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Roy Thomas Baker — the producer behind some of rock’s biggest hits, including Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” — has died at age 78, his family announced Tuesday (April 22).
Baker died at his home in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, on April 12. No cause of death has been revealed.
The producer’s credits feature a who’s who of rock stars over the past half-century, including Journey, Yes, Foreigner, The Cars, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Devo, Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses and Smashing Pumpkins. Baker worked with Queen on five of the band’s 1970s albums, including on their bombastic A Night at the Opera lead single “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which is reportedly the most-streamed song recorded in the 20th century. The 1975 single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1976 but didn’t hit its No. 2 peak on the chart until its inclusion in the film Wayne’s World in 1992.
Born in Hampstead, London, in 1946, Baker’s career began as second engineer to Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti at London’s Decca Records. He graduated to chief engineer in the ’70s and moved to Trident Studios to begin working with the then-unknown Queen. Columbia Records later asked him to relocate to the U.S. to work with Journey and others.
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“We did [1978 album] Infinity with the infamous Roy Thomas Baker,” recalled Journey’s Neal Schon, “and we did so many different things on that record that I’d never tried, or even thought about doing. I learned a lot from Roy.”
Elektra Records, Queen’s U.S. label, connected Baker with Lindsey Buckingham, Dokken and The Cars — for whom he produced their first four albums, from 1978 to 1981.
Baker is survived by his wife, Tere Livrano Baker, and his brother, Alan Baker.
Dream Into It is Billy Idol‘s first new album in 11 years — but hardly his first new music during that period. Since 2014’s Kings & Queens of the Underground, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee has released a pair of EPs (The Roadside in 2021 and the following year’s The Cage). So why did Idol take the plunge this time?
“I realized I have to do the same amount of press for the EPs as an album, so I thought, ‘F-ck this. Come on, let’s make an album!’” he tells Billboard via Zoom from his Los Angeles home, with the same smirk that was as much a trademark in his ‘80s videos as his leather vest and fingerless gloves.
Dream Into It, which comes out April 25, is not just an album but a concept album — about Idol. Its nine tracks, divided into two halves (“Dying to Love” and “I’m Reborn”), rock hard while also documenting his life and times, from the youthful aspirations expressed in the title track to remembrances of his early days in England’s nascent punk rock scene (“77” with Avril Lavigne), his misadventures with substances and other self-destructive behaviors (“Wildside” with Joan Jett and “Too Much Fun”) and his shortcomings as a mate and father (“People I Love”). It all leads up to self-awareness and corrections (he’s been sober since 2010) that leave Idol defiantly, joyfully “Still Dancing” by the end of the album.
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“We’ve been making a documentary since ’19,” Idol says of a new film project, Billy Idol Should Be Dead. “It kept getting interrupted by the coronavirus and everything. Writing (songs), I was bouncing off the documentary. I was running into a lot of thoughts about the past — and today and the future, one part of me in the past, one in today and one part me looking forward. That’s very much what the album’s about.
“A song like ’77,’ it’s about everything that was going on then in England during that punk rock era with the politics and the division and people turning to violence…and I just wonder if it’s not so different today in America, you know? (The album) covers a lot of ground.”
Steve Stevens, Idol’s guitarist and main collaborator since 1981 and co-writer of all but one track on Dream Into It, wasn’t entirely surprised to see his partner take that narrative approach. “I’d seen Billy spending a lot more time with his grandkids and stuff, so he was in a bit more reflective headspace, I think, and wanted to reflect that on the album,” Stevens says. “There’s a lot of shared experiences for both of us. Our parents are no longer there, and we’d reminisce about a lot of that crazy stuff we had experienced and seen and felt. There was a lot of good juice to work with.”
Dream Into It does present Idol as he is today — particularly as a dedicated family man in songs such as “Gimme the Weight” and “I’m Your Hero” — but he acknowledges that the deep immersion into his life gave him valuable perspective. And regrets.
“My drug addiction and stuff affected the sort of relationships I had with people, and even sort of the job I did,” says Idol, a Billboard Hot 100-topping artist and three-time Grammy nominee. “You wish you hadn’t got caught up in all that, ’cause it took a long time to overcome them — 15 to 20 years to really get control of yourself to where today I don’t really even drink. And you’re gonna let down the people you love. You’re gonna hurt them — even my parents couldn’t understand me…and I know they were worried.”
But 48 years after the first Generation X single, Idol makes no apologies for making music his life’s pursuit.
