Neal Smith Of Alice Cooper

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

Neal Smith Of Alice Cooper
Interview
May 20, 2005

When it comes to rock drummers of the classic rock era, or any other era for that matter, Neal Smith is a true legend. His work on the first seven albums (eight if you count the 'Greatest Hits' album) released by the original Alice Cooper Group, which besides Smith was comprised of Alice Cooper on vocals, Michael Bruce and the late Glen Buxton on guitars and Dennis Dunaway on bass, ranks up there with the finest rock drumming ever recorded. Combining fabled theatrics with timeless songwriting and musicianship, the original Cooper band put out a string of incredible albums that have rarely been equalled before or since in the entire history of rock. It was Smith's exemplary playing on the classic songs that helped propel the band to international stardom back in the early 70's. Tracks such as "Halo Of Flies," "Killer," "Billion Dollar Babies," "School's Out," "I'm Eighteen," and "No More Mr. Nice Guy," to name just several, solidify his reputation as one of the top musicians ever behind the kit.

Thirty years after the breakup of the original band, Smith is still going strong, recording three albums with ex Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway and former B.O.C. bassist Joe Bouchard on guitar and vocals as Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith, (BDS) a power trio that retains the feel of classic heavy rock while moving boldly into the new millenium, the Cinematik project with bassist Peter Catucci, and solo efforts as well. To set the mood for this, put on 'Love It To Death,' 'Killer,' 'Billion Dollar Babies,' 'School's Out' or any of the other classic albums from the original band (Go ahead, we'll wait for you, honest) and join us as we take a trip through the history of Alice Cooper and beyond with drummer extraordinaire Neal Smith....

Special thanks to Billy James at Glass Onyon PR for coordinating, and a BILLION thanks to Neal Smith for doing this interview for Rock N Roll Universe!

Rock N Roll Universe : What are you currently up to music wise?

Neal Smith : Right now, I have three projects that I'm working on, a new Neal Smith solo project, then Cinematik, but the main project I'm working on is Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith, aka BDS, a band with Joe Bouchard, who was the original bass player in Blue Oyster Cult. However when he joined BOC, Albert Bouchard, his brother, was the drummer, and when Joe started playing with BOC he was actually a lead guitar player. Albert said, "Why don't you join the band, we have a recording deal, and we need a bass player for a couple of albums." Well, he was there for 13 albums in 13 years. They had opened for some of our Alice Cooper shows back in the 'Killer' days down in the South. They lived in the same part of Connecticut that we lived in, so we got to be friends. Joe, Dennis and I have been playing together pretty much since the early 80's, almost 25 years now when you think about it. So, officially we started calling ourselves Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith about 5 years ago. Dennis Dunaway of course being the great bass player from the original Alice Cooper band, and myself on drums. BDS is a classic rock power trio.

RNRU : You guys were also involved in Deadringer as well..

NS : Deadringer was actually the first album that Dennis, Joe and I put together, and we brought in two friends of ours, Charlie Huhn, who used to play with Ted Nugent back in the 'Intensity In Ten City' days. I had seen him in the early 80's when they played at the New Haven Coliseum. Of course we knew Ted from all the way back when we lived in Michigan together. We used to party a lot in those days with Ted Nugent and The Amboy Dukes, The Stooges, The MC5, Brownsville Station, bands that were around there. So, we knew Ted from way back then. We hadn't seen him in a while, Charlie was playing rhythm guitar and singing backup. Now Charlie blows Ted away when he sings. He's a phenomenal singer. I think he's out now with Foghat. He was in a band in Germany, Victory in the 80's. He did three albums with them, and he and I were always in touch. I said if I ever did put a project together I'd love for him to sing on it, and he said that he would. So, he came back to the States, he was in Michigan, and we put Deadringer together. He did a phenomenal job on it. The only place you can really find that CD anymore is on my web site nealsmith.com .Then a friend of mine, Jay Johnson from Hartford, Connecticut did all the guitar work. It was like a hair/glam band type of thing like Alice's "Poison," and all that stuff, you know, Whitesnake, White- this, White- that. It was a great album, we worked with Grudge Records. When Sony bought Columbia, some of the executives who were let go and weren't too happy formed their own company. Unfortunately, they didn't have very much money to do any promotion so we didn't go on the road with it. But it's a great record.

RNRU : It's a very underrated album in my opinion..

NS : Well, it didn't really get a chance to be rated (Laughs). But it was a good record. That band was pretty much the nucleus of Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith.
Also, on the BDS CD 'Back From Hell', there were four songs that Ian Hunter came in and co-wrote with us. He didn't do any guitar playing or singing, but he helped with arrangements and the writing. He comes over every once and awhile for BDS rehearsals, he lives in Connecticut too. He'll pop by, he comes over to hang out and have a couple of beers with us. But when you're working on material, a true songwriter somewhere along the line will usually grab a guitar and have some ideas once the creative juices get flowing. Ian's a great guy, even though he's English and drinks all of my beer. (Laughs)

RNRU : What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to become a musician?

NS : Well, it was back in Akron Ohio when I was a kid. I started actually playing before any guys in the band Alice Cooper, except maybe Glen. In grade school, I always wanted to play drums, but the first instrument I ever played, in the fourth or fifth grade, was the trombone. Because my mother was a big Glenn Miller fan, the music of the 40's, and she has all the Big Band albums, that's the music I grew up with. The trombone was the only instrument around the house, and my Mom said, "If you want to play an instrument then play this one." I said, "I want to learn how to play drums." So, I played the trombone and I was terrible. When I was a kid I had polio in my throat. That was the type of polio that a lot of kids were dying from in the early 50's when they had the big outbreak throughout the country. It affected my throat a little bit, but luckily it was not as severe with me as it was with some other children. So, I think just the fact that I didn't like the instrument, and it wasn't the kind of instrument that I could really master very well, made it very frustrating for me. I would get the wooden spoons and play the pots and pans in the kitchen like young kids did in those days, and I guess maybe still do, that's how I started playing the drums (Laughs). After I put the trombone down I was about 10 or 11 years old, and I started playing snare drum. My cousin had a Ludwig marching snare drum. I started playing that, just taking lessons in school, then a year later for Christmas I got a full set of drums. I would continue taking band lessons in school, I was in the orchestra at Simon Perkins Junior High in Akron and in the marching band at Buchtel High School. Then I advanced to private lessons. I had a teacher at the Conservatory Of Music at Akron University, where I was really exposed to the tympanis and the timbales, orchestra toms and all the different types of percussion instruments. My exposure to all percussion was my influence when my drum set kept getting bigger and bigger. Every part of my set was just another expression in percussion. It's amazing, recently I was just watching the Elvis Presley special on television and even in 1974, the drumset that Elvis's drummer played was an exact replica of my drumset. It was amazing everybody copied my big drumset. When I asked Slingerland to mount three tom toms on one bass drum they thought I was crazy. But because my arms are so long I could reach all of them. So Slingerland drums came up with an idea to put three tom toms on one bass drum, then after that there were just so many of those monster drum kits through the '70's. At any rate my big drum set was the first time it was ever done.

RNRU : Keith Moon was one of your favorite drummers. Did you get that idea from him?

NS : Keith was a great drummer, but his first double bass set of drums was only seven drums, a small set of drums. After my humongous set came out, then drummers really started expanding on their sets. Keith never did that till much later on. I saw him play his "Pictures Of Lily" drum set on the Who's 'Magic Bus' tour. Again that kit consisted of only nine drums and that was considered a large set at that time. Keith's "Pictures Of Lily" set had two bass drums, three mounted tom toms, three floors and a snare drum. He was all over them like a madman, then he expanded the size of his drum sets years later. I had the layers of orchestra toms all around, the bongos, the timbales and even more. My big set was 22 drums, then even those sets started expanding. Then you saw all the drummers starting to expand their sets, but nobody was doing that, nobody was before me, not even Keith Moon. His influence on me was the double bass drum, the monster drum kits were my idea.

RNRU : You hung out with Keith a lot, didn't you?

NS : There were people we hung out with more, but there is one great story at the East Town Ballroom. One night we opened for The Who, this was after the 'Love It To Death' album was released. It's an old theater, so they still had the big screen that they could pull down, and the opening band would play in front of the screen, and the headlining bands equipment would be in back behind the screen. When you stand behind the screen it was pretty cool, because you could see through the screen. When I got off stage after our show, my drum roadie Goose comes backstage to tell me a story. The last song we did in those days was "Black Ju Ju," that was the big finale song, with the feathers and CO2 and everything. Anyway, Goose asked me, "Did you hear what was going on behind you?" I said, "No". He said, "Keith was on the drums right behind you, and he was mirroring your every move on "Black Ju Ju." Keith was playing the song right along with me, hidden from the audience behind the large movie screen. Obviously, when I'm engrossed, and I'm in the middle of playing a song live, there could probably be an explosion and I wouldn't even know what's going on. But, I thought that was pretty awesome. Keith was back there the whole song, from the beginning to the end, playing right along with me. I would have loved to have a video of Keith playing along with me on "Black Ju Ju," from behind, with all the smoke, feathers and the CO2.

