Alice Cooper discussed The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr and late The Who drummer Keith Moon showing up drunk to record with him in a new KLOS interview. Ringo Starr Made A Cryptic David Bowie Tweet.
He also discussed his classic band lineup breaking up, “When our band broke up, we didn’t divorce as much as we separated. There was no bad blood, there were no lawyers, there was no…
“It was just a matter of us all going in our different directions. We had just done five albums in a row without rest, we did five albums and toured – when we weren’t recording, we were touring.
“And it just got to a point where we were becoming dysfunctional, and I think we all recognized that.
“We just all spread apart, but we never ever were enemies. So, Dennis and I stayed in touch with each other over all those years, same with Neal, same with Mike, and Glen passed away…
“When Glen passed away… He was our Keith Richards, so it was never going to sound like Alice Cooper again without Glen. He was a very unique ingredient to Alice Cooper.
“And so on the last four albums that I’ve done, the original band has been on all four of those albums. They’ve done two or three songs on those albums, and they’re playing as well as they’ve ever played.
“Dennis, Neil, and Mike are playing just as valid as they’ve ever played. I’m doing more projects with them all the time. If people think that the original Alice Cooper band broke up – we didn’t really break up, we just separated for a while.
“[Producer] Bob Ezrin works you hard in the studio, but he gets the best out of you, and he gets you to do things that you didn’t think you could do.
“When we did the last European tour in England, the original band came out with us, and we would do our show, the regular show, and of course, my band with Nita [Strauss, guitar] and [drummer] Glen Sobel and [guitarist] Tommy Henriksen – that’s an all-star.
“That band is so tight it’s stupid – they’re so tight. And we got done with the show, curtains come down, and then the curtains come back up, and it’s the original band, and we did five songs.
“So the review, it said, ‘Oh man, the show was so good, it was sparkling, it was clean. Alice was at the top of his game, and then it got dangerous,’ because the original band played differently.
“They played a little heavier, they played a lot darker, and I sing even differently when I sing with the original band, so all of a sudden a song like ‘I’m Eighteen,’ it sounded like a threat.
“That’s the great thing about it, it was the fact that the original band has still got that, they still got that dangerous thing about them, and that’s why I love working with the guys.”
The interviewer said, “One of the great stories I’ve always loved is how the [1973] song ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ was recorded – tell me about that session.”
Cooper responded, “Well, we had already done [1972’s] ‘School’s Out,’ which was, it was a No. 1 album in England, and so we decided to record ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ at Morgan Studios in London.
“And we got there, and so we’re pretty much at the end of a session, and all of a sudden, here comes Harry Nilsson, Marc Bolan, Ringo [Starr], Keith Moon, Ric Grech, and they all decide they’re gonna play on a song.
“What they didn’t realize was that we were just as drunk at that point of the night. Ezrin was the only one that was sober because it was the end of the night. We’d already finished recording.
“So Keith Moon picks up a guitar, Harry Nilsson gets on the drums, everybody’s playing the instrument they don’t play, the only guy playing a real instrument I think was Marc Bolan. To this day, we can’t remember who played on what on that album.
“There was a version of ‘Put the Lime in the Coconut,’ that if it ever gets released, we’ll all be in jail.
“There was another version of ‘Jailhouse Rock’ I think we did, and finally, Bob Ezrin had to put an end to the session because it was just so incredibly silly.
“We started doing the credits on the album, we couldn’t remember where Marc Bolan played, what song, and we couldn’t remember where Harry played piano, or where Keith Moon played drums or Ringo, any of that stuff.
“I mean, that was definitely one of the… When you hear stories about the ’70s, this was one of the stories. This was equal to the last weekend that night at the Morgan Studios.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