“I didn’t want to follow in my father’s footsteps,” the man born William Broad explains. “That’s what we were looking for in music. That’s what rock n’ roll was giving us at the time, a sense of freedom. That’s what music did for me in a lot of ways, and that’s what I’m singing about on the album. And then you have the life now, with grandchildren…It makes you feel like you’re reborn in a way. You’re seeing life anew, through them.”
Dream Into Life was produced by The Cage collaborator Tommy English, who, along with Nick Long, also co-wrote the songs. (“John Wayne,” featuring Alison Mosshart of the Kills and the Dead Weather, was previously released on a 2008 compilation.) It’s a rocking set, to be sure, recorded in Los Angeles primarily with Stevens, current AC/DC bassist Chris Chaney and Josh Freese on drums. “We’ve got a band-sounding album, that’s what it sounds like to me — which is something I’ve always gone for with my music,” Idol says. “With me and Steve, the idea’s always, ‘Yeah, it’s a solo artist, but really we’re looking for a band feel,’ like me with a three-piece, just old school. I don’t think I’ve really been with just a three-piece since Generation X. We very much got that on this record.”
Idol says having duets on Dream Into It was “kind of fantastic. I’ve never really done that before. It gave an extra dimension to the songs because the (singers) could sort of answer what I’m singing about. Joan and Alison and Avril are really dealing with a similar thing to me, a lifestyle, the rock n’ roll lifestyle, that’s not completely normal ’cause we’re not completely normal people to be doing it in the first place.” Jett — who will be supporting him on tour this year — goes back a long way with Idol and, he notes, shared the “Wildside” that they sing about on the album.
“I’ve known Joan since, what…1978 maybe,” Idol recalls. “We used to hang out at the Whisky (a Go Go) and all those places. She could sing (as) the female that felt the same way — they have a wild side, too. We all do.”
Idol plans to make Dream Into It a significant part of his sets for the It’s A Nice Day To…Tour Again! outing, which begins on April 30 in Phoenix, wraps up Sept. 25 in Los Angeles and includes Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. “The great thing about it is I think we’ve done an uptempo, youthful sounding album; even the ballads aren’t necessarily slow, so (the songs) are gonna be fun to do,” he says. “We’ll intersperse the new stuff with the old stuff, I think, so at first maybe five songs and then we’ll see what the reaction to the album is and as time goes by maybe we’ll put more songs in. And I’m touring with Joan, so it’s likely we’ll do ‘Wildside’ on the tour.”
As for Billy Idol Should Be Dead, which premieres at Tribeca Festival in Manhattan on June 10, the rocker says he “didn’t want it to be just a glorified Behind the Music. I wanted it to be a little better than that, so we’ve worked really hard on it. I’m hoping the album and documentary will bounce off each other. You should get the full picture of my life with all that.”
And, Idol acknowledges, he won’t at all mind if a Rock Hall induction becomes a capstone for the story later in the year.
“That’d be an incredible thing,” says Idol, who participated in last October’s induction for Ozzy Osbourne and has ranked consistently in top five of the fan voting, which closed on April 21. “Ozzy’s induction was really good fun. It was a great night. I ran into so many people I knew, and then I met a load of people, too. It’d be fantastic to be inducted, yeah.”
Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen says he’s still dealing with the fall-out from a 2023 incident in which a 19-year-old man rushed at him and knocked him to the ground outside a Florida hotel. In a recent interview on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk, the veteran rocker said that he has eased back on […]
Liam Gallagher has confirmed that he and brother Noel spent Easter Sunday together, marking a rare public show of unity just months before Oasis reunite onstage.
On Sunday (April 20), Liam Gallagher took to X (formerly Twitter) to share a surprising family moment: he spent Easter Sunday with his brother Noel and Noel’s two sons, Donovan and Sonny.
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“So we had a BIBLICAL Easter Sunday,” Liam wrote. “Noel, Donavan and Sonny popped over to ours for a cup of tea. It was absolutely incredible to meet the young guvs. I obviously blew their minds coz I’m cool as f—. You heard it here 1st.”
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The casual tea catch-up arrives just months before the first Oasis shows since the band’s 2009 split. The iconic Britpop group is due to kick off its global reunion tour this July, having announced 41 dates so far.
The shows will kick off with the first of two shows at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, before criss-crossing the U.K. in advance of a North American run beginning August 24 in Toronto; the tour will then move on to Mexico City, South Korea, Japan, Australia and South America.
The new tour follows decades of tension between the brothers, who last performed together during Oasis’ 2009 tour before an infamous backstage blow-up in Paris led to the band’s split. Since then, both Gallaghers have pursued solo careers — Liam releasing multiple solo albums and Noel fronting the High Flying Birds.