Then, it was actually at The Rainbow Theater, about a year or so later, when we played in London, they did the Tommy show. They headlined on a Friday night, and we headlined on a Saturday night. This was after 'School's Out.' We pretty much headlined every place after that. We went Friday night to see them, I was interested in buying a Rolls Royce. I took it out for a test ride, I didn't drive it, I had a chauffeur in London. My chauffeur, chauffeured us to the show that night, so it was kind of a special night. I ended up buying the car, and that was one of the reasons I loved it because I went to see The Who. We went backstage afterwards, and I'd never really been formally introduced to the guys in the band at that point. We'd played with them a couple of times, and went to some of their shows, but we'd never formally met them. We went upstairs to their dressing room, Townshend and the other guys were cooling down. It was a phenomenal show. It was one of the top 5 concerts I've ever seen in my entire life, and I've seen some great shows. The Who, on their own home turf, in London, was like no other place. I saw them in Detroit and Los Angeles, but nothing was like seeing them on their own hometown. It was kind of like when we used to play in Detroit, that was our home turf. It would take hours to describe how incredible it was. I went over to Pete, shook his hand. He was sitting down on a couch, and I said, "Hey Pete, I'm Neal Smith," and he said, " I know who the f*ck you are," and then he bites me right on the knee (Laughs). But where I really got to know Keith better was a couple of weeks later, where we were actually finishing the 'Billion Dollar Babies' album in the studio in London. Then Keith would come down to the sessions. At that time I had a set of silver chrome Slingerlands, which was my stage set, and a set of silver sparkle Slingerlands, and those were my recording drums set. I actually took both sets with me to London. I actually got rid of that silver sparkle set, but I found it and got it all back again and restored it. I totally forgot that Keith Moon played that set. I sold pieces of it off, then I said, "Oh my God, Keith played that set, and also I recorded 'Love It To Death', 'Killer' and 'School's Out' with it. I'd better get that set back,"

RNRU : Did you ever have any other interaction with Pete?

NS : No, not really. That was probably the only time. He didn't come down to the studio in London, so that was the only time that I saw him. The only other time I talked to him was when we (Alice Cooper) took the year off to do our solo projects. Michael did 'In My Own Way,' Alice did 'Welcome To My Nightmare,' and I did an album called 'Platinum Gods' that Dennis helped me with. When I was looking for a producer, I called Pete in London to see if he was interested. He said he'd love to produce it, but he was actually doing a project for Joe Walsh, and couldn't do it when it was ready to record. So, that was really the last time I ever talked to him.

RNRU : He seemed pretty upset over the whole Toronto "Chicken Incident."

NS : Townshend did? I never heard that.

RNRU : It's actually mentioned in the Who song "Put The Money Down." There's a line in the song that says, "There's bands killing chickens." And even as late as 1982, in a Rolling Stone cover story interview with Townshend, there's a quote from him about Alice: "I remember being horrified seeing Alice Cooper beheading live chickens on stage. And it didn't really redeem him that I smashed guitars, ya know? Somewhere there was a line. I don't know whether it was because it was live, or because it was real blood, but the fact that he later on went to make some great records didn't redeem him either. He's a sick, tragic, pathetic, and will always be that way. I'll say hello to him on the street, but I'll never tip my hat to him." So, that whole incident must've really affected him.

NS : Well, first of all, the incident never happened or did it? The fact that he believes the press that much is a great testimonial to how gullible people are that believe the press. There was a chicken there, and it was thrown in the audience, and it was said in every newspaper all around the country and all around the world that, "Alice Cooper Bites The Head Off A Chicken And Drinks The Blood." It's a great story. I'll never really deny it or confirm it, but at this point everybody knows that the press just ran away with the story. You can't get better press than that. They used to really try to hammer the band, destroy the band. But this isn't like other bands, it's like throwing gasoline on a fire, it's just going to burn brighter. And it was great. It didn't get any better than that. And it didn't cost us a penny. I don't know how stoned Townshend was when he saw Alice BEHEAD a chicken. Maybe he was at one of Colonel Sanders' packing plants or something. The chickens were actually safer on stage than when they went into the audience. You've got the Pennybacker movie footage of the Toronto "Rock n' Roll Revival, you can see that.

RNRU : Do you find it ironic that the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has enshrined "I'm Eighteen" as one of the Top 50 most important songs in rock and roll history yet you guys haven't been inducted?

NS : Some people talk about the Hall Of Fame. The only thing good about that we're not in the Hall Of Fame is that we still piss people off. And as far as I'm concerned, that's okay. Those are so political, I don't care what anybody says. When I see the bands that have gone in there, it just speaks for itself. I'll put our greatest hits album and our track record against some of these bands anyday. I go, "How the hell did they get in there?" I don't care one way or another. The only thing positive about it would be it probably would boost some of our record sales, and maybe we would get together to do a quick reunion for the Hall Of Fame. But I wouldn't bet on it. I'm not against the Hall Of Fame, I think it's a great organization. It's 30 miles from where I was born, so I think it's great. Like I said, I don't care one way or another. The only thing that would be good about it, if we got together and played that'd be great, and for the fans that have stuck by us for so many years, that's great for them, too, that one of their favorite bands would make it there. I'm cool with it either way.

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

RNRU : Both you and Glen were born in Akron, did you two ever meet before being in Alice Cooper?

NS : We knew each other from college, that is where we met and became friends that was about a year and a half before I became a permanent member of the Nazz, but that's a long story. Glen's family moved to Arizona in 1961, and my family moved in '63. He probably started playing guitar in the late 50's, early 60's, around the same time I started playing the drums. I was in several local bands in Phoenix before Glen and I ever met. I was never a member of The Earwigs, which became The Spiders, which became The Nazz. The Spiders and The Nazz were very popular bands in Phoenix in the mid '60's.

RNRU : You guys hit # 1 in Phoenix with The Nazz right?

NS : Yeah, but I wasn't in the band at the time. I became a member at the tail end of The Nazz, in the fall of 1967. The band I was in called The Holy Grail went to San Francisco,. The Nazz then moved to Los Angeles. My band broke up, and I ended up in Los Angeles living with the guys because they were my buddies. I was trying to find a band in L.A. to join up with. Glen, Dennis, Vince and myself all went to Glendale Community College in Phoenix. We took alot of art classes together. The year before, when that school was being built, at an annex, John Speer, who was their drummer, was a pretty good friend of mine, too. Actually I knew John before I knew the rest of the band, as he was in a couple of classes with me. Then, when the college was finished, the year '66 - '67, it was pure coincidence that we were all going to the same college together.

We hung out, and in those days we used to call guys with long hair "Hair Guys" in Arizona. There were very few Hair Guys in school. We were all musicians, in the same art classes. Then Glen and I, once we sat down and talked, found out we were both from Akron, and we just became inseparable from then on as friends. On occasion, The Nazz, way before the name was changed to Alice Cooper, they'd go play different places around the state. Sometimes they'd go down to Tucson, and Glen and I would drive down together and hang out, just as friends. I had my band, Glen had his, we'd travel around together and hang, and that's where I got to know the guys Mike, Dennis and Vince really well. Then, after I moved in with them in the fall of '67, for some reason their drummer John left the band, Till this day I'm still not sure what really happened there. I just happened to be living there in their house with the Nazz and they asked me if I wanted to play. I was happy to do that, and about six months later March 16th, 1968, we changed the name to Alice Cooper.

RNRU : Legend has it that Alice actually chose his name from a session with a Ouija board. How much, if any, of this is true?

NS : There were three people there, and I was one of them. Alice for some reason sometimes denies it, but it was a Ouija board. We sat down, and Dick Phillips, who was kind of like our Road Manager was there as well. Dick, Alice and I were, it was Vince at the time, were playing with a Ouija board one night in Phoenix, this was in early 1968, January or February. Actually, I sat down at the Ouija board first, and we'd ask the board, "What was my name in a past life?".."What did I do?".."How did I die?" I did it, and it went through a whole story, which I still remember, I just can't remember the name it spelled out for me. Then, it went through the same thing with Vince, and it spelled out "Alice Cooper." We didn't think too much about it, but a couple of months later, when we were in Los Angeles, we heard about Todd Rundgren's band The Nazz. We needed a new name, we were banging around some different names, and that one just came to the surface. We all liked it, and we decided to change the name to Alice Cooper. I loved the name, I was totally lobbying for the name. Anything else was like a past name, a present name, but nothing we had thought of was like a future name. It just sounded like a group from the future that would be big to me. Something about it just had a great ring to it. At that time it was just the name of the band, pure and simple. Nobody was going to be called Alice, it was just the name of the band.

RNRU : Your first two albums, 'Pretties For You' and 'Easy Action,' were both released on Frank Zappa's Straight Records label. How did you guys get hooked up with Frank, and did the band and him get along?

