Alice Cooper addresses guitarist Nita Strauss’ return, says band has new music coming
“I understood what she was trying to do with Demi, and it worked. It was a good thing.”
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Alice Cooper has weighed in on the return of guitarist Nita Strauss, who will be rejoining the band after a brief stint playing with Demi Lovato on tour.
Asked who initiated the conversation for Strauss to come back in a new interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Cooper said, “It was the funniest thing because I always have had a revolving door in my band.”
“If somebody has a thing where they say, “I want to go do this for six months,” I go, “OK, go.” Absolutely no problem. … I understood what she was trying to do with Demi, and it worked. It was a good thing.”
“And of course, getting Kane back in was a fan favorite,” he added. ‘That was something that was really fun for us and them. And then at the end of it, I said, ‘You want to come back?’ She goes, ‘Sure.’ And I went, ‘OK, great. It’s gonna be a whole new show.’”
The rocker also spoke of his philosophy towards members who leave and return, saying “I never, ever take a musician and put them in a position where they can’t revolve out and then revolve back in.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Cooper also teased a new album coming out with his touring band and revealed the one little rule he’d set for the upcoming record.
“I wanted to show off the touring band,” he said, “so we wrote songs, went in the studio, and I said, ‘Here’s the deal on this album: No overdubs.’”
“I said, ‘Everything has to be done in the studio live because the whole idea of this album is showing off how good this band is live.’ So when you hear this album, it sounds like a studio album, but it’s actually them playing live in the studio.”
As for the likelihood of new music with his former bandmates, Cooper said that the possibility certainly exists given that the band “never broke up with any bad blood”.
“We went to high school together, we were on the cross country and track team together, things like that… So there was never that like, ‘Oh, I’m never gonna talk to him again,’ or ‘I’m never gonna work with him again.’ So we’ve always been writing.”