Alice Cooper is offering hints about what fans can expect when they come to his live show.
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The rock music legend is preparing for multiple tours in 2023. His headlining Too Close For Comfort Tour kicks off in April, followed by an opening slot on Motley Crue and Def Leppard’s joint tour in August, and he’ll spend late summer into early fall on the co-headlining Freaks on Parade Tour with Rob Zombie—and he has some tricks up his sleeves along the way.
In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Cooper reveals that he’s removed Mademoiselle Guillotine from his stage show, but is re-introducing Marie Antoideath who “will probably be the one that is trying so hard to cut my head off because she had her head cut off and she wants revenge,” Cooper explains in reference to the characters that help cut off his head in the show. He also hints that he’s bringing back a fan-favorite moment from the days of his platinum-certified, 1975 solo debut album, Welcome to My Nightmare.
“We are bringing back one other bit from Welcome to My Nightmare that kind of works right into that, that I think the audience will really, really like,” he continues. “Something we did on Nightmare that really, the audience every night went, ‘Oh!’ Those are the kinds of things, it’s kind of cool to not just do a song that they weren’t expecting, but to do a bit that they’re not expecting.”
Fans will also get to see Nita Strauss onstage, Cooper’s longtime guitarist who was part of the band from 2014 until 2022 when she departed to join Demi Lovato’s touring band, with another one of Cooper’s former guitarists, Kane Roberts, taking her place. It was announced in March 2023 that Strauss would be re-joining Cooper’s live band.
“I understood what she was trying to do with Demi, and it worked. It was a good thing,” Cooper expresses. “And of course, getting Kane back in was a fan favorite. That was something that was really fun for us and them. And then at the end of it, I said, ‘You want to come back?’ She goes, ‘Sure.’ And I went, ‘OK, great. It’s gonna be a whole new show.’ I never, ever take a musician and put them in a position where they can’t revolve out and then revolve back in.”
The Too Close For Comfort Tour begins on April 29 in Youngstown, Ohio, and concludes on May 18 in Biloxi, Mississippi.
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