NS : Once we changed the name to Alice Cooper, a name that's that new, that fresh and that different, even in Los Angeles in 1968, when there were so many bands coming out of London, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles people started to know us and remember us. To have a name of a band that stands out and surfaces to the top just out of pure curiosity real quick in L.A. was pretty much a miracle in itself and a great break for us to stand apart from other groups. At some point, we just started calling Vince "Alice." And even the fact that there was a band called Alice Cooper, and the male lead singer's name was Alice, that was kind of flipping people out even when people couldn't be flipped out anymore. We knew people who hung out with Zappa, like The GTO's. It was actually through The GTO's' Miss Christine that we got an audition for Frank. My personal take on Zappa was it was all business. I love 'The Mothers Of Invention,' the first album. The other stuff's okay, but I was so into Hendrix, so into The Who, the big power bands. Frank was okay, and there was certainly a place for him, I respected him as a musician but I wasn't a huge fan. It's kind of like The Grateful Dead, I respect them as musicians, but I didn't like them as a band. For me, it was all business. He just thought we were weird, he never really got what we were doing, I don't think. He tried to have too much creative control over us. And that was something that we didn't want. We wanted to control everything, which we did, even later on with all the Warner Brothers records. Zappa tried to be bizarre and weird, he certainly was on stage. He was a genius guitar player and musician. There's nobody who's going to respect him more than I do. But when he was in the studio with us, we wanted to get stoned, drink beers, smoke pot, and he didn't want anything to do with it, he was very straight. As far as I'm concerned, we even rebelled against Zappa, eventually he didn't like us either.

RNRU : I've heard that Frank actually walked out of the studio because you guys were partying so much.

NS : Dennis remembers that he was not feeling well, he kind of had the flu. But I also know that when we went into record 'Pretties For You,' The Jefferson Airplane were in the studio next to ours. Because it was our first time in the studio, they gave us a little gift, some really killer weed. So, we went into the back alley, we smoked it, we came in, and we were pretty ripped. When we did the audition for him in person at his house, I know we were pretty stoned for that too. I figured man, we're gonna play for Zappa we should be crazy. Alice never talks about that, and that's fine. He didn't really smoke that much anyway in those days. He made up for it later on when he went into rehab and made his great recovery and everything.

RNRU : Alice said later on that you guys never really did drugs, you just drank a lot of beer.

NS: That's bullshit. I was doing drugs before I was in the band, I did drugs in the band. I can't speak for anybody else, well I know Glen, Mike and I did a lot. We loved to drink beer, 90% of the time we were drinking beer, that's guaranteed. There are people that like to sugar coat it, but I'm a realist, I'm a musician, I'm a drummer. When we recorded 'Pretties For You,' Jefferson Airplane gave us the dope, I smoked it, I was pretty stoned, and it was great. Zappa was a little pissed off about that. I know he wasn't feeling good also but I think it was a combination of the two and he left the studio. He could tell we were stoned (Laughs).

RNRU : When the band was in L.A. the first time you hung out a lot with The Doors?

NS : A lot of the friends we knew were well tied in with the pop culture in Los Angeles. We lived in Topanga Canyon, we moved from Santa Monica where I joined the band, then we moved back to Arizona around Christmas of 1967. It was around March when we moved back to Los Angeles. Glen had a girlfriend who was good friends with John Densmore and Robbie Krieger's wives. So through her we got to know Robbie and John pretty well. I actually didn't hang out with Morrison that much. Glen and Alice hung out with Morrison more than I did. We had a seance at our house in Topanga Canyon one time, Morrison was there, David Crosby, and Paul Rothchild, producer for The Doors was there. There were a couple of other celebrities too. How the hell we ever got them to this little house we had in Topanga Canyon, 30, 40 minutes from Los Angeles I'll never know, they must've been bored out of their minds to come out there and sit in a seance with us. It was horseshit, it was pretty stupid (Laughs). That was the only time I really hung out with Jim.

RNRU : During that time, during their first tour of the U.S., Pink Floyd stayed at your home as well?

NS : That was in Santa Monica. I don't remember them staying there, but Dennis said that they stayed at the house. They came over after the show. I had actually gone on the internet and I found their whole tour then, and they weren't spending that much time in Los Angeles. They may have worked out of L.A., they did American Bandstand, The Dean Martin Show, a couple shows like that, they were doing a lot of playing. I remember they partied after the show at The Cheetah that I went to see them at. But other than that, I don't remember seeing them that much. Les Braden, who was their roadie, ended up staying with us. He was our first addition to the crew after I was in the band.

RNRU : Did you ever meet Syd? What were your impressions of him?

NS : Oh yeah, he was totally fucked up. He had no clue what planet he was on. He was totally, totally wrecked. You couldn't have a conversation with him. It was tragic. Because I was very aware of 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn,' and I liked it a lot. It was very different from Jimi Hendrix and The Who, who I loved. But there was something about it that had its own energy, creativeness and insanity, which I found appealing. Actually, the later Pink Floyd I really didn't care too much for but I liked the early stuff.

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

RNRU : After the first two albums, you guys left L.A. and went to Detroit where you played for about a year. This is where the band and Bob Ezrin got together to record 'Love It To Death.' How did you meet Bob?

NS : We had already recorded two records, the first one, 'Pretties For You,' sold about 12,000 copies, the second one, 'Easy Action,' sold about 6,000 copies. With two albums we hadn't even sold 20,000 copies. We were trying to be very creative, we loved what we were doing, the stage show was working, but the records weren't working. We were making money from the stage show but not the records. The big question mark in all this was if we get to record a third album, which was never a given, who would produce the album. The way it worked out was Warner Brothers bought Straight Records. So it was by a fluke that we ended up on a major label. There were ten acts on Straight, most of them were very bizarre and weird. But there was a band called Stone Poneys, with Linda Ronstadt, and also James Taylor was in that deal. So they got Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor and Alice Cooper for about $50,000, which was a steal. They were going to cut everybody loose and keep Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor. But Shep (Gordon) had an active "Alice Cooper" contract with Straight Records, and Warner Brothers bought it, our management was not going to let them release us without paying a shitload of money. They hung on to us, and they said, "Okay, you have to record a new demo." So, we're doing our third album, and we're doing a freakin' demo. So we need a producer and one of the bands that had the big string of hits through the late '60's and early 70's was The Guess Who and we were very aware of that. They just kept getting hit after hit after hit, so we found out that Nimbus 9, Jack Richardson, was the machine behind the hits for The Guess Who. So we said we want to do a new album, let's get this machine behind us. We knew that they were up in Toronto, Joe Greenberg and Shep Gordon, our management team at the time, Shep still manages Alice, hounded Nimbus 9 and Jack Richardson day after day after day. He kept on saying, "No, No, No. I don't want to have anything to do with this band called Alice Cooper." Because by then we'd already played the Toronto Rock Revival, where the chicken incident happened. Our image, in their eyes, wasn't as angelic as The Guess Who. This was a diabolical group called Alice Cooper, a bunch of thugs as far as Nimbus 9 were concerned.

Finally, Jack Richardson knew what he was going to do. We were going to be playing at Max's Kansas City in New York, and we wanted Jack Richardson to come down and see the show and make his own decision on whether they'd help us or not. He said, "Look, I've got this new guy who's working for Nimbus 9, his name is Bob Ezrin. I'll send him down there." We were excited, but we were a little disappointed Jack wasn't coming down himself. But what Jack was actually doing in reality was sending the sheep to slaughter. He said that Bob was a real classical music fan, everything that Bob really loved was in the classical music vein. He was formally trained, he's going to go down to New York and he's going to come running back to Toronto with his tail between his legs scared out of his wits. Well, we played at Max's Kansas City, and there was a 180-degree turnaround. Bob went back to Toronto, and he was the biggest, biggest fan of the band. He told Jack Richardson that there's a whole new trend of music coming, that he wants to be part of it, he thinks Nimbus 9 should be part of it. Without that incident happening we could've just faded into oblivion. That was the first step of everything that happened, with 'Love It To Death,' every single story was luck after luck after luck. He was the first one to believe in us. We believed in ourselves, our management believed in us, that's why Bob was the unofficial sixth member of the band. So we did the demo, he liked the song "I'm Eighteen," that was one of the four songs that we gave to Warner Brothers, they liked "I'm Eighteen," and said, "Okay, finish the album." We released it, then it was a hit.

RNRU : What element did Bob bring to your sound that wasn't there before?

NS : The songwriting was already starting to move in that direction, and the songs didn't really change that much. What he would do that was nice, he was a very, very good arranger. We would play songs and be jamming for like 5 or 7 minutes. "I'm Eighteen" the first time he heard it was an eight minute song. Because a lot of bands, like The Doors had a lot of jam songs. So we would jam the songs out. But what he heard in there was a hit song. He said do whatever you want on stage, but for the record this is how you've got to do it. Everyone was able to play, Dennis is a great bass player, and by that time I'd played drums for about 12, 13 years. I knew my instrument. Glen knew how to play, Mike could play, and Alice was developing his character but was a great singer. We all knew what we were doing and we were going in a certain direction all together. The creative element was already there, but Bob Ezrin found the way to put it all on record.

RNRU : Do you still keep in contact with Bob at all?

NS : Yeah, as a matter of fact he just moved to Connecticut about a year ago and lives nearby between Dennis and I.

RNRU : Have you ever discussed having him produce any of the Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith material?

NS : He's always pretty busy, we were going to do a demo tape but timing wise it just didn't work out. He's in the middle of a couple of projects right now. He's a great friend, and I love him like a brother. It's just great to have him back in our lives again. As a family we were always pretty close, and that was pretty cool.

RNRU : What was the songwriting process during the time with Alice? Was there a particular process that you went through?

