Alice Cooper Welcomes Ke$ha To His Nightmare: ‘This Girl Is Not A Pop Diva’

Alice Cooper Welcomes Ke$ha To His Nightmare: ‘This Girl Is Not A Pop Diva’

August 24, 2011

Alice Cooper is currently on the road with what he calls “a summer show… we do the hits and five, six major special effects things.” But he’s already hatching plans for a show built around “Welcome 2 My Nightmare,” the sequel to his platinum 1975 concept album that drops Sept. 13.

“We’re already talking about what songs should go in, how they would work, all of that,” Cooper tells Billboard.com. “When we get to November, December, when we’re off the road, I imagine we’ll write some pieces of (the show), then start it really next year and do the full-out thing. I can’t wait.” Some sort of TV special, like he did for the first “Nightmare” album, is also a possibility, he adds.

Cooper is giving his audiences a taste of the new album this summer by including the new “Nightmare’s” the first single, “I’ll Bite Your Face Off” in his shows. “I come out with a jacket around and turn around and it says ‘New Songs,'” Cooper says. “Then I take the jacket off and it says ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off’ on the T-shirt. And the audience is already singing it. They hear the first chorus, and they’re singing along after that, which is pretty great.”

“Welcome 2 My Nightmare” reunites Cooper with Bob Ezrin, who produced the first “Nightmare” as well as 10 other albums in Cooper’s catalog. The three surviving members of the original Alice Cooper group — guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith — appear on three tracks, building on the group’s April induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, the guitar tandem from the first “Nightmare” album, also worked on the new set, as did Desmond Child, Buckcherry’s Keith Nelson, Vince Gill (“A Runaway Train”) and Ke$ha (“What Baby Wants”).

“I met (Ke$ha) at the Grammys,” says Cooper, “and I immediately looked at her and went, ‘This girl is not a pop diva. She’s a rock singer.’ She would much rather be the female Robert Plant than the next Britney Spears. (Ezrin) said, ‘Nobody’s gonna expect Ke$ha on your album.’ ‘Great! Let’s do it!'”

You can read the entire interview at www.billboard.com/news/alice-cooper-welcomes-ke-ha-to-his-nightmare-1005326082.story

Courtesy of www.sleazeroxx.com and www.billboard.com