice rewrote my
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: lyrics to be about Glenn Buxton. So we have those
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: and then also we have other songs that there's a
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: lot of Glenn throughout this album in various ways.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Blood on the Sun, I think that's the lyrics are
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: about his love of TV Guide.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, Glenn collected every TV Guide, which was a
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: little weekly booklet you got in the old days to
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: tell you what was going to be on television that week,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: and Glenn always had them all stacked in chronological order
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: on his bedroom floor, and you had to be careful
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: not to knock him over or you'd hear from him.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: But so I had one of his TV guides, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I had heard that you can't copyright a title, So
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: basically I went through one of his TV guides and
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: picked out what a bunch of titles that I thought
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: were really interesting, and then I went back through and
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: put them in an order that I thought they flowed together,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: kind of like inspired a bit by whiter Shade of Pale,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: you know, the Procol Harum song where you kind of
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: when you listen to the lyrics you kind of make
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: up your own meaning.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: So that's what Blood on the Sun is a bunch
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: of movie titles strung together.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: It's an epic track. And you got sole songwriting credit
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: on that, so you wrote the music as well.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I play guitar on that one too.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: That's a great track, Black Mom. But going back to
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: that one, that one came quickly right. That was just
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: you guys are jamming.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like a guitar jam that Michael had
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and him and Neil had jammed on it at some
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: point out in Phoenix, and then when we were in
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: the studio, Neil said, Hey, Michael, what was that riff
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: that you had? And Michael started playing it and we
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: wrote a song.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Kill the Flies is another one of my favorites, and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Alis sounds great on that.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: That seems to be going by YouTube views, that seems
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: to be a very popular track.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, not surprised that one.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Bob Osburne was talking about Dennis, what do you think
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: should happen on the bass on this? And I told
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: him that I think that the body of the song
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: should be just below the belt, just lock in and
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: don't do anything fancy. And then I said, but I
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: think the middle part should go somewhere very ethereal So
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Bob sent me a keyboard part that he had come
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: up with, and then I added bass to that, and
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: then we not only inserted that into the middle of
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: the song, but we also used about half of that
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: for the intro of the song. But that's pure Alice,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: the lyrics and the vocals.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: It's a great one. The track wild One Wild Ones
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: goes back to the eighties and a jam with you
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Alice and guitarist Caine Roberts, who was Alice's guitars back
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: at that time at your place in Connecticut.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: It was actually at Neil's house in Connecticut, and Alice
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: asked Neil and I if we wanted to help them
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: lay down some demos for the Constrictor album. And I
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: think we did about four or five songs up at
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Neil's house in a couple of afternoons, and wild Ones
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: was one of the ones that I had written, so
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: we made a demo of that with Caine Roberts. But
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: we did some others The World Needs Guts. I can't
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: remember all of them, but we had a blast, even
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: though I was running a temperature where I should have
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: been in bed at the time.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Oh really, music calls yeah, and the album cover is
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: so cool. It's the old school monster movie thing going
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: on there, and they got you in character.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: So Neil came up with some We were trying to
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: think of what we should title this album, and Neil
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: came up with the Revenge of and he had various
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: versions of that, and then Alice said, oh, yeah, I
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: know the perfect guy to do the cover, and it's
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: this guy, Graham Humphreys from Britain and if you look
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: at his website, you'll see that our album cover fits
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: right in with all of the horror film posters that
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: he's done. I think he did like not Nightmare on
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Elm Street, but something like that, and then a lot
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: of others.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's great, the return album the world was afraid of. Yeah,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that's awesome. Yeah, the recording came together quickly. You talked
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: about that. The chemistry that you guys had is still there.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I believe you said Bob Ezrin set aside time to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: record the album, and you're way ahead of the deadline.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I think songs just float out of you.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Well, right, Bob, when this whole thing happened in in
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: spurts with long periods where nothing happen. So you know,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: we got together in the studio, just Neil, Michael Alis
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: and I out in Arizona, and then we came up
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: with about four songs, and then nothing happened for a
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: long time because of everybody's schedules. You know, Alice is touring,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Bob's got other projects, and Neil and I so then
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: it almost seemed like it wasn't going to happen again,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: you know, because this wasn't the first rodeo of us
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: attempting to put an album together over the years, but
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, something big would happen again
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: and we'd get all excited again. Then there'd be another
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: long period of where we thought, oh, it's not going
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: to happen. But Bob finally got us book studio time,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: and at that point we had about seventy songs bouncing
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: around between us, and we still hadn't decided which songs
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: we were going to do. Definitely, we were going to
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: just go in the studio and do pre production and
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: decide what songs. But we started laying down tracks and
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Bob had booked ten days, figuring we would get about
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: five tracks, and no, we were rolling along like we
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: did in the old days and ended up walking out
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: of there with a dozen songs.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: You said in one interview, there's enough songs for five albums.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: So you know where I'm going. Will we get another
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: one from Yeah?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, All it takes the same thing. It's
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: always been the same. All it takes is a phone
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: call and we're all in.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: You know, Well, that's just cool. You guys have been
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: closed all along. I mean, the band broke up, but
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it wasn't one of those things where there was a
