Alice Cooper took part in a question-and-answer session with comedian Don Jamieson and SiriusXM's Keith Roth aboard this year's Monsters Of Rock cruise. The five-day/five-night full ship charter cruise, which departed out of Miami, Florida on February 9, featured performances by the legendary rocker along with over 35 other artists and stopped at two ports, CocoCay in the Bahamas and Labadee in Haiti before returning on February 14. You can watch video of the Cooper chat in three parts below (courtesy of YouTube channel WILL TRAVEL FOR GIGS). Alice kicked off his 2022 U.S. tour on January 28 at The Andrew J Brady Music Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Joining Cooper as part of his touring band are guitarists Tommy Henriksen, Ryan Roxie and Nita Strauss; drummer Glen Sobel; and bassist Chuck Garric. Regarding how he chooses the setlist for his concerts, Alice told CityBeat: "It's the hardest thing in the world. It's the same for THE WHO or THE ROLLING STONES or anyone who's been around for 50 years. All of our records are the soundtrack to somebody's life. I hear a STONES song and go, 'Oh, I know what car I had.' But I'm not really thinking, 'Well, Alice, you've been around that long. People will want to hear something from 'Easy Action'.' We can't go that far back, but we do try to find good stage songs that fit this show. "This show has a storyline in it, so I have to go, 'What's a good stage hook?'" he explained. "A song like 'Generation Landslide' is a great record, with a great lyric, but we've tried it onstage and audiences don't react to it. They give it a nice polite clap. But a song like 'Feed My Frankenstein', that's a stage song." Cooper added: "Out of the 25 songs we do, 18 to 20 of them are must-dos or the audience will get pissed off. If we leave without 'Under My Wheels' or 'Poison', we'll get killed. We only have about five we can play with there. We fit in a couple from the new album, and there are theatrical bits where I go, you know, 'Roses On White Lace' would be exactly right to get from A to B here,' so we put that in. But then every e-mail is, 'I can't believe you didn't play...' I have to go for pleasing 80% of everybody." During an appearance on a recent episode of SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", Cooper confirmed that he is putting together ideas for the follow-up to last year's "Detroit Stories" LP. "I'm working on two albums right now, actually — two studio albums," he said. "And all I can say is that one is written — totally written — and we'll be doing bed tracks for that one pretty soon. And then the other one is just a touch in the future, but that's being written right now too. They're two entirely different kinds of albums, but they're Alice Cooper pure rock and roll albums. The two albums will really be hard rock albums." The 73-year-old singer went on to say that his longtime producer Bob Ezrin will once again be involved with both LPs, the first one of which will arrive later this year. "It's kind of like the old days when you're touring and putting out records at the same time," Alice explained. "It kind of takes me back to when you're doing 'Love It To Death' and then you tour for 'Love It To Death'. While you're doing 'Love It To Death', you're writing 'Killer'. When 'Love It To Death' is over, 'Killer' comes out and then you go support that. And while you're doing 'Killer', you're writing 'School's Out'. So we're kind of piggybacking everything. And I kind of like that. It keeps everything moving. I don't like those big chunks of time when there's nothing going on." Released in February 2021, "Detroit Stories" was recorded with Ezrin, mostly in Royal Oak with Detroit musicians and featuring a mix of original material alongside covers of songs by Bob Seger, the MC5, Mitch Ryder's DETROIT and OUTRAGEOUS CHERRY. In 2018, Cooper issued "A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris", a recording of his December 7, 2017 concert at the world-renowned Olympia venue in France. The effort captured Cooper and his current bandmates performing a choice selection of classic Cooper hits, in addition to some highlights from 2017's "Paranormal" album. Alice later said that he wanted to release a document of his band's onstage prowess because they "deserved a live album."
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