In January, Liam responded to a fan’s dream setlist, telling them “it’s not far off,” when they asked if the unsolicited rundown was “official.” The list included band’s past setlists, including such live staples as: “Acquiesce,” “Some Might Say,” “Lyla,” “Shakermaker,” “The Hindu Times,” “Cast No Shadow,” “Slide Away,” “Supersonic,” “Morning Glory,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” “Live Forever” and “Champagne Supernova.”
Last month, the band announced that a film documenting the Oasis Live ’25 tour would be created and produced by BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated writer/producer/director Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Spencer, Dirty Pretty Things) and directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (Meet Me in the Bathroom, Shut Up and Play the Hits). No release date has been announced as of yet.
Fifty-one years ago, after trying out Zorro, Superman and gorilla costumes, Angus Young took a suggestion from his sister, borrowed her son’s school uniform and wore it onstage. Since then, like his band AC/DC, the lead guitarist’s live persona has been insanely consistent — he once told Billboard that he packs 12 schoolboy costumes for tours.
“We’ve never tried to do something we’re not or looked around to see what the other bands were doing,” Angus said in a 1996 interview. “An audience can tell when you’re phony or you don’t want to be onstage.”
High Voltage, AC/DC’s debut album, set the band’s consistent musical template in 1975 when the record arrived in the group’s home country of Australia. Twelve months later, it reached the United States and, after a few years, established the act as international rock stars.
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Every AC/DC album since, from classics such as 1980’s Back in Black to lesser-known gems like 1995’s Ballbreaker, has exemplified what Billboard declared in a 2014 review of the Rock or Bust album: “Neither trends, age nor the passing of many decades has altered the basic blueprint the band laid out on its 1975 debut, High Voltage.”
“Some people might say that you guys have made the same record over and over 10 times,” an interviewer once suggested to Angus.
“That’s a dirty lie!” he responded. “We’ve made the same record over and over 11 times!”
Of AC/DC’s 19 studio albums, seven have hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200, including two No. 1s, 1981’s For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) and 2008’s Black Ice.
Phillip Rudd, Angus Young, Mark Evans, Malcolm Young, and Bon Scott of AC/DC pose for an Atlantic Records publicity still in front of a graffiti-covered wall circa 1977.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Imag
Ten of the band’s tracks have earned more than 177 million streams, beginning with “Thunderstruck” at 1 billion, according to Luminate. AC/DC’s touring power has been similarly steady, from 1978, when it opened for Aerosmith for multiple sold-out arena dates, to 2010, when its four best-selling concerts ever grossed $11.7 million, $12.8 million, $24.6 million and $27 million, all in Australian stadiums, according to Billboard Boxscore.
Despite the loss of Angus’ brother, founding member and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, to dementia in 2017, AC/DC rocks on. The band opened its global Power Up tour on April 10 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
CAA books AC/DC, with agency veterans Rob Light, Chris Dalston and Allison McGregor overseeing dates. The tour takes its name from the 2020 Power Up album. (The band’s repertoire is released by Columbia Records in the United States and by Sony worldwide.) Alvin Handwerker of Prager Metis handles management.
On record, AC/DC began its loud and mighty run 50 years ago, with the release of High Voltage. The album was created in “a very economical two weeks,” as Jeff Apter writes in the 2018 biography High Voltage: The Life of Angus Young. The second week focused on Angus’ guitar solos and the controlled night-prowler shrieks of frontman Bon Scott, who died in 1980.
Angus has said of Alberts, the band’s Sydney studio, “I would have liked to have taken the f–king walls with me and kept them. A guitar just came to life in there. It was a little downtrodden, but it had a great vibe, this energy to it.”
The group’s pathway through the music business began with Sydney publisher Ted Albert, who lived in a mansion called Boomerang and sailed with his father on a yacht of the same name. His company, Albert Productions, had signed Australian rock’n’roll band The Easybeats in 1965, putting out classics such as “Friday on My Mind” and “St. Louis” before it broke up four years later. That act’s rhythm guitarist, George Young, turned out to have talented younger brothers, Malcolm and Angus, and the Albert connection led to AC/DC signing with the company in 1974. George and bandmate Harry Vanda, who served as High Voltage’s co-producers, had a knack for drawing the screechy rock rawness out of Angus and Malcolm.
“That was our first real album,” Angus told Guitar Player in 2003, “and it was the one that defined our style.”