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: lot of trash talking in the media or anything like that.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, you guys remained pretty cool, right.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: You know, A banned his family. You know, we were
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: in the same car and the same hotel room, in
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: the same stage and everything for many years. So you know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: families all have certain things. You know that you nobody's perfect,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: but you make it work. And we've all been friends.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, Alison I became friends when he was fifteen
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: or sixteen and I was seventeen. So you know, we
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: didn't get lawyers when things started going awry, thinking that
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: we started as friends, just a bunch of high school
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: buddies that had a dream and we achieved that dream.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: We made it to the top of the glittery rock pile,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: and we didn't want to lose our friendship over it.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: And also at the time, we thought, if we get
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: lawyers involved, that'll be the nail in the coffin for
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: anything ever happening. Again. We didn't know it would take
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: fifty two years, but that was the thinking that the end.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: There's a story that you had told in one interview
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: to which I love about, and when he went over
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: to his house and you were hanging out in his
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: bedroom and playing some records, playing some Stones records, and
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: you guys, go back that far.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: That's how I learned to play bass. When I bought
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: my bass, Glenn went with me. We went to Montgomery
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Ward's and bought a beginner's bass, and then I went
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: over to Glenn's house, and I didn't even know how
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: to tune it, you know, I had I barely had
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: an idea of what bass was because my record player
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: at the time you couldn't hear bass hardly at all.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: The only thing, the only time I would be notice
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: bass was if I heard a jukebox somewhere, you know.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: But Glenn, you know, the very first thing he did,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: he set me down and he had his guitar and
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: we sat down by the record player and he said, okay,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: before we start, always remember one thing. The most important
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: thing is the feel. And then he taught me how
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: to tune. And then we learned through mostly Rolling Stones,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: early Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry records and blues patterns,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: and that's the other link to Glenn. On this album,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: we have some songs that we wrote that are very
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Glenn Buxton from that era. The kind of stuff that
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: he liked, including what happened to you. But yeah, so,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: but you know, first of all, I had to get
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Glenn out of bed because it was a weekend, and
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Glenn has always been the hardest person in the world
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: to wake up. And so I went to his house.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: And I didn't really know him that well yet.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: You know, he was wrote your bicycle, You got on
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: your bicycle, and I rode.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: My bicycle and carried my base. Yeah. Uh. And and
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: then I went in the and his mom said, oh,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: he's down the hall there, the first door on the left,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: you know, go wake him up. And I went in
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Glenn's bedroom and all I saw he had ten foil.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: This is Phoenix, Arizona, so to block out the sun.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: He had ten foil over all of the window panes.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: And then he's totally covered up except one foot sticking
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: out and TV guides all over the floor, of course
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: in the carcase. But I had to wake him up,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: you know, And he's all I could get out of
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: him was go away, you know. But but I was persistent,
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: and that wasn't the that wasn't the last time I
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: had to wake him up.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Oh man, Now, Alice. Did he at the time Vincent Fernier?
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: That was the pronunciation.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Well, his family pronounces it Fernier, but Alice pronounces it Ferner.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Did he stand down right away? When did you first
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: you were in class together?
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had charisma except you. Nobody would ever in
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: a million years think that he would be lead singer
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: of a band. He was just a skinny little stick
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: with a big nose, you know. But he's always had
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: a knack for making anything sound more interesting. He would
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: enhance even I used to say, he can make opening
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: a can of tuna fish sound interesting, but he would
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: He wouldn't go and try to collect people to listen
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: to him. He just always be in the classroom and
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: then next thing you know, he'd be surrounded by people
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: because he'd be telling stories. And Glenn used to be
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Glenn and I would be standing off to the side,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: and Glenn used to have this thing where he'd go
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: after Alice would be telling a story, Glenn would go
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: twenty five That meant twenty five percent enhancement on the story.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Well, Alice is a great storyteller. I just saw Reche
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: interview with him, and you could tell he loves to
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: tell stories and he tells them. He tells him as
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: good as anybody.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and you can't you know, I've heard him all
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: so many times and you just never get tired of him. Yeah.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: You know, I just spoke today. I spoke to our
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: high school art teacher, Missus Sloan, who is about to
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: become one hundred years old.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: And I spoke to her for the first time since
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. And you know, I told her, and
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: she didn't know this, that Alis and I decided to
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: start a band when we were in her art class
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: because the Beatles had just come out, and we decided
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: we wanted to start a band, and we wanted to
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: incorporate ideas like Salvador Dolly, surrealism and the New York
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: pop art scene in to a band. And that happened
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: in her classroom.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Wow. One hundred yeah, how about that? Man? Yeah, all
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: those memories just must come back to you, just especially
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: when you get into the rock hall and when you're
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: back in the studio working together. Man, those memories are
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: just like right there in front of.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: You, uh yeah, and us being together recently, you know,
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: it always floods back, but it's but whenever we're all
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: in the same room together. It's it's partly about old memories,
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: you know, but a lot of it is just a continuation.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: It's not like we have to fill in the time
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: lost or anything ever. You know, we just get in
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: the room and it just continues.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. I want to go back to Edrin because
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: he's such a big part of Alice Cooper history. He
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: produced Love It to Death and Killer Schools out Billion
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Dollar Babies. What is it that makes him such a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: great producer? Specifically when working with your band?
