Entertainment

Musical Musings | Shock rock legends back in action

By Joe Matera

Jul 16, 2025

Alice Cooper

For the first time in over 50 years, the original Alice Cooper Band have reunited to release a brand-new studio album, The Revenge of Alice Cooper, which is out on July 25.

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The new album features all the classic elements in the sound, energy and mischief that made the original shock rockers legendary.

“We all thought it was going to happen a couple of times over the years, as rumours would start and Alice would get excited, but then nothing would happen,” bassist Dennis Dunaway told Musical Musings when asked about the reunion.

“We weren’t sure if this was going to happen, too.

“Even after we finished recording the songs for this album, there was a long pause of nothing.

“We kept thinking, ‘when do we get to pop some champagne’?

“But we had to keep it secret for four years, so we couldn’t talk about it during that time.”

“Then it all got leaked a day before it was going to be announced, but I was so happy because I was ready to explode with excitement.”

Blending elements of horror, music and art into a musical cocktail that became known as shock rock, The Alice Cooper Band were the originators of the genre that later saw acts such as Marilyn Manson, Slipknot and Ghost take it that one step further and beyond.

“We had the censors breathing down our necks back then because if you went too far across the line, your album wouldn’t be sold in stores,” Dunaway said.

“We’d go right up to the line and just stick our toe across the line an inch.

“We wouldn’t have gotten away with some of the hip hop lyrics that are out there today!

“Or gotten away with any of the videos that you see today.”

At the height of their fame in the early 1970s, and due to the group’s image and live show, the Alice Cooper Band caused public outrage, and in the aftermath, much myth-making.

“We’d show up to play a concert and the fire department, the mayor and the Humane Society would all be there trying to stop us from doing whatever they thought we were going to do,” Dunaway said.

“In those days, nobody had a phone with a camera in it, so the rumours would start.

“And they were way better than some of the shows, and some of the shows were way better than the rumours we’d get blamed for.”

By the time Alice Cooper had embarked on his first Australian tour as a solo artist in 1977, the members that comprised the original Alice Cooper Band had split a few years prior.

So, the band members themselves never made it to our shores.

But with the reunion in place, they may finally get their chance.

“Well, I hope so,” guitarist Michael Bruce said.

“We were supposed to come to Australia back in the day, but then we had split.

“So, it’s long overdue, just as this album has been, too.”

For more on The Alice Cooper Band, go to: alicecooper.com

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Fatboy Slim can now add author to his CV.

His debut book, titled It Ain’t Over ’til The Fatboy Sings, hits shelves later this year.

The 300-plus-page illustrated book collects photos, flyers, original artwork and various rave stories from across Slim’s career.

Behind the album — Spirit of Place — Goanna (1982)

Australian group Goanna’s debut studio album, Spirit of Place, was the biggest selling album of 1983, notching up sales of over 300,000 copies.

Recorded between March and June of 1982, the album was released in November 1982.

The album’s lead single, Solid Rock, went on to top the Australian charts soon after.

In 1983, the band won ARIA awards for Best Debut Single and Best Debut Album.

In a 2009 interview I conducted with the group’s singer-songwriter and guitarist, Shane Howard, he revealed how the album came to be.

“The songwriting process went back to 1975 when, with just a guitar and about $30 in my pocket, I first hitchhiked from Melbourne to Sydney and later Cairns,” he recalled.

“The track Razor’s Edge was written around that time from all those hitchhiking experiences.

“Then in 1980, I spent time at Uluru and experienced an Inma (a corroboree) from the Indigenous people.

“Later, I witnessed the troubles of and colonisation for the peoples in Alice Springs. Those two experiences would inform the writing of Solid Rock.

“As for some of the other songs, Stand Yr’ Ground was influenced from a book called Darkness At Noon, which was about Communist Russia, while Borderline came out of a trip I had to Byron Bay, which itself encompassed a lot of youthful optimism.

“And a lot of the early days of the band are embedded in that song.

“All the songs were written prior to entering the studio, but we actually recorded a couple of other songs that didn’t make the record.

“Those wouldn’t appear until the digital remaster of the album that came out in 2003. The album cost around $60,000 to make, which was a lot of money at the time.”

Fun fact

The percussive ‘bang’ that is heard during the ‘lie-la-lie’ section in the chorus to Simon & Garfunkel’s 1969 hit The Boxer was created by placing a microphone in an open empty elevator shaft to catch the echo of the snare drum.