Judy Collins

Photo: WireImage.com

Interview

Judy Collins Talks GRAMMY Nomination, New Book & Tackling Addiction

Collins takes us inside her new book 'Cravings: How I Conquered Food' and why she's lucky to be a late bloomer

Steve Baltin

Monica Molinaro

Recording Academy

Oct 12, 2017 - 2:21 pm

Forty-one years after her last nomination, Judy Collins returned to the GRAMMY Awards in a major way in 2017. A 59th GRAMMY nominee this year for Best Folk Album for Silver Skies, the iconic folk troubadour got to honor two of her peers this year when she sang “Both Sides Now” in front of Joni Mitchell at The Recording Academy & Clive Davis' Pre-GRAMMY Gala and then the next day performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony.

It was a fitting kickoff the year for Collins, who will be taking more strolls down memory lane with her new album, Stills & Collins, and tour with one-time paramour Stephen Stills. Collins, of course, was the inspiration for the famed “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”

Collins talked about life on the road, her very open battles with food and alcohol addictions, chronicled in her new book, Cravings: How I Conquered Food, and how Mitchell first sang her “Both Sides Now” over the phone 50 years ago.

You’ve been touring on and off sporadically as of late, correct?
I’m always on the road. My life is a tour. I do about 130 shows a year, actually, and I’m just all about getting it out there.

You were nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Folk Album this year. What was your experience like?
I sang for the tribute to Leonard Cohen, which everybody said should have been on the main stage, and had a great time. It was a wonderful trip. Ari [Hest] and I loved every minute of it, and we were so honored to be nominated.

You also performed for Joni Mitchell at the Clive Davis event, correct?
Yes, I did, the night before the Grammys. It was very exciting.

What does it mean to you to get to have the chance to honor people you have such longstanding relationships with? It had to be extra special to perform for Joni.
Of course, that hit the high note, I must say. As I do. And you know, it was so magical to be there. It’s almost 50 years since I heard “Both Sides Now,” that’s pretty amazing, and the way I heard it was pretty amazing. I was sound asleep here in New York in my apartment on 79th street, and it was three in the morning, and the phone rang and thank god I woke up. I wouldn’t have necessarily done that because I’m sure I was drunk — after all it was the ‘60s — and I woke up and it was Al Kooper on the phone and he said to me, “I know I woke you up, but you’re not going to regret this.” And then he put Joni Mitchell on the phone and she sang me “Both Sides Now.” It’s how I heard the song. And I said, “I’ll be right over.” (Laughs)

Is that the most famous song that anyone’s ever sung to you over the phone, or have there been others?
I think that’s the best. I’m sure I’ve heard other things, but not like that.

Since you say the Joan [Baez]/Judy [Collins]/Joni [Mitchell] tour won’t happen at this point is there still a possibility of the Joan/Judy tour? That would be a pretty amazing double bill.
Well, put it out there. I don’t know. I just show up and sing, let’s put it that way. And I have incredible luck. I've just finished a tour and an album that was nominated, as you know, with Ari Hest, and that’s a dream come true, that has been a real gift to me. I never wrote a whole album with anybody. I never went on tour with a guy, or a girl; I’ve never been on tour with anybody. So that sort of blew my mind, that whole thing.

I love that you still get to learn and do new things. How much fun does it make it for you, getting to have these new experiences?
I’m very fortunate that for a lot of my life, I have never done anything like that. I’ve never written any songs with anybody at the length that I did with Ari. We’ve had about four years of being able to sing together, tour together, and make, really, the album that I made in 2015. It was based on the song that Ari wrote which is called “Strangers Again.” “Strangers Again” kicked the album off, so then I called Jackson Browne and Willie Nelson and Jeff Bridges and a lot of wonderful singers who all said, “Yes," they would be happy to sing with me. So I think that album reminded the GRAMMYs that I was still around here. It also got me back on the charts, which is amazing. And so I always look for and do different and wonderful things, and I’m lucky that a lot of them reach the public since that’s how I make my living. The new album that I released, the new CD and DVD that came out of [Stephen] Sondheim, is quite remarkable too, because I’ve been working on that for about 25 years. Ever since I went to Stephen and said, “I’d like to work on a whole other group of your songs,” and he said, “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” it’s taken a long time to get that to happen but it’s finally happened. Now it’s a PBS special and raising a lot of money for my favorite television channel and, you know, I work on different ideas all the time and sometimes they come to fruition.