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: He brought uh music theory into the picture. He got
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: what we were trying to do, where back then very
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: few people did. You know. We started a career with
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: people saying you can't do that. You know, we're like,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, watch us. But Bob Ezarn saw us at
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Max's Kansas City and New York City and he saw
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the light. You know. He loved the show. He thought
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: this is going to be the next new thing. And
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: at that time we were just we had done two albums,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: but we still hadn't really mastered songwriting abilities. But by
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the time we met Bob, we had learned a lot
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: about how to write songs and we had also decided
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: exactly what we wanted the Alice Cooper character to be,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: and we but before that, we knew what the character
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: should be, but we didn't know how to write the
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: songs to support that. So by the time Bob Ezern
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: came along, I had written Black Juju, and Neil had
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: written Hallowed Be my Name, and Michael had written Ballad
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: of Dwight Fry. So all of a sudden we had
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: learned how to do these write these songs that would
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: be a platform for Alice to develop the character. But
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: we still hadn't shed our inability to focus a song
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: without having too many extraneous parts. So we would play
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: a song for Bob Ezron the first day we got
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: together working with him in Pontiac, Michigan, at our farm there,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: we would play him a song and he'd say, that's
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: not a song. That's enough parts for ten songs. Let's
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: so I'm eighteen was the first song we worked on.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Bob remembers that differently, but whatever. When we worked on
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: I'm eighteen, he said, we have to get rid of
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: that big, sprawling, bluesy intro. And we're all like, but
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: I like that, So Bob said no, We're going to
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: start with an instrumental chorus and go right into the song.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: And he he whittled it down to a an AM
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: radio friendly for arrangement, which is why we wanted him.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: We knew we needed somebody that could do that, and
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: so that's one thing his talent for helping shape what
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: we were trying to do. But also he had to
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: be baptized by the fire of Glenn Buxton's sarcasm, because
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: nobody walked into our sacred room. We all spent our
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: You know, when people read what we say about each
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: other in black and white, just looks like we're being mean,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: vicious even No, that's just our high school humor. We
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: always put each other down, you know.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Which is still there, right? I think you said you
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: still to this day are just busting each other.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean the other day and rehearsal I
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: made a mistake and Alice said, oh, Dennis, you made
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: another mistake. I said, only make them when I look
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: at Neil, you know, yeah, right, stuff like that. But
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Bob Ezron came into the room, Glenn fired off a
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: few of his witty remarks, and and Bob actually made
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: an attempt to come back. But that's you know, making
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: an attempt to come back and outdo Glenn with all
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: anybody could do. You know, most people would just you know,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: shrivel up and leave.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Right right, you said, Glenn. Also, you couldn't just tell
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: him what to do. You had to be real strategic
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: about getting the doc.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Glenn was a true rebel. You could not you could
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: not come off as an authoritative figure and not even
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: one sentence you had to. You know, if Glenn was
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: in the recording studio laying down a track, you wouldn't say, hey, Glenn,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: I think you should play a major scale there. No,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: you said you would say, Glenn, would you like a
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: blue light or a red light on you while you
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: play this? You know? That's it, that's it, Like you
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: drive me nervous. Glenn is like, hey, Dan, what do
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: you think I should play here? You know, but I
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: knew better than to say what notes I thought he
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: should play? No, I said, easy play nervous. Oh okay,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: you know that's how you dealt with Glenn.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Ezrin had that ability to work with different personalities.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, big time, Bob, you know. And also Bob
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: knew when to let Neil and I explore to the
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: point where we were even disruptive to the development of
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: the arrangement of the song because we were looking for
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: something the ultimate groove for a part, and Bob knew
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: to let us explore that and then once we would
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: lock in, then we would move forward. But he also knew,
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: learning from the great Jack Richardson, who was his mentor,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: you know, that's who we actually went for it because
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: we wanted to get a producer that could make us
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: sound like the guess whose songs it jumped right out
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: of the dashboard radio, you know, in the station wagon.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: But Jack always prided himself on getting a hit song
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: on a record, underbudget album and Bob and so therefore Bob,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: you know, so he would let us debate what we
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: all thought was the best part for a particular part
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: of a song. Because we were all very collaborative and
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: we were all very passionate about what we wanted to do.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: It was never personal. It's always what you think is
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: the best for this part of the song. But also
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Bob knew when to bring the hammer down and say, Okay,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: we're losing time here, We're going to do it this way,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: move forward, and we would all do that without nobody
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: held a grudge ever.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And Bob, of course you worked with Kiss as well,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and Kiss so influenced by Alice Scooper, and we just
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: lost as Freeley and Ace lived in Kinnetic for a
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: long time, did you guys cross paths a lot? Did
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: He's well, yeah, you know. Neil and I went over
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: to Ace's house decades ago and he had just built
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: this brand new recording studio, but he didn't know how
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: to how it worked. He didn't even know how to
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: power it up. So we decided, okay, well there's a
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: drum kit there, and there's a bass ant, so let's
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: let's just jam. Neil, Ace and I. Oh, the studio
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: had probably it seems like it was twenty feet tall
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: glass bricks, and so we were jamming and really having
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: a blast. You know, when you jam, especially like with Neil,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: it's there's a point where all of a sudden, it's
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: like you stop thinking and the song starts kind of
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: creating itself, and you're sort of almost you're playing, but
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: it's almost like you're an observer of what's happening. Ye
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: coming to just laying some take over, you know, and
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: so things were really flying along and all of a
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: sudden that glass wall of bricks, glass bricks flashed bright
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: and it seemed to be going with what we were playing.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: And there was a lightning storm outside and this whole
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: wall would light up and it was It was quite
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: a memorable thing. It was like we felt like we
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: had gotten back from being abducted by aliens. When we finished.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that would have been a cool project. Did
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: that cross your mind, like, Hey, maybe we should record
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: something with Ace, This would be cool.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: Well, we wanted to record that, but he didn't know
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: how to turn on the power.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: So you played that show in Phoenix recently. That was
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: for Alice's fundraiser concert which he puts on every year,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the Christmas Putting Concert, and he raises money for three
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: local teen centers there and last spring you made a
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: surprise appearance with Alice here in Connecticut at the Moleagan
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: cent Arena.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: More recently, I sat in with Alice at the arena
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: in Bridgeport. That was interesting too, because I told Alice,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I said, instead of having me come out for schools
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: out for the encore, how about if I just come
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: out like on the fourth song of the set and
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: play I'm eighteen, and then I'm gone and Chuck Gerrick
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: is back and you don't even acknowledge that I was
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: ever there. You know, that's the kind of abstract ideas
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: I like, Well, he decided that we could do that,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: but then I still had to come back for schools out.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: But so then I did that and we had a blast,
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: and then I knew Alice was going to be playing
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: down in New Jersey a few days later, and I
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: had forgotten about that. That My wife and I, Cindy,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: was almost all the way to our friend's house that
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: we were going to visit, like three and a half
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: hours from where we live in Connecticut, and all of
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: a sudden, I passed this thing. It says PNC Bank Arena.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I go, wait a minute, Alice is there tonight. So
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I texted him and he says, yeah, come on down.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: That is awesome, And so that was you know, I hunt.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: I usually hang out in Alice's bands dressing rooms just
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: so we can make sure we got all of our
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: parts straight. And then Nita has her own dressing room,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: so she didn't know I was there until I walked
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: out on stage, and then she did like a classic
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: double take you know what.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: That's great. Are there plans for any shows with all
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: of you guys together playing some stuff from the new album?
