DENNIS DUNAWAY, the original bass player from the ALICE COOPER group is featured in a new interview with Jeb Wright at Classic Rock Revisited. An excerpt is available below.

An introduction from Wright: "Dennis Dunaway is, after all of this time, a member of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, along with the other original members of the Alice Cooper Group. It was a long road but the Hall finally figured out that the Coop Group were not only one of the most popular bands in hard rock history, they have influenced every aspect of today’s modern rock show. From the lights, to the theatrics, to the way the entire stage is set up and constructed, can be traced back to the days when a teenage Dunaway and a teenage Vincent Furnier (later to become Alice Cooper) were teammates on their high school cross country team. They dreamed of becoming rock stars and bringing the elements of old fashioned horror movies to the rock stage.

It took years to perfect their craft, and even longer to get the world to notice, but once they noticed, oh how they noticed! Alice Cooper became a phenomenon. They were loved by many, hated by parents and they terrified anyone over the age of 40 – maybe even 30. Many missed the point, the sense of humor and the tongue in cheek-ness of the whole thing but that only spurred record sales. Now, decades after they started that long road to stardom, they are getting the respect they deserve.

Dennis Dunaway still struggles for personal recognition, as many lump him in with the dozens of players that have been with Cooper since he left the original band. Even Alice admits that the concepts and designs that he earns his living on were a group effort. Real rock fans know who Dennis is but outside of the inner circle he is still not nearly as famous as his makeup wearing best friend."

Jeb: I think the press releases surrounding the Hall induction did a good job explaining who you were and why you were all going in the Hall and not just Alice.

Dennis: "Alice was very good about it. I have even seen, in more than one interview, where he would correct the interviewer and make sure they knew it was the original band. He would then have to correct the interviewer again a few minutes later. It is like they just can’t think about Alice Cooper being a band and they didn’t even hear him. When I meet people that I’ve known for a while, and one way or another, they find out my background, they can never remember what band it was that I was in. They think of Alice in Chains, or someone else, because they just can’t think of Alice Cooper as a band."

Jeb: How did you get back to working with Bob Ezrin and Alice on Welcome 2 My Nightmare? Was going back and recording with those two…was that a great thing for you?

Dennis: "Absolutely. First of all, there had been rumors about us being nominated at that point. Every year for the past fifteen years the rumor would come around but this year it was more intense and a bit more believable. We were also very excited to be going back in the studio with Bob Ezrin. My concern was that we wouldn’t sound like the original band any more, especially with Glen missing. I took Glen’s 1956 Harvard Fender tweed amp into the studio and we got a vase of a dozen red roses and we put a bottle of Seagram’s 7 in front of it and that was our shrine to Glen. We wanted his spirit in the studio with us. Anytime I play '18' or 'Schools Out' then Glen’s spirit is always with me.

Bob Ezrin was perfectly open. The dynamics could easily have changed. I have to tell you, the first time we ever worked with Bob was forty years ago, to the second day of that W2MN session. The thing that was very refreshing was that the humor was still flying. Some people might come in and see us laughing and look at the clock and see dollars ticking away while these guys are joking around. Getting all of this stuff done, under the gun, gets very intense; we had two days to record three songs. The humor helps with that. I also have to say that it was refreshing to see Bob still willing to try whatever ideas we were throwing out there; it was still the old chemistry. We kicked things around and we made the songs better by doing that. It really was like the old days."

Go to this location for the complete interview.