Turning to your book, was it something that you had been aware of, these demons, and these battles all your life where now you were ready to talk about them in your book, Cravings: How I Conquered Food?
This happened to be the time to talk about it because I’ve been in recovery now for eight and a half years for a food issue, and sober for 38 years, almost 39. And I found a way, and I’ve talked about alcohol before and about recovery before, but the issue of the eating disorder has gone on simultaneously, but I really found a true solution and I want everybody to know about this because the question of allergy, compulsion, and how these foods fit into our lives and make us eat more or less, or create eating disorders, I don’t think it’s been approached in the way that I finally understand it. I certainly want people to know there’s an easier way to deal with it. It’s not complicated, it’s simple. It’s like science, like chemistry. You know, I’m an alcoholic so I don’t have food that has in it grain, flour, sugar, wheat, or corn. I don’t have alcohol so I don’t have those foods. However, in most of our food plans that we get involved with, we have that junk, so the food plan that I’m on, which was a gift from the twelve-step programs, I call them the anonymous programs, takes out the sugar, flour, grain, wheat, and corn. These are all foods found in alcohol, and in me, they set up a compulsion and an allergy. And it’s that simple.

You mention Mama Cass and Karen Carpenter. Do you feel it’s important to talk about this, especially with the pressure that people in this industry go through?
I wrote this book especially to let people know that there’s something to do about this and it’s not extreme, it’s accessible, that is not expensive, it doesn’t involve special clothes or shoes or buying all kinds of products and going broke. It’s very simple. You go online and you get into the anonymous programs and you find out who’s doing something that’s free and also healthy about food.

How has this lifestyle enabled you to do more with your music, your voice?
I’m just lucky and I love to work and I love what I do and being out on the road and also writing books and writing songs, I’ve been on an entire writing year, writing like a maniac. And it’s just because that’s what I can do so I get to do it and I feel so blessed and so fortunate to be able to. Thank god I have good health. There was a lot of questioning in the history of my own life that I would make it this far and be this healthy so I feel strongly that the better angels have a hold of me. That’s really the truth. I thought I was a late bloomer but an early starter.

'Suzanne': Watch Judy Collins' GRAMMY Performance

News

A Letter To Our Recording Academy Members And To Our Colleagues In The Music Industry

Read a letter from the Academy's Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees

Tim McPhate

Recording Academy

Feb 15, 2018 - 12:16 pm

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees is attuned to the calls to action that have resonated ever since the 60th GRAMMY Awards. We recognize the impact of the unfortunate choice of words from our President/CEO, Neil Portnow, in a post-GRAMMY interview. In the many letters and statements that we and our Board have received from some of our most respected artists, as well as prominent female and male music business executives, the message is clear: Our Academy and our industry must do a better job honoring and demonstrating our commitment to cultural, gender and genre diversity, in all aspects of our work.

The Recording Academy is a membership organization, first and foremost. Like all Academy members, our Trustees live and breathe music, and are embedded in the fabric of our industry. Our Board members - many of whom are women - include independent artists, songwriters, touring musicians, producers and engineers, visual and audio entrepreneurs, A&R executives, and music publishers. Our Vice Chair and former Chair/Chair Emeritus are women, and our National Awards and Nominations, Membership, Advocacy, and Producers & Engineers Wing Steering committees are all chaired or co-chaired by women. We honor the Academy, and we expect nothing less in return than strict adherence to musical excellence, an inclusive and diverse philosophy, meaningful outreach and communication, a purity of purpose, and an eagerness to embrace change as our musical culture and society evolve

The Academy’s commitment to our community resonates far beyond the nominations, winners and performers on the GRAMMY Awards. MusiCares, the GRAMMY Museum Foundation, and our Advocacy presence in Washington, D.C., speak to how much we care about all the people in our music family, whether they are Academy members or not. Our 12 Chapters nurture new generations of professionals in recording and business, and mentor Governors on our local boards to ally themselves with the issues they are most passionate about. At the heart of what we do, there is mutual respect and the belief that each of us has something unique and valuable to offer. The more diverse we are as an Academy, the better equipped we are to champion our members and our community.