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: No, not that I know of. But you know, there
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: are occasions when I'm the last to know, you know,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, people will say, Hey, Dan, I
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: heard you're going to be doing this, and I go, oh, well,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: I better call Alice.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: This news to me.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Alice keeps saying we're doing another album, but he seems
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: to be the only one that knows about it.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: But talking with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Dennis
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Dunaway of the Alice Cooper Group. And by the way,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: thank you to Chris Sutton off of Chris Sutton who
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: helped connect us. Chris is the author of Alice Cooper
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies from Sonic Bond Books. Get that
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: book if you haven't. Chris is a great guy, great guy.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: In July, you had announced a collection of exclusive autographed
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: items from your collection. Tell us about this and they
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: are still available for fans if they want, they can
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: go to your website.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, this gentleman Steve Harkins, who has been in the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: music business for many years. Not only that, but he
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: also worked for McMillan Distributors book distributors, and knew about
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: my book and everything. So the Music Business Association had
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: an event in Nashville. This was two thousand and seven teen,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I think, and so Steve asked me if I wanted
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: to come down because they had a whole this great
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: old hotel and it was all musicians that had published books,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: and then there was a big jam going on and
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: all kinds of great musicians involved. And so as it
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: turned out, it was on the same night that Alice
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: was or the following night from when Alice was playing
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: in Nashville. So then I got Steve to bring Neil
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Smith and Michael Bruce in the picture, and we ended
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: up sitting in with Alice at his big concert at
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: the Arena there, and then the following night was a
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: very intimate show where with the original group with Ryan
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Roxy on guitar, and we played at this book signing event,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: and that was a step toward getting the band back together,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: I believe, because we ended up doing touring with Alice
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: later that year. But Steve Harkins has the Rock and
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: Roll channel on Talk Shop Live, and it's it's kind
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: of like if you're a celebrity or a musician. You
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: can sell things there rather than being on Amazon or
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: whatever where you're competing with plumbers and everything else. So
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: there's the dentist donaway. All the offerings that I have, Like,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: you can get a signed copy of my book with
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: a special loss chapter included. You can get tour books
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: from the Hollywood Bowl. These schools out are the killer
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Tour book that has an actual record on the back. Ah,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: things like that patches, billion Dollar Babies, iron on Patches,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: the Originals.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, and all of these things are available on there,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: and then we keep adding things. We're about to add
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: some more goodies, but cool. Usually when we add the
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: rare stuff that goes immediately, you know, it's like uh
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: uh you know.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: It's great though, because Steve Harkins is such a great
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: guy to deal with because he does he's very fair
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: to musicians and he's a real deal, uh you know,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: rock and roll guy. So talk Shop Live, Dennis Stoneway
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: rock and Roll Channel. It's easy to find.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at it here. Yeah, these are things you
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: found in your attic going through ur attic.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Well uh yeah, yeah, most of them are in storage.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Let's put it that way. But in order for me
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: to go in that room, I need to tie a
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: rope around my waist first.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah uh and Jones yeah right, so uh.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: But but I found some new stuff that's very rare
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: and it's all authentic. It's real deal stuff. It's not
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: rep because if it is, I would tell people, of course,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: but then we try to price it at a reasonable price.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: There are really good prices here. I mean anything from
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five dollars to you know some maybe a
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: little more higher up, but still, I mean it's I'm
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: looking at all the stuff here. I mean you got
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: T shirts seventy three T shirt. Yeah, some great stuff
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: on there. So yeah, people, defin you could get You
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: could go to Dennis Dunaway dot com and you'll see
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: it there too.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: You can absolutely. I'm about actually, I'm writing a blog
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: about this show that we just did a couple of
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: weeks ago in Phoenix, Okay, and that will be added
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: to Dennis Dunaway dot which my daughter and Steve Mayor
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: helped me with the website. But I'm all, I'm trying
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: to add lots of things to keep it that interesting.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: But you can go there and find out talk shop
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: live you can find out Blue Coop stuff and all
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: of the things that I'm up to these days, which
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: mostly right now, it's writing songs and making demos of
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: songs that that I that I've started. Hundreds of songs
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: I've started and haven't made a demo. Some of them
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: are just in my head, you know. I want to
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: at least make decent demos of all of these songs.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: When do songs come to you? Is there a particular time,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: time of day, time of year, all of a sudden
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: that it just starts to come out of you.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: It's pretty much like all day long, that's all the time. Like, yeah,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: my wife will say you're writing a song, aren't you.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: We'll be in the supermarket, right, I say you're writing
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: a song, aren't you? And I go, oh, how did
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: you know? And she said, because your head's bobbing up
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: and down. Wow, yeah it looks weird.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the melodies just come to you melody?
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, most songs start with just the idea, you know,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: what do I want to say? But I mean, I'll
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: be walking the dog and all of a sudden something
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: will pop into my head, and then I'll come home
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: and I'll lay it down as fast as I can
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: while it's still fresh, and then I have a ton
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: of those, and then I'll go back and pick the
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: cream of the crop, and then I will finish them.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: But I rarely finish this song totally because I usually
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: leave him thinking of Alice in mind that, you know.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Usually if I write a verse, then I leave room
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: for Alice to add his h you know, two cents
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: to it and everybody else. So but I like to
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: get the at least the idea of the verse and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: the enthusiasm and the groove and everything, and then the chorus,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: and that's basically a song. Everything else people can add
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: their own to it, you know, so that it becomes
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: a collaborative thing.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: This show focuses on rock and roll books, so can't
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: go without asking you about the book from twenty fifteen,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Snake Schillotines Electric Chairs, which I picked up a copy
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: on a Kindle. I got a kindle copy of it. Congratulations.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: It's a great book. It took me ten years to
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: finally get around to it, but I'm glad I did.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: It covers a story from your early days with the
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: guys in high school to your rise and you played
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: what is considered the largest indoor concert ever according to
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the Guinness Book of World Records, one hundred and fifty
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: thousand time. Yeah, at that time, and that was in
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: sal Powow in nineteen seventy four. And you get into
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the breakup the years following the Hall of Fame induction,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, what a ride. But there's a show in
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two at the Hollywood Bowl. You devote a
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: chapter two talk about that night, and that's the night
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: you realize like, yeah, we've made it, right, I mean,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: this is it right?
