Steel Notes Magazine
February 2017 the format of the magazine , which made it even better . But when they started covering The Alice Cooper Group they were the only ones . Those two magazines . And a lot of kids started following them because that ’ s the only place they could hear about this band and that helped us because they were targeting that ‘ I ’ m 18 ’ group of people . And so that had a lot to do with our success . Circus Magazine and Cream Magazine .
Alexxis : Sure , absolutely . Those were very popular teen magazines back in the day .
Dennis : Yeah and this was probably still happening about the time we ran into you out on the road .
Alexxis : Yes , it was . Because that was like 71 , 72 , & 73 .
Dennis : Yeah .
Alexxis : Now at this point , was this still under Frank Zappa ’ s Label ?
Dennis : No , It was after Easy Action we felt like we hadn ’ t heard from Bizarre , we hadn ’ t heard from Zappa , or anybody . We just felt they had decided to drop us and we were out on the road playing night after night and sometimes two gigs in the same night . You know I swear Bizarre had the chicken wire like in The Blues Brothers where people throw stuff at the band but there ’ s chicken wire in front of the stage . [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : And all kind of festivals in Detroit most of them were promoted by Nicky Quatro , Susie Quatros ’ brother .
Dennis : Susie ’ s band with her sisters , they were great , I mean it was girls that played hard rock and that was pretty unique for them . We did all these festivals with The Amboy Dukes , The MC5 The Stooges and SRC , Bob Seger and all these bands that were playing for the Detroit audience , which was the most loyal audience . San Francisco was loyal to their bands but so was Detroit . It was fists in the air every note of every song and it ’ d be the same local bands at all these festivals and every one of them would be sold out with everybody ’ s fist in the air . It was great . So after migrating there from Hollywood we had a quirky kind of a show going . We were on our guard and then we come to Detroit and The Motor City Bad Boys are doing all this hard and heavy stuff with The Stooges , who I think was the first punk band . I think most people would agree , but MC5 everything was just as loud and hard and heavy as it could be . Well , we picked up on that . All of a sudden we realize OK , we ’ ve got to up our game . We can ’ t out power them so how are we going to follow The Stooges . How do you do that ? [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : Yes ....
Dennis : Well Bill Graham had us follow , that ’ s another thing he would do is bring in the Ike and Tina Review and have us follow them . Like what ? Oh My God !
Alexxis : Ah , yeah . That ’ s a good combination hahaha
Dennis : We had to follow Aretha Franklin once in the early days in L . A . So we picked up on this and decided , OK we ’ re going to have an execution on stage , we ’ re going to hang Alice and we ’ re going to get heavier music so “ Black Ju Ju ” came along . And when I finally figured out how to write a song like “ Black Ju Ju ” by then we all had this concept in mind that we were going to write songs to accommodate this Alice character that we all were developing collaboratively within the band . Neal had come up with ‘ Second Coming ’ ‘ Hallowed Be Thy Name ’ so you know all of our writing by then had gotten more coherent . At the same time we ran into Bob Ezrin , and he was a very important factor in that we didn ’ t know how to write a hit song . We knew how to write songs and Michael Bruce was getting much better . I mean ’ I ’ m 18 ’ had pretty much developed , ’ Cotton of Dreams ’ we recorded the way Michael had wrote it , and we pretty much didn ’ t have to do too much on the arrangement . But there were songs like ‘ You Drive Me Nervous ’ we were floundering on . we loved the song and knew it had potential but we just couldn ’ t find the right pocket on it .
Alexxis : Sometimes a song does not come together unfortunately .
Dennis : We were struggling with it . We would put it on the shelf and then we would pull it off . We ’ d go at it again and then put it back on the shelf . Anyway , we were struggling with it again and Bob Ezrin said “ straighten out the drumbeat Neal just Boom shh , Boom shh , Boom shh .” And all of a sudden the song took off the way we wanted it to . So Bob would have these insights you know where it ’ s kind of like , you played the song too many times and you lost your perspective .
Alexxis : Very true that does happen with songs .
Dennis : He could bring things into focus like that and he certainly knew how to record . His boss , Jack Richardson , kicked down the doors to America for Canadian groups because back then for some reason America shunned Canada . It ’ s like they didn ’ t count . And Canadian bands just couldn ’ t get played in America and couldn ' t get gigs in America not like they should have but Jack Richardson came in with the Guess Who and when we were driving around in our station wagon thinking we need a
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