The GRAMMY Awards have always been a positive and negative flashpoint and will likely continue to be because of the ever-changing nature of our world. We are constantly striving to reflect genre, gender, and ethnic diversity in our categories and fields. We welcome proposals from our members to make changes, and we debate all worthy ideas at an annual meeting dedicated solely to this purpose. Likewise, we have worked hard to ensure that our eligibility requirements reflect changing distribution methods. The advent of online voting and the ability to offer audio streams of nominated titles has been designed to make the voting experience convenient, while not compromising security.

The Academy is a thriving, fluid environment. It has a powerful agenda to do good work intended to improve the lives of those who create music, and to ensure that we respectfully participate in a culture where creativity can flourish. We look to our industry partners to provide opportunities for music creators to maintain their professional careers. We embrace the idea that with the help and support of dedicated artists and professionals, we will undertake a fresh, honest appraisal of the role of women in all aspects of our Academy and the industry at large, with the hope of inspiring positive change.

Our Board of Trustees is committed to creating a comprehensive task force that will take a deep look at these issues and make material recommendations on how we can all do better. We are pleased that our task force announcement has been well received, with many people offering to participate in work that will yield tangible results. As we continue to take the appropriate time needed to ensure that this action is well-conceived and properly developed, we ask you to remember what this is about: improving our community and creating opportunity for all. If we achieve this goal, we will all look back at this moment as one that has helped reshape the fabric of our industry.

Please be assured that the Executive Committee and our Board of Trustees holds all the Academy’s leadership to the highest standards. We respect and deeply appreciate the opinions of the artists and industry leaders who have spoken up since the GRAMMY Awards. We cherish the trust that you have in the Recording Academy, and pledge to honor this transformational moment of gender equality as we continue to recognize musical excellence, advocate for the well-being of music makers, and ensure that music remains an indelible part of our culture.

Respectfully,

The Executive Committee on behalf of the Board of Trustees
The Recording Academy

Leonard Cohen

Photo: Jack Robinson/Conde Nast Collection/Getty Images

Feature

'Songs Of Leonard Cohen': Leonard Cohen's Debut Album Turns 50

Go inside the groundbreaking LP with insight and commentary from Judy Collins, producer John Simon, Ben Folds, and more

Paul Zollo

GRAMMYs

Dec 27, 2017 - 8:04 am

"When Dylan emerged, he blew everyone's mind," said the poet Allen Ginsberg. "Everybody except Leonard Cohen, this is."

Leonard Cohen: Lifetime Achievement Award Acceptance

Ginsberg was right. Even before Bob Dylan transformed modern songwriting with his expansive folk poetry, Leonard Cohen was already there. A published poet and novelist in Canada, he was fusing poetry and song long before he officially became a songwriter. The switch to music, he said years later, came out of a hope to make a decent living.

That all changed 50 years ago on Dec. 27, 1967, with the release of his debut album, Songs Of Leonard Cohen. Even the title was telling: This was not an album about singing or rock and roll. It was about songs, and songs written by the artist himself.

His debut album was produced by John Simon, who had a creative hand in the landmark 1968 album Bookends for Simon And Garfunkel. Cohen's was an opening salvo unparalleled by any other (with the possible exception of John Prine, whose debut also contained instant folk classics.) He'd already written many of the songs that have since become modern standards, such as "Suzanne," "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" and "Sisters Of Mercy." But he never intended to sing them himself.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Songs Of Leonard Cohen (GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, 2015), go behind the scenes with some of the professionals who worked with Cohen on the groundbreaking LP, those who worked with him subsequently and artists whose lives and work have been forever impacted by this album and all that was to follow.

"The necessity to be cool has hurt rock. Leonard didn't conform to that idea of cool at all, which is the coolest thing of all." — Ben Folds

Judy Collins (vocalist/collaborator): A friend told me about Leonard in 1966, and said, "He's never going to amount to much, because his poetry is just totally obscure." Months later, she said he wanted to come and sing me his songs. I asked if they were obscure, and she said yes.

Leonard came to see me. His words were, "I can't sing, I can't play the guitar and I don't know if this is a song." Then he sang me "Suzanne." He also sang "Dress Rehearsal Rag."

I loved them both. I had almost finished my album, In My Life, and [label executive] Jac Holzman said, "You know, it's terrific. But it really needs something." And the something was Leonard. I recorded both songs.

John Simon (album producer): John Hammond signed Leonard to Columbia, but kept postponing recording. Leonard felt like he was festering in the Chelsea Hotel. He begged Columbia to assign another producer to him. That was me.

