Jan. 21, 2015

RollingStone.com and Alice Cooper on Death-Defying Drumming, Bodily Functions

SOURCE:  RollingStone.com

BY KORY GROW

When you gather all four members of Mötley Crüe and Alice Cooper, the conversation will inevitably turn to subjects that are both dark and profanely funny. Seated in a New York City hotel room, everyone is dressed appropriately in black to talk about what lies ahead: the Crüe’s final concert and how they will say goodbye.

“Alice, can you build us three more guillotines, and then we’ll just end it?” usually tacit Crüe guitarist Mick Mars suggests, referencing one of the shock rocker’s most infamous stage props.

“Better, it’s a puff of smoke and when it clears, there’s just skeletons up there with your clothes on – and that’s it,” Cooper offers.

“That sounds good,” Mars rejoins, looking content as everyone laughs.

After December 31st, 2015, the only show Mötley Crüe will be playing will be the great gig in the sky, to borrow a phrase from Pink Floyd. Last year, the band’s original four members – Mars, vocalist Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee – signed a “cessation of touring agreement,” a legal document that prohibits them from playing together ever again beginning on New Year’s Day of next year. So, starting last summer, the group, along with special guest Cooper, has been making the rounds on its ultimate victory lap, the “Final Tour,” complete with unwieldy pyro (“The first blast of fire I think singed my eyebrows off,” Cooper tells the band, “It took my breath”) and a full-scale drum roller coaster dubbed the “Crüecifly.”

This week, Mötley Crüe announced the final 34 concerts they’ll be playing in North America, most of which feature special guest Cooper and all of which will feature the Crüecifly, culminating with a blowout at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The Crüe also put out a new song, “All Bad Things” – as in the tour’s slogan, “all bad things must end” – which may or may not be their final song, depending on whether they write new music for the upcoming Hollywood adaptation of their 2001 memoir The Dirt. The band claims to have other surprises planned but is keeping mum on what they may be.

Currently, though, as they tell Rolling Stone between stories of lascivious debauchery and forked-tongue-in-cheek death jokes, their sights are firmly set on the end of their touring career, the reason they’ve gathered together in the first place. Even if it kind of weirds them out.

Read Full Interview at: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/motley-crue-final-tour-dirt-biopic-alice-cooper-20150121#ixzz3PfBs9j9O
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