The album’s opening track, “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ’n’ Roll),” began as a “jam,” Angus recalled in a 1992 interview, published many years later in Classic Rock. “We were just playing away, and my brother George left the tape rolling. After we finished, he was jumping up and down in the studio going, ‘Great, great, this is magic!’ And you’re thinking, ‘What’s he on about?’ And he played it back and there it was. It had that magic atmosphere.”
Although AC/DC became known for its lascivious vocals full of not-so-disguised euphemisms, “It’s a Long Way to the Top” is almost a folk ballad, lamenting endless hard work and “getting old, getting gray, getting ripped off, underpaid.” Country, folk and Americana singers including Lucinda Williams and Cody Jinks have covered it.
The droning track required a droning instrument — bagpipes — as its crucial final touch, the producers’ idea.
“Bagpipes!” exclaimed Steve Leeds, head of album promotion for AC/DC’s longtime U.S. label, Atlantic Records, as reported in Jesse Fink’s 2013 book The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC. “There are no bagpipes on the radio, even today. George and Harry were f–king geniuses. They figured it out. Conventional wisdom says, ‘You guys are crazy.’ ”
George knew how to communicate with musicians, and he recognized that the band’s imperfect quality in the studio could lead to spontaneous excitement on its recordings. At one point, while recording the title track, drummer Phil Rudd thought he had “messed up” during a fill, Angus recalled in 1992. “And George is signaling: ‘Keep going. Keep going.’ And we finish that take and we come in and go, ‘OK, we better try again.’ And he goes, ‘No. That was the take.’ And that was the one we used.” The track wound up closing the album.
From Australia to the United States, where it was released in 1976, High Voltage received almost no attention — other than negative attention. Critics were merciless. Rolling Stone’s infamous pan called the band “Australian gross-out champions,” declared hard rock “has unquestionably hit its all-time low,” referred to its rhythm section as “goose-stepping” and concluded the whole operation added up to “calculated stupidity.” A short feature two years later — written by Ira Kaplan, later frontman of Yo La Tengo — concluded, “There’s nothing new going on musically, but AC/DC attacks the old clichés with overwhelming exuberance.”
Many critics back then blooped over Malcolm’s steel-beam rhythms and Angus’ devotional reinterpretations of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry and stripped-down arrangements that distilled The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and The Stooges into riffs that gained power with repetition.
“At that time, Rolling Stone was really into the punk genre and were matching up everything to what was the current flavor of the day,” Angus told Vulture in 2020. “What we did was rock’n’roll and we weren’t going to change anything.”
Malcolm Young, Bon Scott, and Angus Young of AC/DC performing at The Nashville Rooms on April 26, 1976 in London.
Dick Barnatt/Redferns
The vision paid off — eventually. Angus would criticize “really soft” Australian radio for being overobsessed with Air Supply and worse. But in the United States, programmers for a small San Antonio rock station picked up High Voltage and aired it immediately. This led to a show at Austin’s 1,500-capacity Armadillo World Headquarters and, later, airplay in the Bay Area and Boston.
“Up until that point, all we had really done was a lot of touring around Australia, so it was great to get into a studio and really hear how we sounded,” Angus recalled in 2003. “What was impressive about that album was that it sold on word-of-mouth alone.”
The band also played at CBGB, the New York punk fixture where the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie and Talking Heads first became famous. When Atlantic co-founder Ahmet Ertegun saw that gig, he agreed to sign AC/DC, steering the band at first to the label’s Atco imprint. “I’m not sure I would have signed them when I first heard them,” the late Ertegun told Billboard in 1998. “They were very modern; they were pushing the envelope. They were very young-looking then and very ratty-looking. A lot of those bands had disdain for anything that resembled authority.”
Angus responded, sort of. In a 2020 interview with Billboard, he said, “Some people would say, ‘Well, you have a very juvenile approach to what you’re singing.’ But good rock’n’roll is juvenile, in a sense.”
At first, High Voltage was hardly a blockbuster, neither in its native Australia nor the United States. Not even “T.N.T.” charted on the Billboard Hot 100. But it since has become one of the band’s most beloved tracks, with 436 million U.S. streams, as well as 826 million Spotify plays internationally.
AC/DC’s first track to hit the Hot 100 was “Highway to Hell,” in October 1979, at a modest No. 47. And its debut album didn’t crack the Billboard 200 until 1981, long after Highway to Hell broke into the top 20 and Back in Black followed by reaching No. 4. Album-oriented rock, indeed. High Voltage took five years to go gold in the United States in 1981, according to the RIAA, and hit quadruple-platinum in July 2024.
As it turns out, consistency is exactly half of AC/DC’s formula for commercial success. The other half is a combination of songs that sound perfect no matter how many times they’re played on the radio and onstage. Like the song goes, “If you think it’s easy doing one-night stands/Try playing in a rock-roll band.”