Collins: He came with me to a benefit I was in. I told him everybody knows "Suzanne" and wanted him to sing it. He said, "Well, I can't sing." I said, "Yes, you can," and pushed him onstage. Halfway through "Suzanne" he started weeping and walked off the stage. Backstage he said, "I can't do this." I said, "Leonard, you have to. You must do this. You're a wonderful singer." I went back onstage with him, and we sang together. That was the start.

Simon: Leonard was different from the other acts. They were kids. He was a grown-up. And an intellectual. He was already a published poet and novelist.

Ben Folds (singer/songwriter): The necessity to be cool has hurt rock. Leonard didn't conform to that idea of cool at all, which is the coolest thing of all.

Collins: Once Leonard got past the fear of performing, he became a spectacular, powerful performer. I was in awe of what happened with his work, and singing his own songs. It was really so deep.

Folds: The way he's singing, whether you like his singing or not, it makes you listen to the words. That's the main thing. As soon he opened his mouth, you think, "Well, he wasn't here to be Pavarotti. He really must have something to say."

Simon: Instead of using horns or strings, I used wordless female voices, sung by Nancy Priddy, my girlfriend at the time, who was uncredited. Until now.

Nancy Priddy (album vocalist): One night John said, "We've got to go in and finish Leonard's album." Most everything was done. He engineered too, so it was just the two of us in the middle of the night. We did little things to wind it up. I added all the harmonies, and we also hit on some tambourines and drums. John came up with all the harmony parts, and directed me. He's quite brilliant. It was an easy session, very casual — took maybe three hours, at the most.

Collins: As a guitarist [Cohen] was so good. It's not your common denominator. [His music] is very beautiful, and strikingly different.

Simon: Though Leonard joked that he had only one "chop," he was a good guitarist. He recorded "The Stranger Song" before we began, with that difficult, insistent triplet pattern that he had mastered with the fingers of his right hand. We used that triplet technique throughout.

Sharon Robinson (collaborator/co-writer): "The Stranger Song" is the testimony of someone questioning his heart. When we were on tour, he played it alone. Listening offstage, I was moved deeply by his performance. I have never forgotten it.

Simon: "The Stranger Song" made me think about his lyrics. Although Dylan paved the way with lyrics that were more thoughtful than the average pop lyric, Leonard's have more finesse. His scansion is stricter, his rhymes truer as a rule. Whereas Dylan's language had a connection to "the people," in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, blues and folk, Leonard's lyrics reveal a more educated, exposed, literate poetry.

Priddy: Songs like "Suzanne" were amazing. We would be in awe. We'd listen together all the time throughout the project, and we loved it.

Folds: I listened to "Suzanne" like I listened to Joni Mitchell. I listened to the story.

Simon: "Suzanne" is gorgeous. I love the track. The strings and the girls together with the vocal and guitar make a lush blanket of sound.

Folds: "Suzanne" has a simple melody, perfect to carry the poetry without making the lyrics secondary. It has only a few notes, so you recognize it, but it's so simple that the simplicity allows the poetry to exist. It's not something everybody can do. His melodies are very simple, but they're succinct.

Athena Andreadis (singer/collaborator): His melodies are like mantras, little meditations.

Robinson: "Suzanne" is a story of lovers found and lost, as is "Hey, That's No Way" and "So Long Marianne." These first songs became among his most important and defined him as an artist.

Andreadis: "So Long Marianne" has a Greek folk sound that I was drawn to — singing of goodbyes, life, death, and the afterlife, echoing in the silences.

Robinson: I love the sound of the background vocals on "So Long Marianne." It's so '60s!

Priddy: When he sings, "When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned," in "Sisters Of Mercy," it's so beautiful.

Andreadis: A song about the muses, "Sisters Of Mercy" has been healing for me; that place at the crossroads of western therapy and eastern spirituality, woven into the song like a breath of fresh mountain air.

Folds: He was outside of the rock lexicon. He didn't say, "Girl, I wanna take you higher." He didn't pay any attention to that. So what he did write about really stood out. When you hear those words, you really hear them.

Robinson: These songs created a palpable aura of love's intimacy and complexity. You feel them in the deepest levels of the heart.

Folds: I remember Rickie Lee Jones once saying a recording needs to have a ghost in it. I think that is definitely true of this album. There are ghosts in this record.