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: You know it was. It was difficult all of a
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: sudden for me to say, oh, we finally made it,
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: because you know, we'd have we'd play to an arena
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: crowd and go out back and there'd be people yelling
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: insults at us, you know. So.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: But then well, because it was a controversial band, right,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I mean that's well.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: We liked it that way. You know, we didn't care
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: if you liked us or hated us, as long as
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: you were talking about us. But so the Hollywood Bowl, though,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, all right, there's no way you can play
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: here without having made it. Elton John was there that
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: night and he was back age raving about our outfits,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: which my wife Neil Smith's sister Cindy May designs and
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: makes and everything. But Elton John, all he could talk
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: about is how great we dressed. And another thing. So
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: we had a camel, Cassius the camel and uh, what's
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: what's his name? The DJ from down Oh it was Jack, right,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: thank you, thank you.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Book.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Jack is going to come out on the camel and
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: introduce the show. Right, Well, the camel pooped on stage
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: and so backstage after the show, Shep Gordon is there
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: and the Union guys are there telling him he's got
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: to pay for a guy to shovel that up, right,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: and Shep Gordon to give you an idea of his
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: New York City street savvy, you know, a proach.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: The legendary manager by the way.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Joe Greenberg, Joe Greenberg, who's a good friend
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: to this day. Uh So Shepp is telling them we
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: don't want it shoveled up. This is a theatrical show
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: and it's a cool night, and we wanted to steam
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: in the stage lights and that. Meanwhile, Elton John's over
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: here raving about the costumes.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: And what were their panties being dropped from Yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: We dropped paper panties and oh right, So the helicopter
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: flew over the Hollywood Bowl and he wasn't supposed to
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: do that, but we paid him and we even bailed
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: him out of jail.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: But so in then, so we're looking at the Hollywood
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: papers the next day to see what they wrote about us, right,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: And the main story was the surrounding neighborhoods of the
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Hollywood Bowl, very affluent homes all had the I guess
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: the blades from the helicopter or the wind blew the
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: panties into their neighborhood and they were all hanging in
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: their trees.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: People came out of their houses. There's panties everywhere.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Mortified by what they're seeing.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: And that was a bigger story than our show.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Oh man. But that's the thing though, the publicity that
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: you would get from doing things like that. Man, it's
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: just you can't you can't manufacture or something like that. Man,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: that stuff that does.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: It was manufactured. We calculated stuff like that all the
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: way back when Alison and I were in high school.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: We had our band, the ear wigs that were supposed
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: to be from Cesspool, England, and we would make up
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: stories about the ear wigs, and because we were both
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: in journalism and on the school newspaper, we would always
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: whistle in all of these stories about the ear wigs. So,
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: you know, like Rolling Stones early on, they finally made
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: national news because they took a leak on some building
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: in England. Right, So we looked at it like, okay,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: that's how you got to jump the shark. You can
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: get into a rock and roll rag, you know, any day,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: but to make it into the to the masses, you
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: had to have a story that was good. Everybody does
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: it these days, you know, but back you know. So
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: you know, even the time that Cindy made clear plastic
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: pants for the band, and so this was I think
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight in Hollywood, for it was Saint Patrick's Day,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: and so we were going to wear clear plastic pants
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: and then our managers were going to call the lapd
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: and say get down here and arrest this band. You know. Yeah,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: well we had two problems with that first ball. As
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: soon as we started playing, the pants steamed up and
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: you couldn't see anything. And the other problem was right
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: up the street, just a couple of miles where all
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: of the strip clubs on Sunset boulevards. So who cared
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: about the band?
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, well was that Frank Zappa was was part
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: of the story. It was the story in Canada with
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: the chickens.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: No, Frank wasn't there.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: It wasn't he the one that was telling me. I
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: think he told Alice though he's like, Alice, don't correct it, man,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: this is perfect. It's gonna make headlines because right, yeah,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: it was a misunderstanding.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: About well, okay, there's different there's different versions of that story.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: But but but Alice. But the truth is Alice really
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: did think that chicken would just fly. Yeah, he's not
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: a farm guy, you know, I you know, I knew,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: but uh, you know, the stories got pretty exaggerated, I
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: think because I have seen footage of from somebody that
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: was right near where the chicken landed in the audience,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: and you know, it wasn't ripped apart by a bunch
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: of paraplegics in the front row, and all kinds of
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: wild stories that came around, but it certainly put us
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: on the map, and we didn't really know it because
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: at that time we were putting so many crazy things
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: into the show that we figured some of them are
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: going to flop, but if anything, but at least people
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: are going to walk around talking about what they saw
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: and everybody's going to have a different interpretation. And we
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: also like to change it up. So we thought, okay,
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: we want somebody to go and tell their friends, oh,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: you got to see this band because they did this,
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: this and this, and when their friends get there, we
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: do that and that totally different. Right. So now after
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: the Toronto show, it also was exaggerated because we would
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: take the pillows from the holiday Inn and a fire extinguisher.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Alice would rip the pillow open and Michael would spray
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: the feathers to Kingdom come. I mean they'd hang in
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: the air for an hour, still all of them settled,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: and so Alice tosses a chicken and then there's feathers everywhere.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: So that helped the illusion that the sport that chicken
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: had perished. But then everywhere we went we didn't even
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: get it for a while. I think the world caught
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: onto that that it was a reputation before we did,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: because we go to a show I think it was
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: in Boston and these kids had rubber chickens and they're
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: going chicken, chicken and chicken. We're going, what are they
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: talking about? You know?