James Hetfield of Metallica put it a different way, describing the live Angus experience to Billboard in 2016: “That guy sweats so much every night. I can’t believe his head is still on his body.”
This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.
The Cure will revisit their 2024 album Songs of a Lost World on an upcoming remix collection entitled Mixes of a Lost World. The 24-track compilation will feature fresh spins on the songs from EDM stars Four Tet, Paul Oakenfold and Orbital and others.
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The album conceived and compiled by Cure singer Robert Smith will be released on June 13th through Fiction/Capitol Records and also come in a deluxe edition with additional remixes and reworks from Deftones frontman Chino Moreno, as well as Mogwai, 65daysofstatic, Gregor Tresher, Sally C, Daybreakers, Daniel Avery, meera and Trentemøller.
In a statement about the remix album, Smith said, “Just after Christmas I was sent a couple of unsolicited remixes of Songs of a Lost World tracks and I really loved them. The Cure has a colorful history with all kinds of dance music, and I was curious as to how the whole album would sound entirely reinterpreted by others.” The curiosity resulted in what he described as a “fabulous trip” through the original album’s expansive eight songs by 24 artists.
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All of the Cure’s recording royalties from the remix album will benefit War Child UK. The album will come in deluxe three LP, three-CD and three cassette formats with both the “artist and remixers” tracks, as well as two-LP/CD/cassette versions with just the remixers tracks. Songs of a Lost World was the Cure’s first new album in 16 years and the upcoming remix collection will mark their third such release, following on the heels of 2018’s Torn Down: Mixed Up Extras 2018 and 1990’s Mixed Up.
After the long break, Smith said in December that in addition to a live album, Songs of a Live World, that there is “another album which is pretty much ready to go,” one that he referred to as a “companion piece,” seemingly in reference to the remix album. He also said that there is a “third one which is completely different. It’s really kind of random stuff, it’s like late-night studio stuff.”
Listen to Four Tet and Oakenfold’s remixes below and check out the track listings for the deluxe editions of Mixes of a Lost World below.
3LP
VINYL 1
SIDE A
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Paul Oakenfold ‘Cinematic’ Remix)
2. “Endsong” (Orbital Remix)
3. “Drone:Nodrone” (Daniel Avery Remix)
4. “All I Ever Am” (meera Remix)
SIDE B
1. “A Fragile Thing” (Âme Remix)
2. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Danny Briottet & Rico Conning Remix)
3. “Warsong” (Daybreakers Remix)
4. “Alone” (Four Tet Remix)
VINYL 2
SIDE A
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Mental Overdrive Remix)
2. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Cosmodelica Electric Eden Remix)
3. “A Fragile Thing” (Sally C Remix)
4. “Endsong” (Gregor Tresher Remix)
SIDE B
1. “Warsong” (Omid 16B Remix)
2. “Drone:Nodrone” (Anja Schneider Remix)
3. “Alone” (Shanti Celeste ‘February Blues’ Remix)
4. “All I Ever Am” (Mura Masa Remix)
VINYL 3
SIDE A
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Craven Faults Rework)
2. “Drone:Nodrone” (JoyCut ‘Anti-Gravitational’ Remix)
3. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Trentemøller Rework)
4. “Warsong” (Chino Moreno Remix)
SIDE B
1. “Alone” (Ex-Easter Island Head Remix)
2. “All I Ever Am” (65daysofstatic Remix)
3. “A Fragile Thing” (The Twilight Sad Remix)
4. “Endsong” (Mogwai Remix)
3CD
CD1
1. “I Can Never Say Goodby” (Paul Oakenfold Cinematic Remix)
2. “Endsong” (Orbital Remix)
3. “Drone:Nodrone” (Daniel Avery Remix)
4. “All I Ever Am” (meera Remix)
5. “A Fragile Thing” (Âme Remix)
6. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Danny Briottet & Rico Conning Remix)
7. “Warsong” (Daybreakers Remix)
8. “Alone” (Four Tet Remix)
CD2
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Mental Overdrive Remix)
2. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Cosmodelica Electric Eden Remix)
3. “A Fragile Thing” (Sally C Remix)
4. “Endsong” (Gregor Tresher Remix)
5. “Warsong” (Omid 16B Remix)
6. “Drone:Nodrone” (Anja Schneider Remix)
7. “Alone” (Shanti Celeste ‘February Blues’ Remix)
8. “All I Ever Am” (Mura Masa Remix)
CD3
1. “I Can Never Say Goodbye” (Craven Faults Rework)
2. “Drone:Nodrone” (JoyCut ‘Anti-Gravitational’ Remix)
3. “And Nothing Is Forever” (Trentemøller Rework)
4. “Warsong” (Chino Moreno Remix)
5. “Alone” (Ex-Easter Island Head Remix)
6. “All I Ever Am” (65daysofstatic Remix)
7. “A Fragile Thing” (The Twilight Sad Remix)
8. “Endsong” (Mogwai Remix)
Alice Cooper says that making a new album with his original bandmates — the first in more than 51 years — was like riding a proverbial bike.