Peter Case (singer/songwriter): The way [Cohen] put words together, the attention to sound, was the thing that hit me. I see that now but it was an unconscious influence, like Mother Goose or Chuck Berry. The words carry rhythm and sound themselves, as does the shifting of vowels in each line. That had an impact on my own writing forever.

Collins: [Cohen] finds illuminating ways into songs that is all his. Where that comes from, in part, was music he heard in temple. His music has an element of chant, an element of the Kadish, the prayer for the dead.

Simon: Leonard and I did have some differences over some arrangements. But in spite of those, there was not a speck of animosity between us. This was before his immersion in Buddhism, and his subsequent reputation as the man in black, sharing that handle with Johnny Cash. In our time together he was cheerful, funny, very rarely dark. With his wit and intelligence, he was a joy to be around.

Folds: In this business, people who make super-tight, shiny records, they have taken over. But when Leonard made this album, you know the only reason it exists is to be a framework for the poetry that is included. And that's a special kind of record.

Robinson: Listening to this album now, I'm struck by the lightness of his voice, and the fluidity of those great melodies.

Simon: We ended the album with "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong." I liked the humor and the undercurrent of ardent young lust. As for the questionable taste of the ending with the recorder, the whistle and Leonard screeching way up high, what can I say? We were young.

Folds: Leonard was a real artist. There are a lot of fantastic songwriters and singers, but they're not 100 percent artists. They're compromised somewhere. But someone like him, I don't think there's any compromise at all.

Andreadis: He is a true master of lyrics, unsurpassed by any other. His words point to something much bigger, deeper and more profound, a truth we all seek and recognize.

Robinson: He knew songwriting was his calling. He once said to me, "Speak to them about them." He was concerned with the heart of mankind and the things we have in common as human beings. He stayed inside the process, which was the part he loved, the discipline of the writing itself. For him, it was a process of trusting and keeping the channels open.

Folds: People like Leonard, Dylan, Kristofferson, they have hijacked a form of folk music to penetrate your brain with poetry. And making a high art of folk music is a rare gift.

Leonard Cohen's Final Poetry Book 'The Flame' Gets Release Date

(Writer Paul Zollo is the senior editor of American Songwriter and the author of several books, including Songwriters On Songwriting, Conversations With Tom Petty and Hollywood Remembered. He's also a songwriter and Trough Records artist whose songs have been recorded by many artists, including Art Garfunkel, Severin Browne and Darryl Purpose.)

Midland

Photo: The Recording Academy

Interview

Midland: 'On The Rocks' At Austin City Limits

Country group on why music is essential part of their lives and collaborating with A-list songwriters

Lynne Margolis

Recording Academy

Oct 17, 2017 - 9:40 am

The guys in Midland know they’re in the midst of a moment they’ll only experience once: that sweet spot when a band’s star starts to rise and reality starts to resemble their dreams. Right now, they’re enjoying their growing fame, which began building with the release of their hit single, “Drinkin’ Problem,” and went into hyper-drive with the September 22 release of their debut album, On the Rocks, which entered Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart at No. 2.

The trio — lead vocalist Mark Wystrach, guitarist/vocalist Jess Carson and bassist/vocalist Cameron Duddy — hail from Dripping Springs, Texas, just outside of Austin. But their music owes as much to Bakersfield — and Laurel Canyon — as it does to Texas. Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam (whose song, “Fair to Midland,” inspired their name) and the Eagles form their foundation, George Strait and another inspiration, Gary Stewart, shore it up.

They spoke of those and other influences — and clarified their bona fides — following their Sunday set on the second of two Austin City Limits Festival weekends.

“I want to clear up one thing,” says Wystrach, in a voice that sounds nothing like the deep baritone of his singing. “Each and every one of us has been playing music since we were kids. Jess got into music at 9 or 10 years old; Cameron started in his first band at, like, 11. I grew up in a live country-music honky-tonk, since I was a baby sitting in my mother’s lap. Music has been an essential part of our lives.”

They didn’t come off some Music Row assembly line, in other words. They’ve put in the time, even though each had other career pursuits as well. Duddy, a northern California native, won an MTV Video Music Award for directing Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven”; he also directed Mars’ “24K Magic,” Fifth Harmony’s “Worth It” and Jennifer Lopez‘s “Ain’t Your Mama” — and Midland’s “Drinkin’ Problem.” Wystrach, who grew up on an Arizona ranch, acted and modeled (including underwear, though he says he was more often the guy who rode the motorcycle or horse in shoots, and spent far more time tending bar and waiting tables), and cofounded a footwear company, MOVMT. Carson, raised on an Oregon Christmas-tree farm, played in various bands, as did his partners.