NS : Everybody was writing. If you look at the credits for 'Pretties For You' and 'Easy Action,' we were splitting everything. No matter who wrote a song, we were all going to take credit for it. But by the time 'Love It To Death' rolled around we said, "Okay, if you write the song, you get credit for it." And that's the way the royalty monies work too.

RNRU : Big difference in royalties too...

NS : Well, of course the royalties are going to be higher if you're the particular songwriter, but "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out," and "Elected" were all songs all five of us wrote together. The reason for that is, that any song ideas that influenced new songs were grandfathered in. Years ago when we were writing for 'Pretties For You' and Easy Action,' if we took any of those ideas and rewrote new songs around them later, they'd come under those guidelines and we would split the royalties equally five ways. "School's Out" was a song that all five of us really influenced a lot. That song is a true collaboration of five musicians. The simplest form is Mike Bruce would write a song, then Alice would write the lyrics. Mike and I would work song ideas out a lot, Dennis would come in, then the whole band would come in. It would start off pretty simple. But at the same time, Dennis wrote songs, like "Black Ju Ju." That's a great song Dennis wrote. I wrote a song "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Alice wrote, "Second Coming," that was his own song that he wrote on guitar. Everybody was creating. When we were putting albums together, we didn't really have much waste. People ask, "Didn't you guys record songs that weren't on the records?" Well you know what? NO! Every song we recorded went on a record, there weren't any other songs that were just out there lying around. Like "Unfinished Sweet" on the 'Billion Dollar Babies' album, I had written the original idea for it, then Michael liked it, we worked on it together, then Alice came in and did his thing to the lyrics. The three of us wrote the song, and it worked out as a great theatrical piece on stage as well during our 'Billion Dollar Babies' tour. Alice, when he went solo, did it on The Smothers Brothers show too. There were all sorts of combinations of songwriting. I think Glen was the only one, I mean he was always writing, but Mike Bruce was a real student of the British Invasion, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He was a very accomplished piano player, I think he was a real master of melody. Bob helped a lot with the arrangements, but pretty much the melodies Mike Bruce came up with, then Alice would write lyrics to it. I'm sure Alice would add his touches of melody too, but the song... hooks, Michael was like the hook master. He's the one who could come up with hooks for songs that would just be great. "No More Mr. Nice Guy" is Michael's song. Alice wrote some lyrics, but that's pretty much as Michael wrote it.

RNRU : With the release of 'Love It To Death,' the band pretty much suddenly became superstars. Besides the music, a lot of it was due to the stage performances, you were pretty much the first band in hard rock to bring a real theatrical feel to the stage. Whose idea was it to go in that direction?

NS : I think we had sort of an unwritten motto that when people left and went home after our shows, we just wanted them to remember us. Whether they loved us or hated us, just remember us. We were not afraid to try anything new. We all went to art school together. The guys before I was even in the band were always doing outrageous things on stage. They had their Spiders Sanctum. There was always another element besides just getting onstage and playing music. That movement started early on, in the early roots of the band, and it just continued and got bigger and bigger as time went on. Once we were comfortable with it, Alice found his character, as well as everybody else finding their own personal image on stage. It was either something that was or wasn't going to work. I think the timing was right for a band like us, because if I saw one more person flip me a peace sign, I was ready to flip them the bird. The timing was right for something to change in music. The Doors led the way a little bit with a little bit darker, ominous side to music like nobody had before, with "Strange Days" and "The End" talking about death. There's always been death in rock n roll, but this was where the mood was very ominous. There are elements of that in 'Pretties For You' and 'Easy Action.' "Fields Of Regret" from 'Pretties For You,' and "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" from 'Easy Action,' those elements were already starting to take seed in our music, but it really wasn't coming out full blown yet, and that's another thing that Bob helped bring out. His classical background opened that up. "I Love The Dead" from 'Billion Dollar Babies' is almost like an opera, like Beethoven or Mozart. That real dark side, he just made it more dramatic for us in his production and arrangements. Getting onstage, having a huge drum set, back in the early days I'd jump off the set during the "freak out" part of "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye," hang from rafters, chase Alice around, the chicken and the feather thing. It was always chaos on stage, controlled chaos is what we used to like to call it. We got artists involved, they built big props for us that would collapse on us, almost kill us, until it finally worked. It just felt comfortable, it never felt forced because we always had creative control over everything. Nobody else was doing it. It was like when the British came over to the colonies and were fighting the Indians. They had their redcoats on, their muskets, standing in line and shooting, and the Indians were hiding behind the trees and rocks, just totally destroying them. We were hiding behind the trees and rocks, destroying everyone else.

We had fun, I'll tell you that. I think about some of those times, the things we did. I flipped backwards off the back of a stack of amplifiers once, landed on my head, and I'm lucky I didn't crack my skull open. I was sitting there and I just threw my legs up, disappeared behind the amp and did a one point landing on my head, stupid. This was in Cincinnati, The Black Dome. Those were the wild days. By the time we got to the big stages and the coliseums we had really calmed down. You have to pace yourself when you're playing. Dennis and I were the rhythm section, so that has to be strong. There was a time when I said I couldn't go onstage fucked up anymore, because it's my responsibility to hold the beat of the band down. Later on in the show, I'll have a couple of shots of whiskey, drink a couple of beers along the way, but I can't go onstage as wrecked as I used to in our very early days. (Laughs)

RNRU : As time went on, more and more attention on the band centered on Alice. Did you guys ever feel overshadowed by the public's identification with Alice as the main focus of the band?

NS : It was orchestrated from early on, in the early days all five of us would go in to do interviews. You can imagine how crazy that was. So eventually we just said okay, we'll do the sound checks, because time became of the essence when we'd come into a town, and Alice would do the interviews. Occasionally we'd still do interviews, but the bulk of it we decided to put on Alice's shoulders. What bothered me personally early on was when there'd be extra pictures of Alice in the press kit just by himself. Once newspapers and the media get photos, I never really thought that was the right thing to do. It's setting the stage obviously for Alice's solo career is what it did more than anything else. By 'Muscle Of Love,' the in store stand-up poster was a picture of Alice by himself, with the shorts on that said "Malibu" on it. I went, "What the fuck is this? This is bullshit." It's like The Stones putting out a new album and it's just Mick. We're still making all the same money, so it didn't really matter. I think the only time it really got to me was on the 'Muscle Of Love' tour. I think everybody's going to have a different take on it, Dennis probably has his theory on it. We all owned 20 percent of Alice Cooper Inc, and we still do, we never sued anybody for the name.

One of the shows on the 'Muscle Of Love' tour, in late 1973 , it was crazy times, and there were a lot of outside entities going on. We did the tour, ZZ Top was opening for us, all the concerts were selling out, no problem there. It was in the middle of winter, which we weren't crazy about touring at that time of year, and I forget where we were, I think upstate New York. This was after the show, and as always there were one or two limos. This night there were two, I got in one of the limos and sat in the back seat. Then the driver comes around the back and says, "Can you get out of the car? This is Alice's car." I said, "Excuse me, can you repeat that again please, I don't think that I heard you clearly?" See, I carried a switchblade with me and sometimes I have a very bad temper. And I said, "This is not fucking Alice's car you son of a bitch. This is OUR fucking car, anybody who wants to come in this one or the one behind me can do that." This guy went over to Dave Liebert, who was our Road Manager, then Dave came to said, "Neal, its no big deal," and I told Dave, "What, are you fucking kidding me? It's like telling Keith Richards to get out of Mick's car." And I didn't get out of the car. Apparently the promoter set a special car for Alice and one for the band. I went, "What the fuck is this horseshit?" Whatever happens in the press or the publicity is one thing, but when it comes down to our personal lives as a band, as a unit you're going to find problems. If I had a gun I would've shot someone that night. (Laughs) The only reason I highlight that is because at that point if it had been a sensitive issue and was out of our inner circle, who cares. But once it came into the circle, THEN that's a problem. Otherwise, whatever the press thought, I personally didn't have any problem with, because I knew it was all part of the bullshit.

Alice would make up a lot of these stories, and that's great. I mean Dennis is nuts, Glen was nuts, Michael's a fucking basket case and I was as well (Laughs). Alice, Glen and I were pretty crazy together. People to this day say, "I just met Alice and he's the nicest guy in the world," well, he IS the nicest guy in the world. That's because when he gets on stage he's taking on a character, like we all did. But don't come on stage into our space because we probably would've killed you, but off stage that's another story, we're like normal human beings then, relatively speaking. Once the fantasy started sinking into the inner circle of the five of us, that was a huge problem. That's okay though, his name is Alice Cooper, we're still great friends. We'd been through a lawsuit with Frank Zappa, about a two or three year lawsuit, Alice wanted to go solo, Mike Bruce did the first solo album, so once that happened everybody had the right to do a solo album, including Alice. With the name and the momentum of the band he found success certainly on his own. It could've happened to Michael, he could've been like a Peter Frampton just out of "Humble Pie" and could have become more successful than anybody else in the band. It could've happened to anybody in the band. The main thing I was always concerned about is that we maintained friendship and we are always there for each other.

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

RNRU : When you guys hit it big, there were an awful amount of rumors going around, the "chicken incident" being one of them. What was the craziest rumor you ever got wind of, and what was your reaction?