“Oh, very much so,” the veteran shock rocker tells Billboard by phone from his home in Phoenix, speaking about the upcoming The Revenge of Alice Cooper (out July 25 on earMUSIC). “It was very much like this was our next album after (1973’s) Muscle of Love, just like, ‘OK, this is the next album.’ Isn’t that funny after 50 years? All of a sudden it just falls into place.”
Producer Bob Ezrin, meanwhile, says that the band on The Revenge… was eerily similar to the group he worked with on platinum Cooper 70s albums such as Love It to Death, Killer, School’s Out and Billion Dollar Babies. “None of them has changed much as a person,” Ezrin notes. “Obviously everyone’s older and more mature and more settled, but when we all get together and I watch the interplay between them, it’s like they just walked out of high school and were hanging out in the local cafe. They just revert to type. They revert to who they were as kids when the first got together… and make music together like they did 50-some years ago.”
The 14-track album reunites Cooper with guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neil Smith. Guitarist Glen Buxton passed away in 1997 at the age of 49 — the album is dedicated “to our brother Glen Buxton” — and he’s represented on two songs. “What Happened to You” is built from the riff on an old demo tape Dunaway and Buxton made together and the limited-edition box set bonus track “Return of the Spiders 2025,” is an upgraded remix of a track from the group’s second album, 1970’s Easy Action.
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The set also features another bonus remix, of the “Titanic Overunderture” from the group’s 1969 debut, Pretties For You, and a remake of the Yardbirds’ “I Ain’t Done Wrong” from 1965 — a nod to a favorite band of Cooper and company that it covered during their early days as the Spiders on Phoenix.
Cooper will be premiering the first single, “Black Mamba,” on Tuesday (April 22) on the latest episode of his syndicated radio show, Alice’s Attic. Featuring Robby Krieger of the Doors, a friend since the band’s late 60s days in Los Angeles, it was, according to Cooper, “definitely an Alice Cooper, from-the-ground-up song” created during studios sessions for the album.
“It wasn’t even a song yet,” Dunaway recalls. “We’re in the studio and we start jamming on the riff and warming up together. The next thing you know we get this swampy feel and decide it’s gonna be about a Black Mamba snake, which is very deadly, and it fell into place. It was so new Alice had to stop us at one point and ask me if I remembered what the melody was. It was very spontaneous.”
For Ezrin — who also co-wrote songs, sang backup and played keyboards and percussion on the LP — “Black Mamba” in particular defined what The Revenge… was going to be. “When we started to play that it’s when I knew the spirit of the Alice Cooper group was back and that what we were making was very much an album that could’ve been in the 70s, when we were last together. It had the psychedelia, it had the artful drumming and bass playing, the great atmospheric guitars. It has Alice telling a really fabulous story, in character.”
Cooper adds that, “We didn’t know where it was gonna go. At the end we looked at each other and went, ‘Oh, that’s pretty good!’”
The Cooper crew has been working its way towards another full album for more than a decade.
Its split in 1974 — after seven albums over six years, and such iconic hits as “I’m Eighteen,” “School’s Out,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and more — was acrimonious but not insurmountable. “We didn’t’ divorce as much as we separated,” Cooper explains. “There was no anger, no bad blood — not for very long anyway.”
Dunaway adds that, “the breakup wasn’t what the band was about; the togetherness was. After all of these years we’ve buried a lot of hatchets.” Bruce and Smith performed at the opening of one of the Alice Coopers’town restaurants in Phoenix during 1988 and all four living members played for the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2011.
That led to song collaborations on several of Cooper’s subsequent albums — Welcome 2 My Nightmare in 2011, Paranormal in 2017 and 2021’s Detroit Stories, and on Oct. 6, 2015, the four played an eight-song set at Good Records in Dallas to celebrate Dunaway’s memoir Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Group; the show was subsequently released as the Live from the Astoturf album and DVD three years later.
And during 2017, Bruce, Dunaway and Smith performed as special guests on the U.K. dates of Cooper’s Spend the Night with Alice Cooper world tour.