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: The book Down Rock podcast is part of the Boneless
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Podcasting network. If you're a fan of classic rock and
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: classic film like I am, go to Boneless dot lovable
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: dot app to find over twenty great shows there. That's
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: Boneless dot lovable dot app. Or just go to booked
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: on rock dot com. Click on the logo, it'll take
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: it right to the Boneless podcasting network. It is what
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: you want to be listen with, confidence, the showmanship, the
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: shock value. And then you combine that with these songs
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: that are just bonafide now classics like I'm eighteen. That's
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: a song and you write about how that becomes the
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: most requested song in the history of KLW, which is
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: in Windsor, Ontario, and that station helped to establish the
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: band in the Detroit Windsor market. Was released in I
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: think on this month in nineteen seventy and you say
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: they played it every fifth song. It was the heaviest
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: rotation outside of the Beatles. And it's a song that
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: really stood out to Bob Ezrin when he saw you
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: guys play live. He thought it was I'm edgy, right,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: but talk about how that song came together.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm Edgie isn't bad. It would have worked, yeah,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: But the reason it was I'm eighteen is because this
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: song came from a jam that Michael had, like, you know,
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: the chords, and when we would do a sound check
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: at a you know, tiny club or whatever, we would
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: just jam on that and then we would each of
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: us would come up to the microphone and do a
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: funny verse. We'd just make stuff up, but it was
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: just to warm up. And then at one point the
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: band was at Warner Brothers and we were talking to
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: one of the A and R guys and we saw
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: this chart on the wall, and we're saying, so, wait
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: a minute, who's the what age is the biggest record
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: buying age? And he said, hands down, eighteen years old
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: because most of them are still living at home, they
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: don't have to pay rent, and they've got money in
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: their pockets. So so we said, okay, well we can
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: relate to that because we all met when we were
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: in high school, and so the idea of making it
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: about an eighteen year old started coming together. You know.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: So now when we would do a sound check, we
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: would come up with lyrics that we thought would fit
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: that concept. Now, of course, Alice polished it and really
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: brought it home. And Rosalie Trombley worked at c KLW.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: They called her the girl with the Golden Ear. I
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: think I think there was even songs written about her. Yeah,
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Bob Seger I believe wrote it. But anyway, so Rosalie
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Trombley is the one that started playing it. Now. I
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: hadn't seen her for years, decades after the whole thing
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: happened because KLEW was right across the river from Detroit.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: But since they were Canada, they didn't have the restrictions
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: on the power of their transmitter, so they could blast
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: the entire Midwest of America and Canada like Wolfman Jack
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: did out of Mexico when he started. But so now
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: years later, I'm in a bar in a hotel, late
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: at night in Phoenix, Arizona. It was an event the
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: town of Phoenix was giving an award to Alice and
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: his wife for community service. But now it's late at
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: night and everything's closed, and I'm hungry, and I'm in
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: the bar trying to figure out what I can get
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: to eat. And this guy comes over and says are
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: you Dennis don Away and said yeah. I said, my
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: mom is Rosalie Trombley. I said what, and he said,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: she's over here. She wants to know if you want
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: to have a drink. Sure, you know, so Rosalie as
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: he's giant martinis, So I have one of those. And
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: I said, okay, I finally got to talk to you.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: And I said, so, how did this come about. What
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: made you think that I'm eighteen was a hit? She said,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: the lyrics, She said, before it even got to the chorus,
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I knew it was a hit. And then she said
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: she started playing it and about day three, all of
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: the other disc jockeys came into her booth while she
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: was on the air and said, wait, you know, we
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: don't think you should be playing this because this band
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: is the Chicken Killers and all of that. And she
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: said the timing could not have been more perfect. Every
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: phone was ringing off the hook with requests for I'm
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: eighteen and when they saw that, they said, oh, okay,
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: go ahead and play it. I told Rosalie that that
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: was us calling.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean it connected with teenagers, just like Schools
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Out from seventy two, another timeless classic, and it just
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: it connects with that that age group. But again, it's
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: a timeless classic and you can listen to it now
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and you just it's it's still just it holds up
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: so well. And you say in the book that this
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: is the first time you all felt like, yeah, this
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: is a single and the music you had worked out,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: but you wanted to perfect the lyrics and you hit
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: a snag on that final line of verse two.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: Well, Schools Out was written for the same reason because
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: we didn't really have a hit as big as eighteen
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: off of the Killer album. We had Under My Wheels,
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: which did pretty good. Be My Lover did pretty good,
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: but it didn't reach that level, and we thought, wait
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: a minute, we didn't target that same age group. So
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: that's why we wrote. Schools Out was one of those
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: songs that almost felt like a gift from the creative gods.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: It kind of just felt. We all went to high
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: school in the same town during the same year, so
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: it was a no brainer for us. But so this
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: is the song that we all felt, Okay, this is
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: a hit, and Bob Ezron got us all together in
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: a room and he had a legal pad and a pencil, said, okay,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: let's lock in these lyrics because this is a hit.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: And so the whole band went through line for line
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: and we got everything, but you're right, there was one
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: line that we just kept. The more we tried, the
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: dumber it got kind of a thing. And so Bob said, Okay,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: we're bogging down. Let's continue and finish the song and
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: come back to this. And when we came back to it,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: we were still bogged down. And finally I said, hey,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, we're the kids at the back of
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: the class. We can't even think of a word that rhymes.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: And you know, Neil's going, yeah, well, no, you know whatever,
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: and Bob then the light bulb goes on over everybody said, yeah,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: that's it.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: And Gwen's riff, as you say, late enough to march
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: through time with the best rock rifts ever created. And
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: he had such a unique style and so much so
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: that nobody has been able to replicate that unique scream.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Talk about Glenn as a guitarist.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: Well that's his personality. He was a true rebel, and
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: that riff is his fiery rebellion. I mean, we were thinking, okay,
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: we want schools out when that school bell rings the
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: final time, when now you're out of school. We felt okay,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: we wanted to be fiery, rebellious, mostly because of Glenn
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: and because he had that guitar riff, and we want
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: it to be. Neil and I decided we want it
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: to be militant, almost we're getting out of school. So
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Neil came up with like the bolero kind of a