NS : The craziest rumor? I don't think there was anything crazier than biting the head off of a chicken and drinking the blood. That was probably number one, and we didn't make it up, that just happened. The rumor about Alice being Eddie Haskell, he was just bored in an interview once, and just said he was Eddie Haskell. Anybody with half a brain knew that was bullshit. But for some reason people just bought it. He'd do interviews and just get tired of talking about the snake, the chicken, this, that and the other thing. I really don't care one way or the other, because the truths are actually crazier than any rumors I ever heard, except for the chicken thing. Do you know any crazy rumors? I'll make a comment if you know one.

RNRU : There's the one about Alice and Frank Zappa having a contest concerning eating shit off the stage, but you know that's...

NS : That was more or less from the Frank Zappa camp. I think that originated somewhere over there, I don't even acknowledge that because it's so stupid.

RNRU : Well people buy into all this stuff..

NS : That's fine, that's just one of those things where I say, "When was this supposed to happen?" I guess the other one that was supposed to happen was when we played Pirate's World down in Florida for an Easter show. With the chicken thing obviously as part of the Cooper folklore, some people had put some baby chicks and baby rabbits on our stage during the Pirate's World concert. Then later we had heard that with our big platform boots we stomped the baby animals to death right there on stage. Besides biting the heads off of chickens and drinking the blood, that the band was accused of stomping small animals on stage at our Easter show in Ft. Lauderdale. Florida was probably a pretty weird rumor. I think the fans were a lot sicker than we were, that's why I love them to death.

NS : Those stories really endeared you to parents in those days..

RNRU : Oh, I loved it. I agree with Alice 100 %, you couldn't drive a wedge big enough between kids and their parents in those days. Now that everybody's a parent, that's another story.

RNRU : During the late '60's and early '70's there were a lot of odd pairings of acts on the concert scene, such as Grand Funk with Arlo Guthrie for one example. What was the strangest one you ever played?

NS : Always, as well as Bo Diddley. The strangest one we ever did, at Yale University, here in Connecticut, probably was playing with John Mayall, the guitar player who used to have The Bluesbreakers? Alice Cooper opening for John Mayall? I truly think that billing fell prey to the image that Alice Cooper was a folk singer. When we went on stage, people pelted us with eggs and threw all kinds of shit. But then, who brings eggs to a concert? Unless you know you're going to throw them at somebody. You've got to remember, and we talk about the success of the band, but people HATED us. We used to go on stage, in those days and people would throw things at us on stage, Alice would catch stuff and throw it right back at the crowd, it'd be like a fruit salad, or a vegetable salad war onstage. I even remember seeing a beer bottle flying, just missing Alice's head one time, and shattering into pieces on my drum set. And this was at one of the big concerts. People hated us, or they liked to hate us. We were the favorite band to hate. But, they would come to see us, so that didn't make any sense. Why would you pay top dollar at a concert at the time to come see a band that you hate? But, that's the weirdest billing I can imagine, John Mayall and Alice Cooper.Yeah, we didn't play too many blues songs. (Laughs)

RNRU : Speaking of strange, due to your image and lyrical content at the time, you must've attracted some strange fans. What was the strangest experience you ever had with any fans?

NS : One of the greatest stories was when we played in San Francisco. At the Fillmore West, a lot of the drag queens came. They came up to the room, after the show, and a couple of these characters, they had drugs, snorting, smoking all kinds of stuff. We were just hanging out, drinking our beers, and this one drag queen named Chas, for some reason, really had a thing for Glen. Really wanted Glen badly. He'd keep saying, in a very flamboyant, best attempt to be female, "Glennnn, can't you be gay for just ONE night?" He kept on saying that the whole time. So Glen of course was happy to share whatever Chas had drug-wise with him, but obviously Chas was hoping there was going to be a payoff here at some point. So Glen was starting to get irritated, we were in our hotel room there partying and having a good time. There were a lot of real girls there too, but there were a lot of these drag queens. So Glen goes, "Chas, let's go to the bathroom for a couple of minutes," and Chas gets this glow and heads to the bathroom with Glen. I said, "Oh man, this just cannot be good." (Laughs) When's the shit going to hit the fan? So, about five minutes later, the door opens up, Glen comes out first, and Chas comes out SOAKING wet from head to foot. Somehow Glen got him into the shower, and turned the shower on to cool him off. These were like the most flamboyant drag queens in the world, they looked like saloon hall dancer girls from the late 1800's. Big full skirts on, the hair, the tops and everything. Glen just soaked this character down, with the mascara and makeup running down his face, the hair totally soaked. Chas came out and said, "Glen, you're the DEVIL, and I HATE you, you're the DEVIL!" Never went out of character, I about died laughing. So Glen gave him a cold shower to cool him off. That was probably one of the most bizarre things I can remember, that the drag queen actually thought he had a chance with Glen. It was great.

RNRU : What is your favorite Alice Cooper album?

NS : For different reasons I like them all. Because 'Love It To Death' and 'Killer' were our rawest and our first successes, I absolutely love those two albums. But 'School's Out' is kind of the one that put us on the map, nationally and internationally. It was such a great album, such a great tour, and it really solidified the macabre side of Alice Cooper. If I did a "Greatest Hits" album, it'd be totally different than our first Alice Cooper 'Greatest Hits' album. It'd have "I Love The Dead," "Dead Babies," "Sick Things," "Black Ju Ju," it'd have all that dark stuff on it. To me that's the greatest hits of Alice Cooper. A lot of those can be found on the 'Billion Dollar Babies' record. I think that it would be almost a tie between 'School's Out' and 'Billion Dollar Babies'. Again, 'Muscle Of Love' I like a lot of that, but that was more or less a filler album. Not so much a filler album, we enjoyed doing it, it was a little more contemporary for the times, but in my mind it sort of lacked the real macabre side of Alice Cooper. It really went more of a sex direction than a death direction. We really could've swung it back easy with the ninth Alice Cooper album that we never recorded.

RNRU : How did it feel when 'Billion Dollar Babies' hit #1? Was there a sense of vindication at that time?

NS : It not only hit #1 in Billboard, but it was #1 in Cashbox and Record World at the same time. And if anybody knows the charts back in those days, not even The Beatles or The Stones would hit all the charts at the same time, in the same month. That was a little rare to do that. Once we'd gone Gold, then Platinum, then Double Platinum, where is there to go? That was something that happened that we never expected. What we'd been doing this whole time, if we could get a Gold album out of the deal and a great career that would've been wonderful and fulfilling. But when the Platinum started coming, and we started hitting #1 in the charts, I don't really think anybody anticipated that the band was going to do that. That was something that I'm still grateful for, and it's still something that nobody can take away. I mean Alice hasn't even come close to that with his solo stuff. None of us have. It was the real Alice Cooper machine that worked.

RNRU : But was there a sense of vindication? What I mean here is that when you were in L.A., during the late 60's, there were a lot of reviews that called you the worst band in L.A. at that time.

NS : Well, they also said, "Tragic waste of plastic" for 'Pretties For You' and 'Easy Action.' That never bothered me. If I was in a band like The Buffalo Springfield, or The Eagles, and they said that kind of stuff, then that might hurt my feelings. But believe me, I was way beyond what anybody could say to hurt my fucking feelings.

RNRU : Well, you guys weren't of the norm even at that time..

NS : No, and I think that's why we stood on a level of our own. We just expected those sorts of things. I never felt any vindication. The only thing I wanted to do was just make a good living and have fun touring, because I loved to tour. Eventually I most likely would've died out there on the road. Probably the band breaking up really saved my life, if the truth be known, because I could get pretty crazy out there. I mean, look at my contemporaries, look at Keith Moon, look at John Bonham. There was nothing that they were doing that I wasn't doing, trust me on that one. So probably in hindsight, it did save my life, and I haven't really said that too often. So vindication, it's not a word that I would use because I think it was always the five of us against the whole wide world. Sort of out of the gate we knew that because what we were doing was completely different we would be getting people's attention. It was always dramatic how we got their attention and that we had to have something commercial to sell once we got that attention. Through the combination of our management, our producers, our songwriting and our ability to do a great show I think it all came together. I think it was more of a personal accomplishment than a vendetta. Because we were putting it in their faces every day of our lives. Everything we recorded from 'Pretties For You' on, just listen to the stuff, we weren't kissing anybody's ass ever.

RNRU : You certainly weren't going for a commercial type thing...

NS : No, we never were. But it could become commercial once we figured out how to make it all work. And 'Billion Dollar Babies' was the epitome of Alice Cooper commercial.

RNRU : Do you ever just sit down and listen to the albums?

NS : Not a lot. The only thing I really listened to recently was the 'Billion Dollar Babies' re-issue CD with the live concert tracks. Man those drums sounded great. I remember going back to listen to the tracks after we recorded those couple of nights in Texas in 1973, and I said, "Man, my drums sound like shit." What happened was, I think over the course of time, with the ability to make better recordings, mixing and the great things that can be done to fix older recordings with modern studio technology, the recordings were greatly enhanced. The first time I listened to the new 'Billion Dollar Babies' live CD I said, "Man, these can not be the same tracks that I listened to when we went to the mobile unit years ago after the concerts." The CD came out great and anything that's new like that will get my attention. However, I'm much more into my new music. I'd mentioned before, Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith, but there are two other projects I'm working on as well, Cinematik and a new Neal Smith solo CD. I have a rehearsal tape that I practice along with, I like to practice on a pretty regimented schedule, when Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith are not in rehearsals. My rehearsal tape features AC/DC, ZZ Top and Alice Cooper on it along with Led Zeppelin. I play along with some of the greatest rock drummers in the world, including myself. Two of the Alice Cooper songs I play along with are "Billion Dollar Babies" and "My Stars." "My Stars" is still one of my all time favorite Alice Cooper songs.

