Frank Zappa to Alice Cooper “I Sign You Because I Don’t Get It”

Alice Cooper has opened up about the first time Frank Zappa heard his music and the reasons why the virtuoso eventually signed his band.

“When we first played our stuff for Frank Zappa, Frank Zappa listened to it and it was very… Beautiful for you was very complicated,” Cooper said Ultimate classic rock.

“(The songs) were only two minutes long, but (there were) 38 changes in one song. And he sat there and said, “I don’t get it.” I said, ‘What?’ And he says, ‘I’m Frank Zappa and I don’t understand.’ And I said, “Is it good or bad?” And he says, ‘No, I’m signing you because I don’t understand.'”

He added: “Now people listened to that album at the time and they went… Okay, one guy reviewed it as ‘tragic waste of plastic’, which I thought was a great review. But now it’s being reviewed as art. People look at it and say, ‘This was so far ahead of its time.’ And some of it was.”

Elsewhere, Cooper also attributed the band’s growing chemistry and technical skills over the years to their longtime producer Bob Ezrin, saying the man “really forced us to become a really good band”.

“The band could play, but he was the one who came in and said, ‘OK, this part is great. This part is great. I don’t understand where you’re going with this part, because it doesn’t fit at all.'” And then Love it to death was born and it was the first time you could listen to an Alice Cooper album and go, ‘Oh, that’s Alice Cooper.’ Because he gave us a signature.”

In other news, the musician – who is embarking on his solo tour next month – recently confirmed that a new album with his touring band is on the way.

“I wanted to showcase the touring band,” he said, “so we wrote songs, went into the studio, and I said, ‘Here’s the deal on this album: No overdubs.'”

“I said, ‘Everything has to be done in the studio live, because the whole idea of ​​this album is to show how good this band is live.’