Former ALICE COOPER drummer Neal Smith recently released a new CD under the project name KILLSMITH. It’s full of the same nasty stuff that powered the first few Cooper records. AntiMusic’s Morley Seaver spoke with Neal to talk about the new music. Here’s an excerpt:

AntiMusic: How did the Killsmith project evolve in terms of when were the songs written and why did you go with that name instead of using your own name?

Smith: "I just wanted something that was a little bit rawer. And just putting the name Neal Smith to it, it just demanded something with a little more guts to it. And a long time ago, when people, with JIMI HENDRIX and THE WHO and those bands were starting to come out in the late sixties, early '70s, really power rock. It wasn't like the Stones, like hard rock, and there really wasn't the term heavy metal at the time. And we used to just call it Kill Rock. That was an expression we used to use. So I kind of used the combination of kill rock and my last name for Killsmith. And also, if a black smith makes horseshoes or a goldsmith deals in gold and making precious metal jewellery and what have you, then Killsmith simply means, creator of really powerful music. So that was sort of the inspiration for it."

AntiMusic: Tell me about the song "Naked And Raw".

Smith: "Well, Naked And Raw, well you know, we just talked about that and to me that was my tribute to all the starlets that have been through the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s. Plus, it was a great way to get some naked chicks to take pictures with me and have the girls kiss. I mean let's be realistic about this, Morley.

AntiMusic: A lot of bands that make it in a big way can point to a singular event that put them over the top, such as Woodstock or whatever. Was there one event or thing that helped Alice Cooper punch through?

Smith: "Well, I know, there were several. And I always tell everybody, one of them was of course FRANK ZAPPA discovering us and wanting to sign us. That was the first one. The next one was Shep Gordon - and I may pick one of these as number one or maybe you can - the next one was Shep Gordon deciding to manage us and he still manages Alice to this day. He managed LUTHER VANDROSS, TEDDY PENDERGRASS, BLONDIE, ANNE MURRAY.

Right before that was the chicken incident in Toronto. And that put us on the map nationally where nothing we'd ever done because prior to that, because at that point we'd sold maybe 15 thousand albums between Pretties For You and Easy Action nation-wide. That's not a lot of records obviously back in those days. So, this band that had no record sales had this huge underground. All of a sudden everybody in the country, it was a United Press release or whatever it is, throughout Canada and America, and that was a huge thing for us. And after that, I would say having Nimbus 9 and Bob Ezrin. Being able to take the songs we were writing and put them into hit album after hit album, after hit album, I think that was huge. You know there were a couple of publicity things obviously, when School's Out, the other big publicity thing we did that happened, the panties that was the dust cover for School's Out, that they were actually, something in customs, they wouldn't let them come into the country because they weren't flammable, or I should say they were flammable and you know, whatever it was, it was like the chicken incident, Alice biting the head off a chicken and drinking the blood which was great. It just doesn't get any better than that. But with the panties, those were the two big things. I really think it was, and another thing that was great about it, it put Alice Cooper on the map in Canada as well with Bob Ezrin. Multi-national isn't the right word but I'm very proud of that. You know there were good producers in America but I mean it was just the expanse of the band…it was great. And I just love those guys. A couple of years ago I was up there for their 40th year reunion in Toronto. I do mean it, they're part of the family."

You can read the whole interview here.