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

RNRU : What song would you say out of all represents your finest performance on record?

NS : Well, "Billion Dollar Babies" has to be right there as one of them. I like my performance on that song a lot. It's easier to pick out ones that I wasn't happy with. And there's not a lot I don't like, because I wouldn't let one go down on tape unless I was happy with it. People talk about Bob Ezrin having problems with the band, well I never had a problem with Bob. I did a lot of work outside the studio with Bob Ezrin and I wanted to perfect the parts that I was playing. He had a little bit different feel for what he thought "Billion Dollar Babies" should be, and I always wanted it to be the way it is on the record. His idea was a little bit straighter. But he said if you can play it perfect, and it works, that's fine. And it did. I did, and it worked great. I think up to "Billion Dollar Babies," nobody had really played a drum part like that before, that complicated in a song that was such a big song. The way I always approached creating drum parts to an Alice Cooper song, or any song for that matter was, if I were a drummer listening to the radio, would this drum part sound cool to me. I went through all the hits of the '50's, the '60's, the Surf stuff, the English stuff. One of the songs that stands out was the beginning of "Get Off Of My Cloud" by The Stones. Charlie Watts is just playing the intro all by himself. I'm a drummer, so I said, "That's cool, that's great, but what can I do that's even more dramatic?" And "Billion Dollar Babies" was the answer. But, I still like my drumming on "Black Ju Ju," "Halo Of Flies," "Killer,"and "Muscle Of Love" to name a few. "Halo Of Flies" is still the #1 song in Europe as far as a classic song by Alice Cooper.

RNRU : The solo in that is definitely one of my favorite drum solos of all time..

NS : "Halo Of Flies" was THE song when people were sort of questioning through 'Pretties For You,' 'Easy Action,' and 'Love It To Death,' can this band actually play music or is it all about theatrics? Which I thought, are these people deaf or what? We wanted to end that once and for all, and I think between "Halo Of Flies" and the song "Killer," we put that to rest. That's a fun solo in Halo to elaborate on live, as well. You just can do an awful lot with it. Most of the time we (BDS) still do "Halo Of Flies." It's a signature song for Dennis and I. Alice, with every band he's played with, they have homogenized that song to where any moron could play it. But the fans are happy hearing it, they buy it, and it's Alice doing the song, but it's nothing like the original. Nobody's ever going to play the bass part like Dennis, never. The drum part, and I don't want to blow my own horn, but I wrote the whole thing, and it's like when a drummer writes a part to a song, nobody's going to be able to play it like he does. There, horn blown.

RNRU : Have any of Alice's drummers got ahold of you and asked you, "Hey, how do we play this?"

NS : Tommy Clufetos, the guy who played on Alice's last tour last year (2004) has come the closest. Eric Singer makes an abortion of the song, he's terrible at it. He's a good drummer for what he does, but the song just has no feel. There are two drummers, Michael had a band in England whose drummer, Jason Callear, played it perfect almost, I could almost hear the scratches on the record. And Tommy, who played with Alice last year played "Halo Of Flies" really great. They haven't really asked me about parts. They're smart guys, they can figure out how to play it themselves, so they've never contacted me for any guidance. Tommy commented in Modern Drummer Magazine that the hardest drum parts to learn were the original Alice Cooper Band, much more difficult than Alice's solo records. The hardest drum parts were the original Alice Cooper band, I'll take that as a testimonial and a compliment.

RNRU : During the years that you were in the band, you released 7 albums, and also toured the world several times in a five year time period. Nowdays bands generally take 2-3 years between albums. Do you think if you would've had that luxury then it would've allowed you to continue as a band?

NS : Actually, eight albums if you count our 'Greatest Hits' album. But I just think we were young and had a lot of energy. I couldn't have done that even in my 40's. I have to go back to when the band was first together. We were literally making no money. We were starving, scraping together whatever we could do to survive. And we went from that, to having 'Billion Dollar Babies' hit #1 on all three charts. I think that says a lot about the integrity of the band. There was an awful lot of luck involved, and I'll be first to say that, and I'm always grateful to the fans. We were like a machine, we weren't going to stop. We were going to make it, or we were going to die trying. And we did it. I don't know too many bands except for The Stones that are still together after this many years. Bands do get back together, but sooner or later every band breaks up. You can have a spin on it, and I get e-mails all the time that say, "Look, if you guys could've got over that hump and would have stayed together, you'd be bigger than The Stones in the United States in 2005." I think that the band could've had a lot of legs, we were one of the bands that started Arena Rock. We held the record in South America with 125,000 people indoors for almost twenty years. All I can say is there was a lot of energy. All we did day after day, we wrote songs, were recording albums and we were traveling on the road. That's what we did EVERY single day for almost ten years straight.

RNRU : Wasn't there some kind of burnout involved after that much time?

NS : We were young. I think that's why we finally decided to take the year off in 1974. We wanted to regroup. Unfortunately in that year, everybody was used to recording, used to being in the studio. We went in and we all recorded. Except Glen, he's the only one who didn't go in and record. Then everything took off in different directions and we never got back together after that.

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

RNRU : What was the real reason the original band ended? Dennis has stated that in his opinion that it was a lot cheaper for Alice to continue on using other musicians rather than using the guys in the original band.

NS : I think in reality there are probably several different explanations, and everybody's going to have their own spin on things. I think there was an element of it that was business. But we tried to replace Glen, we got Mick Mashbir, who's a very good friend of mine from high school, who came out on the road with us and played on the 'Billion Dollar Babies' tour. We just couldn't kick Glen out of the band. I think a part of the element is the band would self-destruct rather than replace Glen. Because Glen was such a key element of the image of what Alice Cooper was. To this day, I still see Glen in Alice on stage. I see a little bit of everybody on stage with Alice. That's fine, everybody influences everybody. Alice has influenced all of us, we've all influenced him, Dennis has influenced me, I've influenced Michael, and vice versa. In hindsight we should've retired Glen, got Mick or some other guitar player and written some new stuff. Which everybody in the band did on a solo level. I got a guitar player who I worked with on 'Platinum God,' Alice got guitar players he worked with on 'Welcome To My Nightmare,' and Mike Bruce got guitar players he worked with on his solo project. Everybody did that, the band couldn't do it. I think there was an element that the band was not going to survive, and it wasn't going to break up. We just got caught in limbo, and everybody just sort of did their own thing.

Now Dennis's explanation of Alice's bands being cheaper. I mean first of all, if you're a solo singer, and you go on the road, you're going to have musicians you hire, you're not just going to pick someone out of the blue and split all of the money equally like our band did. Technically that wouldn't have worked anyway. These guys, they go on the road, they're studio musicians, they have a wage they demand, and that's fine. Cheap musicians were possibly part of it, but I don't think that's the whole story. The other thing was we'd all renegotiated on our publishing agreements with our management just prior to our break up. Everybody renegotiated independently. I have no idea what Alice negotiated with our management. Nor do I know what Mike Bruce did, or anybody else. I know that it changed from what it previously was. There was an element of business in there. Also there was the fact that Glen wasn't really able to be an active contributing member anymore. We didn't take the initiative as a group to replace Glen. Believe me, we had a lot of meetings, Michael, Dennis, Alice and I. About what are we going to do about Glen. Glen had an unlimited amount of money to do whatever he wanted. We talked about replacing him, it was hard to replace him, that's why we ended up getting somebody to come on stage during the 'Billion Dollar Babies' tour just to cover the lead guitars in new material. It was very complicated, and there's not one simple answer. You go back and you analyze what was going on, and as I said, the inner circle was the inner circle. Once things infiltrated into that, I mean our success was born from constantly living and being under the same roof together, we'd been like that since the day I joined the Nazz. Then when we started getting our own places, we discovered there's life outside the band. Once that chemistry changed, and that year was open, I think the guys in the band just found other things to do.

RNRU : That happens with so many bands..

NS : This is certainly not unique, it's more common than anything else. I personally can't come up with one explanation and say this is what happened. On 'Muscle Of Love,' it was like any other album, except for the songwriting, everybody owns everything equally. Whatever happened, happened because of emotions, and I'm sure there was a business element involved as well. But somebody could say I'm wrong with that analogy of what happened. Like I said, subliminally maybe, I know that if I would've continued, I had to make some big decisions on my own as well. A lot of drummers and musicians were dying back then. The other side of the coin is we stopped at the top of our game. Nobody talks about that. We were one of the number one bands in the world, hands down in 1974, '75, when we took the year off. The one thing I'm grateful for is that we stopped on top, instead of grinding to a halt fifteen years later in some little club somewhere. That may have never happened with a band like Alice Cooper, but it's more likely that it could happen than not. It's happened with a lot of bands, then time goes by, they get back together, have a little bit of a reunion. The stuff like The Stones, KISS and Aerosmith do with these big reunion tours doesn't happen too often.

