Karlo X. Ramos
The Original Alice Cooper Band Reunited In Front Of Some Die-Hard Fans at Good Records Last Night.
Last night, fans of Alice Cooper gathered at Good Records for a very special occasion: The band’s original bassist, Dennis Dunaway, was on hand to sign copies of his new Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! memoir, and his old bandmates, guitarist Michael Bruce and drummer Neal Smith joined him to take part in a Q&A with the Dallas Morning News‘ Robert Wilonsky, as well as a little jam session.
That much has been widely publicized for a few weeks now. But it was the unannounced moments of surprise from last night’s affair where real rock ‘n’ roll history was made.
First, the trio of icons reveled in Wilonsky’s assertion that “Alice Cooper is a band, not a man,” and then shared with him some stories and insights from the book, taking everybody back to the bands heyday as they did. They shared it all — from “the chicken incident” and other backstage antics to meeting Salvador Dali and what things were really like in the band’s recording sessions. Next, they signed all kinds of rare memorabilia that fans had brought along for the occasion.
It was the moments after the signing, though, where things really got nuts.
The band came back to perform on the pink AstroTurf stage — but, even with a mic set up for such use, there was no lead singer in place. Immediately, the 200-or-so die-hards packed into the Lower Greenville record shop began to wonder if, just maybe, Cooper, scheduled to play the American Airlines Center with Motley Crue on Wednesday, could’ve possibly made it into town a night early to reunite with the guys he hadn’t played with since their 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
Early indications were that he hadn’t: When the band played its first song, “Caught in a Dream,” it was Bruce covering the vocal duties.
Just before hope dwindled, though, Good Records co-owner Chris Penn summoned The Coop himself for an impromptu in store performance.
That’s right: Before heading off to Downtown Dallas drinking spot Midnight Rambler to catch up with his old buddies, Cooper played with his old for about an hour at the store. And with his old band behind him (plus touring Alice Cooper guitarist Ryan Roxie filling in for the late Glen Buxton), Cooper led the room through hits such as “School’s Out” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” and even an encore of “Elected.”
Between cuts, Cooper dropped some interesting nuggets of his own from the old days, too. But, as he certainly will at tonight’s AAC performance, this band of Cooper’s didn’t rely on any guillotines, snakes, electric chairs or any of the other debauchery chronicled in the book. It was just straight-up rock ‘n’ roll.
In other words: No chickens were harmed during the historical evening on Lower Greenville.