“All of those things got everybody reacquainted — reacquainted is a weird term ’cause we’re so much like family, so it’s more like a family reunion,” Dunaway says. “Then Alice and Bob called and were talking about, ‘Oh yeah, we want to do an album,’ because there’s so many songs kicking around.”
Ezrin explains that, “We’ve worked together here and there over the years. The boys played together… and every time it’s been a joy and complete pleasure, and kind of like going home. So we finally decided, ‘Let’s just do a whole album, an Alice Cooper group album like we used to.”
Work on The Revenge… actually began in Phoenix a few years ago, when Cooper, Bruce, Dunaway and Smith gathered together to try out songs. Dunaway recalls that he and Smith each came in with around 30 songs, putting them on par with Bruce, who was the band’s primary music writer during the 70s.
“Dennis and Neil really blew my mind,” Bruce says. “They’ve come a long way as writers. I just can’t say enough about their songwriting. We all are songwriters now; it’s a real battle of the songwriters. I’m so proud of the band.”
Cooper maintains that he’s long felt, “if we’re gonna do an original Alice record, I want it to sound like the original Alice band. The original band has a darker sound, and a heavier sound. It’s a very different personality, and I even sing differently when I sing with those guys.
“On this (album) it was much more of a band, where each one of us has a certain say. In other words, it wasn’t like my albums. I’m not gonna have a final say on it; I had one-fourth of the say on it, and that’s the way we always did it,” he adds. “I think the best thing about this is normally Bob and I would go, ‘OK, wait a minute — that doesn’t necessarily fit. That shouldn’t go there.’ When we’re working with this band, we go, ‘No, let it go there,’ ’cause that’s what the original Alice Cooper Band did. We would see where it should go, and 70 percent of the song went where it should go, and the about 30 percent of the song went in another direction — but it all sounded like it fit.
“That was the difference. When we heard that, we kinda laugh and say, ‘Let’s go there.’ On my albums I wouldn’t go there, but on this album, we go there.”
Filling Buxton’s role on The Revenge… is Gyasi Hues, a Nashville player who was recommended to Ezrin by Mike Grimes, owner of Grimey’s New & Preloved Music in Nashville and checked out by Dunaway and Smith in a local club. “Neil and Dennis were slightly skeptical,” Ezrin says.
“Nobody wants to replace Glen, and they hold jealously onto his memory and their love for him. But very early on (Hues’) started playing some really cool stuff and the guys were looking around going, ‘That’s kinda great.’ So we have the Alice Cooper group, not with Glen Buxton but with somebody who honors Glen Buxton.” A number of other players, primarily Connecticut guitarist and instrument merchant Rick Tedesco, also appear on The Revenge…
Tracking sessions for The Revenge… began during August of 2022 in Nashville, with other recording done in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Hollywood and Glendale, Calif., and Cooper’s vocals recorded at Noble Street Studios in Toronto.
As word about The Revenge… filters out, Dunaway says the band is “ready to explode with excitement because we’ve kept it secret for so long.” There’s no word yet, however, on whether the four will regroup to play live to support it; Cooper already has a full slate of touring ahead this year, including a May and August dates in the U.S., summer shows in Europe and a co-headlining run with Judas Priest during September and October.
“We haven’t even gotten to that point yet,” Cooper says about putting the quartet back on stage. “I don’t really see it being a full-out tour; it would be very, very hard, I think, if you haven’t done it for a long time. But I could see it being a feature, like going into certain cities — Detroit, New York, L.A., London maybe, and doing a half-hour or 40 minutes in a club or something. We always leave those things open, and if it looks feasible then we do it.”
His bandmates are game. “If (Cooper) asks, I’ll be there,” says Bruce, who continues to write and plays in a local band in Arizona. “I’m an Alice Cooper trouper.” Dunaway, whose various musical endeavors include Blue Coupe with former members of Blue Oyster Cult, adds that, “It has always depended on Alice. If Alice gives us a call, we’re there. We’re ready.”
And while Dunaway considers The Revenge… to be “a full-circle moment” for the original Alice Cooper band, all concerned seem to feel like it’s not the last thing they’ll do together.
“Dennis was talking about a one-off album, and I’m like, ‘Who says it’s a one-off album,” says Cooper, who’s working on his next solo album with Ezrin. “I have no problem working with these guys all the time. I can be doing my albums, working with them. I’ve got the Hollywood Vampires. I’m in the Solid Rock band for all the kids at Solid Rock (his youth centers in Arizona). I’ve got to keep remember what band I’m in! But doing (the original band) again is great. I’ll always be up for that.”