RNRU : After everything went down during the year off, you, Dennis and Michael formed Billion Dollar Babies and recorded 'Battle Axe.' Was there a reason Glen didn't join you? Was it because of his health?

NS : Again, I go back to the statement I made a little while ago, as soon as we all went in different directions, it excluded Glen. Unfortunately, and we love him like a brother, but it was like Syd Barrett, in the original Pink Floyd, he was not contributing musically to the band anymore. He just couldn't do it. Glen was unable to sit down and be a creative element in putting an album together anymore. It was a guitar player that I worked with on 'Platinum God,' Mike Marconi, that came in with us on the 'Battle Axe' album, and then Bob Dolin, who played keyboards on the 'Billion Dollar Babies' tour came in and did all the keyboard work. Great songwriting again with Dennis, Michael and I, But Glen hadn't really recorded a lead solo since 'School's Out.' He smashed a guitar on "Sick Things" on the 'Billion Dollar Babies' album, which was the only thing he contributed on that record. On 'Muscle Of Love,' he played nothing. So it had been really three albums since he'd actually recorded a guitar solo. As for the demise of the band Alice Cooper, that was critical. We never even considered asking Glen to join the Billion Dollar Baby band.

RNRU : Any thoughts on why that album didn't do as well as it should've?

NS : Polydor Records wasn't a great company. They had a golden opportunity to do one of the biggest albums they've ever done in the history of that company. There were a couple things that happened. We were shooting for the stars, we spent tons of money on the staging. We couldn't go into clubs with three semi trucks of equipment. So we had to play big venues. In hindsight it probably would've been better to do like Paul McCartney did with Wings, just to go out and start playing again. But we wanted to do a show. That's why this whole thing is ludicrous when Alice says that Dennis, Michael and I wanted to tone down the theatrics. Give me a break, this show was as equally theatrical as anything that had been doing at the time, if not more. We were the creators of the 'Battle Axe' show and music, it was a group creation, and this was a creation between Michael, Dennis and I. I don't know, other than the fact that it was really hard for Polydor Records to really make a hit record for us.

RNRU : Then, a few years later, you joined The Plasmatics?

NS : Well, I didn't join them, I met them, and I loved those guys. When I had met them in New Haven, Connecticut, in the late 70's they were playing a club, Dennis and I had a band called Flying Tigers, and we'd play at the same club once in a while. I had met Wendy, Wes Beech and Richie Stotts, the guitar players, and they said they LOVED Alice Cooper. Their favorite #1 album, that was like their Sgt Pepper album was 'Pretties For You'. I said, "You guys are fucking sick. That's why I love you so much." I told them if they ever needed my help, I'd be happy to play drums for them. I don't know what happened, but on the second album they needed a drummer, on 'Beyond The Valley Of 1984.' The photographs for the album cover were taken just at the foothills of the Superstition Mountains. I thought that was ironic, of all the Alice Cooper albums we never did any shots in Arizona, then the first group I sort of hook up with afterwards, take shots for their album cover in the Arizona desert.(Laughs)

RNRU : What was it like working with Wendy O. Williams ?

NS : She was very professional, she was cool. The whole band was great. Jean Beauvoir, he's a great bass player and he's also a great drummer. So essentially he played the feel on the drums, give me the idea of the groove, and I would just elaborate on it and do my own thing. So, it was a pretty easy study thanks to Jean. But, I've got to tell you, because it was like speedball rock n roll, punk rock, it was an amazing feat of energy. Just the energy I had to use to record that record was like a marathon every time we got together to rehearse or record.

RNRU : How realistic is it for fans to hope for any kind of reunion?

NS : All I can say is there's always a chance that something can happen. Realistically or not, nobody's ever going to know. Let's put it this way, as long as I'm alive, I will always be one of the people trying to negotiate something that maybe could make that happen. Whether it's putting the right elements together, or helping the right elements or if the elements were put together that I would be there. Dennis and I have always offered to talk about a reunion since the band broke up. I told Alice in '75, if you ever need my help call me, and in 1985 he came up to Connecticut and he did all the pre-production work for the 'Constrictor' album at my studio at my home with Dennis and I and Kane Roberts, who played guitar on it. Our doors are and have always been open.

RNRU : So, the ball would be in Alice's court at this time?

NS : Well the ball's in Alice's court yes and no, it would have to be a group decision. Michael would have to want to do it, Alice would have to want to do it, I would have to want to do it, and Dennis would have to want to do it. I don't see a full-scale world tour, but do I see the possibility of like Cream playing the Royal Albert Hall in London for a consecutive number of nights at the same venue. I don't see why that couldn't happen. All I know is there's more support as the days roll by than not. As long as I'm alive, I'll never turn a deaf ear to the possibility, and there's only one reason I want to do it, two reasons actually, in honor of Glen (RIP) and because our fans deserve it.

RNRU : Did you ever imagine, after 35 years, you'd still be talking about all of this?

NS : No, well, I can't imagine I wouldn't be talking about it, what amazes me is that we still sell hundreds of thousands of records every year. To me, that's the most amazing thing about the band. All of our solo stuff doesn't sell like the original stuff did. The longevity just surprises the hell out of me.

RNRU : There aren't that many bands, if any, these days that even come close to the originality and the classic status that albums of that era had. Why do you think that is?

NS : There are so many people that think that everything has been done, all the hit songs have been written, that's not really true. I just think there was so much creativity in Alice Cooper. And creativity is almost like a disease, an infectious virus you can't stop. On top of that, the chemistry of the band was incredible. If you remember the scene from the movie 'Amadeus' where Mozart is collaborating with Antonio Salieri, the master composer of Emperor Joseph the II. Mozart gets sick and is dying near the end of the movie, and the last thing he's doing is writing an opera in collaboration with the Emperor's composer Salieri. When you're collaborating and writing a song, that scene in the movie is a perfect example of how energy is created just by the people that are involved in writing the music. Because once somebody gets excited, BOOM, then it goes to the other person and back and forth again and again. A lot of our songs were created that way. It was just so exciting to create the music. There was nobody there to say, no you can't do this, or that doesn't work. It was like all the barriers were gone. If there was anything we wanted to say, "I Love The Dead," "Dead Babies," so what, it's never been done before, how can we make that work. Well "Dead Babies" is actually one of the first songs about child abuse. People said, "Oh, Alice Cooper's killing babies," well that's because you're morons and didn't listen to the lyrics. They're taking it for the face value of the title of the song. It's all about the chemistry of the band, the creativity and the energy we had back then. Michael still writes good songs, Dennis still writes great songs, and I'm writing songs for a new solo project. There's always music around, but there was something about the chemistry of all of us writing together.

RNRU : Do you think that it's because everything is so commercially driven these days?

NS : You have a great point from the standpoint of like American Idol, which as far as I'm concerned is one of the stupidest fucking shows that has ever been on TV. And, I have nothing against singers, but where's the musicians? Take Iggy Pop, take Alice, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, take all of the huge stars, take even the singer from The Counting Crows, Smashing Pumpkins, and put them on American Idol, none of them would make it. This is what's being brainwashed on the kids these days. There's nothing wrong with it, but not everybody sings like Whitney Houston. That's great when they sing like that. But look at that Oriental kid that sang the song that was so terrible, William Hung, he stands out from everybody. Why? Because he's entertaining. (Laughs) This guy's got character, he's got a gig of his own, he's been on commercials. I've never seen anybody from American Idol do commercials except for that kid. And God Bless him, I see him and I like to watch him, he's entertaining, and that's what it's all about, entertainment. And the three people that are judging, it's just a rehash of the old Ted Mack's Amateur Hour. It's just another form of reality TV. I have nothing against the pop diva of the day, Britney Spears etc., most of these gals, you have anybody that hot, put them in videos, bumping and grinding, that goes back to the old burlesque and strip tease shows. That's all that is, and you think you're going to get sales with that? Sure you are. But I know that there's still room for something that's new and fresh out there.

[HARD ROCK UNIVERSE]

RNRU : Even given the classic nature of the music you guys did, do you think the band would even have a chance in today's music scene?

NS : Probably not. It's like The Stones, you do what you do best. Right now, I'm totally convinced, if we came back with a high tech version of 'Billion Dollar Babies,' and played some shows in Madison Square Garden, we'd probably start in London or Paris, do a string of shows and that's it. 'Billion Dollar Babies' was never performed in London or Paris, ever. We never did that show in Europe. That show would fucking blow them away. But it's US doing OUR thing. I don't want to only concentrate on writing new songs, it could be good and maybe we'd even come up with something great, but that shouldn't be the total focus. The Stones do it so they have new songs to sell, but I heard the new Stones song, and there's no "Satisfaction." And most likely there wouldn't be anything like a "School's Out" for us, but you never know. I don't have a crystal ball, but I think our fans would still love to see us if we did one of our big shows, and if we threw in a few new songs that'd be cool too.

RNRU : What if you were a new band? Would that change things at all?

