Steel Notes Magazine
February 2017 got ?” I had nothing , all I knew was it couldn ’ t be this beautiful ballet it had to be something really aggressive . So I turned up my amp and we rehearsed loud and it was really loud so I went “ Dun Na Na Na Na . Dun Na Na Na Na . Thats what its gotta be !” So anyway , Neal came up with the drumbeat and the song changed completely . It ended up to be something completely different than how it started out . But that ’ s how everybody was , anything that you brought to the table was everybodies ’ to make better . And we were really good at that and nobody held any grudges , we had five guys so it was Democratic completely Democratic . We would argue about every part of every song and we would all be passionately driven to make every single thing that we did as good as it could . So we had a rule . You couldn ' t throw out an idea unless everybody gave it a heartfelt try . So if everyone gave it a heartfelt try , and then they said “ OK , three guys don ’ t like it even though two guys do .” OK that ’ s the end of it , we ’ re not doing it . You know that ’ s how we were , everything we did was like that . So this song went from being this beautiful Roy Orbison ballet that could ’ ve been on the album and you never would have known the two songs were related in any way . That ’ s how we worked , I mean a good example of it is “ Reflected ” on “ Pretties For You ” ended up “ Elected .”
Alexxis : Fascinating how it ended up !
Dennis : It ’ s a different song really , but we had a lot of things that would evolve like that . Like ‘ Dead Babies .’ ‘ Dead Babies ’ was actually two songs that we ’ d given up on and they fell by the wayside . One had a good verse , and a crappy chorus . And the other one had a good chorus and not such a good verse . So I decided we should take the good verse and the good chorus and put them together . Nobody else wanted to do that , they just wanted to move on . So I wrote this bass line tied them together and you know we were always doing things like that . So I got everybody to try the idea with this new bass line that tied it together and then we voted and the majority liked it , so it was in .
Alexxis : Very cool . That ’ s great how the band was able to work it out .
Dennis : A lot of bands have it a lot easier to do it this way . Where you have one or two guys usually the singer and the guitar player write the songs and then they come in and you just add your part or they tell you what to play , you know . We were very much a collaboration which is hard to do , but it comes out better because inevitably even if they try your idea and they didn ’ t like it , sometimes when they try to do what you verbally describe as your idea comes out differently . They ’ re trying to do your idea but you didn ’ t verbally translate it to them properly and so they try something that is different than what you wanted to get them to do and it winds up being better .
Alexxis : Right .
Dennis : It could be better . We also like mistakes . So are things that just happen that we didn ' t intend to happen musically . Or even on stage . If somebody would play a part and all of a sudden they played the wrong note , we ’ re going “ Wait a minute , I like that note . [ Laughter ] That ’ s not the wrong note , that ’ s the new correct note .” Like “ Black Ju Ju ” we recorded that live in the studio , it ’ s one of the only songs where we recorded Alice singing his vocals live and the whole band played live at the same time and we did it in one take .
Neal Smith , Glen Buxton , Alice Cooper , Michael Bruce and Dennis Dunaway Sand Dunes Canary Islands 1972 Photo by Cindy Smith Dunaways
Dennis : But Michael plays this dissonant note in the beginning and we got to do it over . So we recorded it again and it didn ’ t have the dissonant note but the two tracks were almost identical except the first one had this real edgy note and so we recorded it again and then we decided “ Wait a minute , we like that edgy note .” And that ’ s the one that ’ s one the record . You hear in the Intro , there ’ s a part where he hits this dissonant note and so there you go . It ’ s a mistake that turned out to be something we thought “ No , let ’ s use that . That ’ s better than the other way .”
Alexxis : Yeah , absolutely . It starts out one way but ends up another . The ‘ Billion Dollar Babies ’ show also got you on the cover for Forbes as the highest grossing tour .
Dennis : Yeah , The Stones and Zeppelin were out on tour and you
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