The Revenge of Alice Cooper is currently available for pre-order. The full tracklist includes:
1. “Black Mamba”
2. “Wild Ones”
3. “Up All Night”
4. “Kill The Flies”
5. “One Night Stand”
6. “Blood On The Sun”
7. “Crap That Gets In The Way Of Your Dreams”
8. “Famous Face”
9. “Money Screams”
10. “What A Syd”
11. “Inter Galactic Vagabond Blues”
12. “What Happened To You”
13. “I Ain’t Done Wrong”
14. “See You On The Other Side”
15. “Return of the Spiders 2025” (bonus track)
16. “Titanic Overunderture” (bonus track)
Stevie Nicks is working on her first new solo album in 14 years. The legendary Fleetwood Mac singer and solo star shared the news during her induction into the Pollstar Hall of Fame on Wednesday (April 16). “I’m actually making a record right now,” Nicks said in her induction speech.
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“I call it the ghost record. It just really kinda happened in the last couple of weeks because of, you know, the fires,” she said in seeming reference to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year, during which she was displaced. “I was sitting in a hotel for 92 days, and at some point during that last part of the 92 days, I said, ‘You know what? I feel like I’m on the road, but there’s no shows. I’m just sitting here by myself because everybody else is at the house, doing all the remediations and everything, and it’s just me, sitting here.’ And I thought, ‘You need to go back to work.’ And I did.”
Nicks, who was inducted by longtime friend and former producer Jimmy Iovine, said she’s already written seven songs for the album, a follow-up to her seventh solo LP, 2011’s In Your Dreams. She described them as “autobiographical, real stories where I’m not pulling any punches for probably the first time in my life. They are not airy-fairy songs that you are wondering who they’re about but you don’t really get it. They’re real stories of memories of mine, of fantastic men!”
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Nicks, 76, recently announced a run of summer and fall solo shows she’ll embark on in between stadium gigs with old friend Billy Joel. The tour will kick off on Aug. 12 in Boston and include shows in Toronto, Saint Paul, MN, Cincinnati, Columbus, Tampa, Phoenix and Las Vegas before winding down in Oklahoma City on Oct. 15.
The news about new music comes seven months after Nicks dropped the moving single “The Lighthouse,” a women’s empowerment anthem inspired by the Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.
Watch Nicks discuss the album below.
Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe are teaming up for a hard rock destination festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico this winter. The legendary hard rock groups will set up shop from November 7-9 for the Rock the Tides fest, which will also include sets from Poison singer and solo performer Bret Michaels, Extreme, the Struts, Buckcherry, […]
The New Pornographers have “immediately” severed ties with drummer Joe Seiders after the longtime member of the rock collective was arrested in Palm Desert, CA for possession of child pornography.
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According to a press release from the Riverside Sheriff’s office, Seiders was arrested after officers were dispatched to investigate a report of suspicious activity on April 7 at a Chick-Fil-A restaurant, where an 11-year-old boy told officers that an unknown man had recorded him on a cell phone while he was using the bathroom. Two days later, police said an employee at the same restaurant reported that the man was seen entering and exiting the restroom with juvenile males.
“Believing the male was the suspect from the previous incident, law enforcement was contacted. Upon arrival, deputies located the suspect, identified as 44-year-old Joseph Seiders of Palm Desert, and took him into custody,” read the release. After an investigation, officers served search warrants on Seiders’ residence, vehicle and cell phone, where they reportedly found evidence implicating Seiders in both incidents and “additional crimes,” which they said included possessing child pornography.
Seiders was booked into the John Benoit Detention Center in Indio, CA for possession of child pornography, annoying/molesting a child, invasion of privacy, and attempted invasion of privacy. At press time a spokesperson for the band had not returned Billboard‘s request for additional information on the incident.
In a statement on Instagram, the band wrote, “Everyone in the band is absolutely shocked, horrified and devastated by the news of the charges against Joe Seiders — and we have immediately severed all ties with him. Our hearts go out to everyone who has been impacted by his actions.”
Seiders joined the Canadian indie power pop supergroup — which formed in Vancouver in 1997 — in 2014, joining charter members singer Neko Case, singer/guitarist Carl Newman and bassist John Collins. He appeared on their 2017 album Whiteout Conditions, as well as 2019’s In the Morse Code of Brake Lights and 2023’s Continue as a Guest, as well as their recent single “Ballad of the Last Payphone.” The drummer is being held at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility with bail set at $1 million and is scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Tuesday (April 22).
Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.