NS : Now you're getting into the element of timing. It's like Marilyn Manson, you've got to adjust for when you came out. I don't even know if anything can be shocking anymore. I don't think that's possible, without actually killing live stuff on stage. I think you could be incredibly creative. It's like looking at movies, when they do so many remakes over the years. You know there's got to be some great new scripts out there that has never been done that would be phenomenal. But the creativity is more or less thrown out the door sometimes for money. And with the economy, well it was always expensive for us to be on the road way back then. It's all relative because you go out on the road and gas is expensive, travel, hotel etc., in the late '60's compared to what you're making. It's just if you have the heart and guts to do it. There's going to be musicians who are going to be making it no matter what. Unfortunately it does seem like it gets harder all the time.

RNRU : You've put out a few albums with Dennis and Joe Bouchard as Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith. Can we expect another album soon?

NS : We've worked on new material, we have two completely finished songs. Maybe four or five that we have to finish. Two of which we do on stage right now that would be on a new album. Dennis is doing a solo album, I'm doing a solo album, I also have a project where I was invited to partake in a couple of years ago called Cinematik. Cinematik is a friend of mine, a bass guitar player whose name is Peter Catucci. He's a neighbor of mine. He and Rob Freboni, who's an engineer for Keith Richards, and has worked with Keith since 'Exile On Main Street.' Keith lives about a mile away from me, Rob lives about a stone's throw from me, so does Pete. We all live in the same neighborhood here in Connecticut. Peter called me one day and asked me if I was interested. He'd heard the 'Platinum God' album, and in the last song called "Platinum God," there's a big solo of African percussion. He was inspired, and asked me if I'd be interested in jamming on some songs. He knew I had a pretty big collection of antique, primitive and Indian drums from all over the world. I said yeah, I'll give it a shot, so we got together and recorded two records. One's called 'Cinematik' and the other's 'One Full Moon Away.' They're both available on my web site and in my discography. I'm working on a solo project with about eleven brand new songs, and I'm playing all the guitars, it's real industrial metal, very very heavy, dark stuff. If you're under twenty-one years old you probably shouldn't listen to it. (Laughs) This is nothing like Alice. I've always wanted to do something dark like this, I'm singing, playing guitar, and I do sort of a hybrid drums, where I play some real drums, some drums I have a bass drum that's synthesized and I play a live kit over it. So, it's an interesting combination. Hopefully I'll have that available on my web site by the fall of 2005. I'd love to do another album with Dennis and Joe. Dennis is singing fantastic these days. We just did "Sick Things" the other day, and we hadn't played that song in years. Bouchard, Dunaway and Smith performed it as a power trio, and it came out great.

RNRU : Any chance of a DVD of BDS coming out?

NS : We have DVD's, I'm not incredibly happy with them yet. In the fall we're supposed to be play a show, and they'll record the show, and film it at the same time. So it probably would be one of the better quality things we've done to date. They haven't been terrible, but I would really like it to be a lot nicer. So maybe by the 1st of next year something like that could exist.

RNRU : You've been playing a few Horror related Expos as of late..

NS : We did one in Chicago, we did one in Cleveland, and we've done a couple in the New Jersey and New York area. It's great, it's like Halloween all weekend long. We're one of the few groups of musicians that get invited to these Horror conventions. There are not a lot of other bands that go back to the sort of horror, shock roots that we have. I love these things, we just did "Chiller" in New Jersey, and we're doing the next "Chiller" for Halloween at The Meadowlands in New Jersey. It's a lot of fun to do, the fans come out, we sell CD's, sign autographs. People bring the old records, CD's. I sell drumsticks, Dennis and Joe sell guitar picks and photographs. It's just great hanging out with the fans for the weekend. We (BDS) usually play a full concert at these events.

RNRU : Has there been any discussion of releasing a live DVD of the original Alice Cooper band? I'm sure there's a lot of footage available.

NS : You know the movie 'Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper?' That was shot at the same time that the live tracks were recorded for the newest version of 'Billion Dollar Babies' CD, with the bonus live tracks. That whole show was filmed with multi-track recording. That would be the one if it's going to be released. I know that they're talking about re-releasing the movie on DVD and the movie has a lot of corny shit in it. They thought Alice Cooper was The Monkees or something. This was when things were starting to be written for us. We had nothing to do with this piece of crap. The only scene that I like in the movie is the beginning of the movie. The first scene, I liked that. But then the rest of it was just such stupid stuff thrown in here and there for no apparent reason. The point is, there's a complete concert in there. I'm hoping someday they'll just take the garbage away and just put it as one flowing concert. It exists, whether or not they're going to do it as one complete concert or not, I don't know. I believe it will be released in late 2005.

RNRU : Every band has them, what would you say would be your most 'Spinal Tap' moment?

NS : Where do I start? (Laughs) One of them was during one of our very early shows. We played a show in Chicago, at Wrigley Field. We played a show there, and there were some friends of ours who were artists from Toronto, and they had planned something special during our finale song, which was "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye," which later became "Animal Pajamas" which we never recorded. Actually it was "Animal Pajamas" that we played at The Toronto Rock And Roll Festival where the chicken incident happened. Anyway, we were doing that at Wrigley Field, and this guy wanted to try some kind of kinetic sculpture that would sort of be our background. What he did, if you can imagine almost like a hang glider, but it looked more like a pterodactyl. Of course it wasn't made of lightweight stuff. It was all heavy aluminum poles and canvas. So he'd rigged this whole thing to sit behind me, then at one part of the show he was going to pull some pulleys and wires and makes the wings flap. This thing towered about twenty feet above me. We got near the end of the show, and this is where "the windy city" comes into play. We're doing the finale, the big crazy song, the feathers and the smoke, then he takes his cue and starts flapping the pterodactyl wings. Well, at the same time, the wind starts to blow, and this is Chicago, who would've ever thought of it? The thing collapses around me, crushing me with my drums under this crazy thing, and that's the end of the song. There was no way to recover after that. It was a great idea at the time, but I'll bet it looked like The Three Stooges were on stage. In hindsight it may have been the perfect ending for the song.

RNRU : You've been a realtor for over 20 years now, and you've previously stated that no one has ever not purchased a house from you after finding out that you were in Alice Cooper. Has there been anybody who has actually sought you out because of that?

NS : Well yeah, Bob Ezrin as well as other people from the entertainment business have. Successful people, no matter what kind of business they're in, are fascinated by other people who have been successful. There's always an interesting story there somewhere.

RNRU : What advice, if any would you give to anyone who's just starting out in the music business?

NS: Let me just speak as a drummer. I've been asked many times to teach drums, and I refuse to do that. I don't do seminars and I don't teach. My seminar is when I play on stage. I think if you're starting out as a drummer, learn the basic rudiments of the instrument, and then you can do whatever you want. People that want to play guitar, or drums often go to someone and say, "Teach me how to play this part or this song. Teach me how to play "Stairway To Heaven," that's not really learning how to play guitar. That's learning to play that SONG. You don't have a foundation for a creative outlet at that point. I would be almost surprised at anybody who did know the rudiments of drumming that would listen to any original Alice Cooper albums that wouldn't be able to tell that I knew my rudiments. Because it gives you a foundation to be creative, once you know and master them. There's even a couple that I came up with that I would have to say I'll take credit for that had never been used for recording before. No matter what your instrument is, learn the basics of it. It's like any of the arts, before you can be an abstract painter, learn how to paint a portrait perfectly. That's my advice as far as that goes. The business end of it, I really don't know. We were very lucky. I joined the band, then Cindy, my sister, met Shep Gordon and Joe Greenberg, she was the one who put us together. There was luck and timing there, and also when Bob Ezrin came to see us was luck and timing. Management is key, have a manager that only wants to manage you first and foremost. That was one thing that we were very adamant about, because Frank Zappa wanted us to sign with his manger Herbie Cohen. We said, "Frank, Herbie manages YOU, we want somebody to manage Alice Cooper exclusively and has nothing to do with your management." We had the insight at least to realize that, that's so important. It's very, very hard. We were so lucky, but then again sometimes you create your own luck. There are so many elements of success that have nothing to do with the game plan that you put together. And stay off of fucking American Idol. (Laughs)

RNRU : Anything else that you'd like to add, to say to the fans?

NS : Never underestimate how great of friends the entire band was and is. How lucky and shocked that I was when Glen and Michael asked me to join the band to replace John Speer, drummer in the Nazz. I think he's a great drummer, and it's just one of those things that happened. I think we were all headed in the same direction, and it just worked out perfectly. And the fact that so many fans have really stayed loyal to us over the years, and I get so many e-mails from all over the world from people, that tell me the minute 'Welcome To My Nightmare' came out, they knew something was different. They stayed fans of the original band. They respected what Alice had done, but it just wasn't the same. I'm sure they said the same thing when they listened to the 'Battle Axe' album. There are always elements of Alice Cooper there, but it was the combination of Glen, Alice, Dennis, Michael and me that made it work. If anybody else would've been involved as a singer, another musician in there, it wouldn't have been the same. It was the five of us. I'm just always grateful to the fans, this many years later. I'm always amazed when I hear somebody say, "My vinyl collection, I've played it till I wore the records out. I bought three copies of everything, now I've totally replaced it with a whole collection of CD's." God Bless 'em, there's nobody that's more thankful for that than I am. Thanks a Billion, our fans are the greatest!

For more info on Neal Smith, what he's up to, to purchase any of his CD's, or if you're in the market for a quality home go to www.nealsmith.com