Alice Cooper Talks About “Welcome To My Nightmare 2”

Normally I think follow up albums are pretty lame.  Much like with movies they are never as good as the previous one.    When Queensryche released “Operation: Mindcrime 2,” I gave it a chance and boy I wish I could have that hour of my life back.  The only redeeming quality of that album was the duo with Ronnie James Dio.  While this is the case, my interest in “Welcome To My Nightmare 2” has definitely been piqued.  I have been following Alice’s career since 1985 and over the past 20 years has managed to put out an impressively strong body of work.  I am really interested to see just where this album goes as it sounds like his intentions are good and that his vision is a grand one.

Alice had this to say about the album to Billboard.com:

“I had an idea to do a part two to (2008’s) ‘Along Came a Spider,’ ” Cooper says. “I came to Bob with it, and he listened and goes, ‘Eh. I would be more excited if ‘Along Came a Spider’ was a No. 1 record.’ He wasn’t really into it. Then we started talking about ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’s’ 35th anniversary or something like that, and he said, ‘What if Alice had another nightmare?’ All I was trying to do was get Bob to say, ‘Yeah, I want to produce the album,’ so we found a place where both of us really felt comfortable, and that was doing ‘Nightmare 2.’ “

The album features some other familiar faces from Cooper’s past. The original “Nightmare” tandem of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner played on the album, while Vince Gill plays on a track called “Runaway Train.” And surviving Cooper band members Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith reunited on the track “When Hell Comes Home.” “I was going to go in and say, ‘What I want this thing to have is this live, 70s sound — but I didn’t have to say that. That’s just the way they play,” Cooper recalls. “They just had that sound you couldn’t go in and try to direct them to get. That’s the normal way they play. I said to Bob, ‘I don’t want it to sound any different than that.”

“Nightmare 2,” meanwhile, will have plenty of similarities to its predecessor. “There are certain songs where we let some of the themes from (the original) ‘Nightmare’ slip in,” Cooper says. “All of a sudden you’ll hear the little piano part from ‘Steven’ or from ‘The Awakening.’ I wanted (the albums) to be married together. I think we even make reference to a couple of characters from the original (album).”

Well color me excited.  I really have high hopes for this album and I can only hope that Alice will remember the Southeast when it comes time to route his tour.  I haven’t seen Alice Cooper since 1998 or so and I feel that I’m long over due an Alice Cooper style facemelt. 

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