The following story is courtesy of Jam! Showbiz:

ALICE COOPER says he won't get around to doing the Along Came A Spider tour until 2009, he already has a horde of ideas in terms of props, stage design and illusions. But first he has to get through this current tour, one which started off on the wrong foot when Cooper broke a rib onstage on opening night.

"How about that?" Cooper says. "I've got 100 shows in front of me and it was during the very first show of the Psycho Drama tour. We have a song (Welcome To My Nightmare) where there's about six or seven zombies onstage. I just got bumped into one of the stairways and it hit me right on the corner. It healed up but the first five shows (afterwards) were just hell. Especially when they do the hanging there's a three-foot drop and there's a jolt when you actually stop. That jolt goes right to that there rib."

And while Cooper knows his stage shows and Alice Cooper persona has created a legion of fans, Cooper says there's one thing that has carried him this far.

"If you don't have the songs, you're dead," he says.

"If (DAVID) BOWIE didn't have the songs, he would be that orange-haired guy who was in space. If Elton didn't have the hits, he would be that funny little guy with the glasses.

"But when you have 'No More Mr. Nice Guy', 'School's Out', 'I'm Eighteen', 'Elected' and 'Poison' - then you have some validity because you've got the songs to back them up.

"I kind of feel sorry for young bands because the music business right now does not really give you more than three years. If you're in a band right now and you're the hottest band in the world you've got three years. And that's too bad.

"When I signed with Warner Brothers, they came right out and said, 'We want 20 records.' If you made mistakes they worked on those mistakes and they waited for the next album. If you start a band now and you have a moderate hit or a big hit, the record company's got 25 bands waiting outside for you to make one mistake and you're done. It's not about what's good, it's about what's next -- which is tragic."

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