Alice Cooper will release Detroit Stories, a new album due on Feb. 26.
As the title indicates, the LP was inspired by Cooper's hometown of Detroit.
"Detroit was Heavy Rock central then,” Cooper recalled of his band's early days in the Motor City. “You’d play the Eastown, and it would be Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, the Stooges and the Who for $4! The next weekend at the Grande it was MC5, Brownsville Station and Fleetwood Mac, or Savoy Brown or the Small Faces. You couldn’t be a soft-rock band or you’d get your ass kicked."
In the late '60s, Alice Cooper attempted to establish a following in Phoenix and then in California, only to have their sound and style rejected by west coast music fans. It wasn't until the band retreated to Detroit in 1970 that they began developing its passionate fan base.
“Detroit was the birthplace of angry hard rock," Cooper noted. "After not fitting in anywhere in the U.S. (musically or image-wise) Detroit was the only place that recognized the Alice Cooper guitar-driven, hard-rock sound and our crazy stage show. Detroit was a haven for the outcasts. And when they found out I was born in East Detroit ... we were home.”
Detroit Stories will be released on CD, CD and DVD Digipak, CD box set (including CD, Blu-ray, T-shirt, face mask, torch light and three stickers) and vinyl. The album is available for pre-order now. You can see the full track listing below.
Cooper previously told Consequence of Sound that his new album would “have a lot of different flavors,” admitting that he liked “breaking out of the mode where an Alice Cooper album sounds like an Alice Cooper album.” Detroit Stories is preceded by Breadcrumbs, an EP released in September 2019. Much like the new LP, Breadcrumbs was “inspired by the [Detroit’s] punk scene in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.” Guests on the EP included Johnny “Bee” Badanjek from the Detroit Wheels, former Grand Funk Railroad guitarist Mark Farner and MC5’s Wayne Kramer.
“Breadcrumbs was sort of like leading you into the next album,” Cooper explained, noting that the EP served as an appetizer to the new full-length.
Detroit Stories features all the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper band, a fact the singer took great pride in. “The O.G.s, we call them - the original guys,” Cooper said. “There’s two or three songs that we wrote with the original guys, and they’re pure Detroit. … We're probably more Detroit than we are L.A. or Phoenix or any place else.”
Detroit Stories continues what has been a busy year for Cooper. In May, he released “Don’t Give Up,” an original track designed to deliver hope during the continuing coronavirus pandemic. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer has been active in the fight to save America’s independent music venues, which have suffered greatly while touring has been on hold. Cooper also found time to release his own party game, Horrorbox, which came out around Halloween.