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: beat for the choruses, and I supported that with a
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: very percussive sound. And then when we got to the
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: no more Pencils, No More Books, we wanted that section
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: to sound like little kids on the playground, So all
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, the bass goes up to being did
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: you know? So? Uh? It just everything just fell into
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: place on that song like that. And you know, I
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: used to say, if I know what a hit single is,
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: ninety percent of what's on the radio wouldn't be there,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: but that one I did. It just it just felt right,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: And it's in the Grammy Hall of Fame now.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah it is. It's it's a classic. It's
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: you know, it's one of those two you get around
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: to September each year and you'll you hear the song
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: and commercials and it's just it's just always going to
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: be there.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: The other thing about that is, you know, uh, it
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: doesn't it appeals to you no matter what age you are,
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: if you've been in school, you can relate to it.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: And therefore, you know, we will do these things like
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: audit graph conventions and all of that. And it's not
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: just the parents bringing their kids to meet us and
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: the kids looking like they'd rather be somewhere else. But
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: because of schools out there'll be the kids bringing their
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: parents to meet us.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's awesome.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Features and teachers like I told her. Talk to our
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: high school teacher today and I told her as far
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: as schools that, no more teachers thing disregard that. You know,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: we love you. This is Sloan.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but first
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you about an exclusive deal for
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: booked on rock listeners get fifteen percent off any purchase
• 57:40
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  Speaker 1: glory dot com make sure to use the promo code.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Booked on Rock. Also find a link in this episode
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: show notes, or just go to booked on rock dot
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: com and click on my deals. The success of the
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: School's Out album meant that you were selling out arenas
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: now and that was during the time that you and
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: the band came up with the idea for the Billion
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Dollar Babies album. Talk about the mansion that you recorded
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: that album. Then you had mics set up everywhere, including
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: the bathrooms.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: That's right. It had a big selarium that didn't had
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: very few plants in it. It was marble floors with
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: all glass, so it made a great natural echo chamber
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: that most recording studios would die for. We had, yeah,
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: microphones in the bathroom. You had to be careful if
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: you went in there to make sure the mics were
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: shut off out in the truck that was sitting in
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: the driveway with producers and stuff, which there were times
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: when the mics were not shut off.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: And but but that was here in Connecticut, right, Greenwich, Connecticut.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Is Connecticut, And that house had belonged to Warner Baxter
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: from forty second Street, the actor Yep, yeah, his ex
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: wife lived in that house. In fact, I have right
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: here on my wall a portrait of Warner Baxter that
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: was in that house when we moved in.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Oh that's cool.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Old Greenwich it was. I mean, the ballroom was
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: big enough to put the entire billion dollar Baby stage
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: erected in that ballroom and still have. The ceiling was
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: like painted like the Sistine Chapel, sort of a mural
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: way up there. It had a fireplace that you could
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: park a Volkswagen Beetle in easily. And at one end
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: of the room there was what looked like giant windows
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: with no glass in the panes, and then a wall
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: that was about four or five feet tall. And that's
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: so the orchestra could be sitting in there and you
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: could hear the music through the windows, but the people
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have to look at the band, the musicians or
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: the musicians couldn't see who was there. They couldn't tell
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: the tales, I guess, but yeah, it was. It was grand. Therefore,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: you know, our environment, you know, Pretties for you was
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: glitzy like Hollywood, you know, and Love It to Death
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: was gritty like Detroit, you know. And now we lived
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: in this very affluent house, and so the theme billion
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: Dollar Babies was a natural.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: And that song. Glenn brought that in as a ballad.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: He and guitarist Rock and Reggie Vincent wrote the music
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: and then you you said, you know what, this needs
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: some muscle, some dynamite underneath it. Yeah, story behind that one.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: Rock and Reggie is a great song writer. His song
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: sound a lot like Roy Orbison, you know, beautiful ballads.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: And so we had decided a rehearsal, okay, we we
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: want to call the album Billion Dollar Babies. And then
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: we decided, well, let's also have a title song. You know,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: Schools Out album had Schools Out, but usually we didn't
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: have a title song, but we decided we want to
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: have a title song. So then the next morning, Glenn
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: and Rock and Reggie came down and we kept playing
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: this beautiful ballad over and over, and finally I said,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: you know, if this is going to be the title song,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: we got to light some dynamite under it, you know.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: And I jumped up off my stool and everybody's looking
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: at me like what do you got, you know, and
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I didn't have anything, so but I didn't know that
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: I wanted it to be aggressive, so I went da
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: da da, d and so then I started developing. Okay, Michael,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: what's the next chord? So then I made the bass
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: line go down there and then had the it followed
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: through the chords. And then at that point Bob Ezron said, okay, Dennis,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: you show that bass part to the guitar players, and
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Alison and I are going to go and Neil are
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: gonna go play pool for a while and then we'll
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: come back. And when they came back, then Neil came
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: up with the drum part. You know, Alice always says,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: we wrote it around Neil's drum part, but Neil's amazing
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: signature drum part came after the bass part. But another song,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: generation Landslide, that was written around Neil's trump part.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: That's a great song.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: Thanks. We wrote that in the Canary Islands.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Really, what is that feeling like? Can you even describe
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: when a song comes together like that? When you all
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: come together create something like that.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what's that's what keeps you coming back. That's
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: like hitting the hole in one you know, and okay,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: in the pond or the woods sometimes, but that when
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: when music works, uh, it's it's uh, it's very satisfying
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: as a musician.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, it's just a natural high, you know it.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: It's a natural thing and it and also so now
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: this is in the creation of a song, a band
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: has to learn how to write a song, how to
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: how to work together collaboratively. That's what we did, which
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: that that worked well for us rather than somebody coming
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: in with the song and we all learn the parts.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: That happens sometimes. But music is ever interesting because it
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: comes at all different ways. You know. You can you
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: can look at a newspaper, or you can be walking
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: down the street and see something happen and all of
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: a sudden click, there it goes and you're off and running.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: But you also have to learn your craft because you
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: can't rely on those inspired moments. You know, there are
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: songwriters that will only write when they're inspired, so they'll
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: wait and have dry spells. And then there are songwriters
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: that say, write a song every day and sometimes when
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: you're not inspired, that will inspire it. But you have
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: to learn your craft to be able to write a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: good song without the inspiration being the guiding light. But
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: then the ones that are the inspiration is what guides you.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: That's the hole in one that keeps you coming back.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Do you start thinking like Ezrin when all the things
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: that he did early on, you start thinking about, like,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I have too much here, let's cut this down. You
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: start to think about that you learn from him.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely, Bob Ezron was the teacher, but as opposed
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: to some classes you know where you're not interested. Bob
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: Ezren is the teacher that knows what you want to learn.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: And we were like sponges. I mean, we we soaked
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: it all in and we apply it to this day. Absolutely.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: We worked with some of the greatest people. Jack Douglas,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Jack Richardson, oversaw Love It to Death and Killer, all
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: of these great people. You know, that's the other thing.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: Working with people that you know what their specialty is
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: allows you to focus more on what your specialty is.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: And that's why I say, sometimes I write a song,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: but I don't totally finish it because I know somebody
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: else is going to be able to do that to
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: my liking. And you know, it's also the the sum
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: is greater than the all of the parts. You know,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: I have an idea, and I have an idea for
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: a song, and then Neil might say, wait a minute, Den,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: why don't you why don't you change the beat to
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: be like this or whatever you know, and all of
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: a sudden bingo, Yeah, that's it.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Find the bookdown rock website at booked on rock dot com.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: and x. Also check out the Booked on rockblog. Find
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest hot
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: rock book releases, and before you go, check out the
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: booked on Rock online store. Pick up some Booked on
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Rock merch. It's all at booked on rock dot com.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: The final chapter of the book covers the twenty eleven
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Since then, there
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: have been the occasional reunions, and now we have this
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: amazing new album that came out July with the original band.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask if you thought about adding
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: chapters for an updated edition, but I know that your wife,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: Cindy may really be the answer to that question, because
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: she's working on something that it might be it might
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: be considered like a sequel to your book.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: Cindy kept daily diaries. Not only that, but she has
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: all of the letters that her and Neil wrote home
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: to their mother, telling her what was going on every
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: step of the way.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: And for those who may not know, she's been with
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: the band from Severty Much.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty seven, since before we did Pretties for You. Yep, yeah, yeah,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: Cindy was here when we were writing the songs for
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: Pretties for You. She got a job and helped feed
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: us and designed our our look and was basically our therapist.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Whatever whatever the band needed, it was a team and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: we all worked together. We had the roadies, we had
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: the management, we had. Everything was all for this vision
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: that we shared and we were driven to achieve it
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: and there was there was no roadblock that we We
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: never would throw in the towel ever, you know, even
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: when the band took a roll three van full of
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: band members, full of all of our equipment, even a
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: washing machine in the back, and we rolled three times
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: across the San Bernardino Freeway coming into La and the
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: nine o'clock in the morning rush hour, and our equipment
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: was destroyed and we didn't have money to buy more equipment.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: So but did we throw in the towel. No, we
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: figured it out. And you know, that's like Frank Sappa
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: used to say, if you stay together long enough, you'll
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: make it.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: And Cindy kept the diary, daily diary of the events.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: So okay, so this what they.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: Could do some of it for blackmail materializity.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Right, So what's what's the prediction of when's it coming out?
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: I will know I'm I am letting her do her
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: own thing, and if she wants any two cents for me,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: then then she'll ask and I'll give it to her.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: But uh, but I will say, uh, from what little
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: I have read of it, there's a lot of surprises.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: There's there's things that we had totally forgotten about her.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: Her included where she looks at her diary and all said, hey,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, oh wow, I forgot all about that.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: And not only that, but it's from a completely different
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: perspective because she wasn't in the rehearsal room necessarily, but
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: she could see this overall picture of what was developing
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: and when she would do the costumes, you know, we
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: would decide, okay, we're thinking we should maybe do this
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: kind of a concept. Then she would sit down with
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: each band member and then talk about, well, what what
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: would you like this to be? And then she would
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: have suggestions, and then it would always be a deadline
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: of like tomorrow morning. You know, we need five outfits
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: by tomorrow morning.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: No pressure.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also we don't have any money for material
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: or anything. And she would miraculously create all of this stuff.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: And so I'm looking forward to it coming out because
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: because it is a whole different, whole, different view of
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: everything that happened.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: Well, that's look forward to. And people can find out
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: the latest news at Dennis Stunaway dot com, the official website.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: You're also on Facebook and Instagram. Yeah, people can find
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: you there too. Do you keep people up to data
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: on what's happening as well?
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: But mostly Facebook. I have two pages on Facebook, but
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: it's me, so if somebody messages sends me a message there,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: I don't have somebody else operating it and pretending they're me.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: Dennis, thank you so much for doing this. I'm so
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: glad we were able to make this happen. And again
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: thanks to Chris Sutton for setting this up. And it
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: was great talking to you man, so many great stories
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: and I you know, you're welcome to come back on
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Sidney when she gets that book out. You got a
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: place to plug it right.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: Here, definitely. You know you might want to talk to
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: Mike A Boy Allen too. He was our very first
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: roadie and he has a book out. That's great.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: I'd love to have you.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, living and touring with Alice Cooper and other stories
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: and it's it's very very entertaining and humorous. But you'd
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: love to have a lot the very early days.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh hey, we can. We can work on that
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: off the air, we can.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: But yeah, as soon as Sidney's book is ready, we'll
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: be talking to you. Eric.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Awesome, Thanks Dennis, all right, bye, Brighte.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: Well, no, that was an adventure.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: I was quite assure you put onto the Well, let
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: me just close this conversation by saying you are one
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: unique individual.