They discovered they sounded great together when Carson and Wystrach showed up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to be groomsmen in Duddy’s wedding. They’d all known one another from their years in Los Angeles, where each had migrated in his early 20s to seek a music career; Duddy had been in bands with both. None of them had gotten very far, however; they hadn’t even released any music. But as they blended their voices in the mountains, they decided to give it another shot — together.

“This band felt like the first time that we had the opportunity to really do things right,” Wystrach says. He and Duddy followed Carson to Dripping Springs, where he’d moved with his wife, a horse-cutting competitor. As for why they chose Austin instead of Nashville, Carson explains, “When we started this band, country music itself was not even anything like it is today.”

Revivalists like Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson had yet to appear on the scene, much less sweep awards. “There was nothing in the ether that would have made us think that we could go to Nashville and have any effect,” he adds. “We wanted to play in honky-tonks.”

They got a weekday afternoon slot at Poodie’s, the famed roadhouse founded by Willie Nelson’s late manager. They also played places like the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, the fabled songwriting incubator where George Strait got his start. When the headlining band and bartender stepped out to smoke cigarettes, Wystrach recalls, Midland found itself playing to the club’s memorabilia-filled Strait shrine.

As he tells that story, he happens to be wearing a Strait-logoed T shirt. The band is somewhat dressed down today, but is known for its love of retro country glam (think Gram Parsons’ Nudie suit).

“We’re pretty unapologetic about having a great sense of fashion,” says Wystrach. “That’s part of the artistry.”

They honed both their look and their art while working their way along the honky-tonk trail. Eventually, they crossed paths with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, who share songwriting credit (as well as co-producing credit with Dann Huff) for several of On the Rocks’ 13 tracks. McAnally and Osborne found kindred spirits in Midland; the first time they wrote together, “Drinkin’ Problem” was the result.

“If you get to be exposed to other great artists who can help elevate and realize your full potential … you’d be a damned fool to not take that up and run with it,” Wystrach says.

But the efforts are truly collaborative, they add. And Duddy emphasizes, “We’re writing music that means everything to us. These are our stories; these are our songs. And we get the biggest kick out of writing together.”

One of Carson’s favorites on the album is “Electric Rodeo,” which describes the ups and downs of their current lifestyle with lines like, “We’re painting on our suits/we’re pluggin’ in our boots.”

“We intentionally went for a sort of Glen Campbell quality to that song,” he says. It matches the band’s collective personality: partly serious, partly tongue in cheek. And catchy as heck.

Chris Stapleton Wins Best Country Album

Alice Cooper

Interview

Alice Cooper Talks 'Paranormal,' Working With Larry Mullen & Bob Ezrin

Legendary shock rocker also discusses how Mick Jagger influenced his showmanship and how he doesn't let stress bother him

Nicole Pajer

Recording Academy

Oct 12, 2017 - 6:00 pm

Twenty-seven studio albums into his career and Alice Cooper is a songwriting pro. In fact, the famed shock rocker jokes that at this point in his life, you could challenge him to write about practically anything -- and he’d definitely take you up on that. “I can pretty much write what you want me to write. I try to find the punch line first and write backwards from there,” he tells GRAMMY.com.

For Cooper, the process behind every album is different and largely reflective of the chemistry between himself and his co-collaborators and during the studio sessions behind his latest endeavor, Paranormal, the creativity flowed seamlessly. In addition to bringing in a wildcard drummer, aka U2’s Larry Mullen, Cooper also reunited his original Alice Cooper Band for several of the tracks. The outcome is what he calls “an accidental concept album” and “very Alice Cooperish.”

Cooper chatted with GRAMMY.com about the evolution of his live show, his secret to being able to get away with so much on stage without overly offending the masses, and why he’s concerned that the era of rock stars may officially be over.

Walk us through the creation process of Paranormal. I’ve heard that you’ve been calling it “an accidental concept album.”
Well it really kind of was. In fact, we went out of our way not to do a concept. Bob [Ezrin] and I are sort of famous for doing concept albums from Welcome To My Nightmare on and we decided this time to just do a great rock and roll album. Of course, after we got done writing the whole thing, I listened back and realized that every single character has some abnormality that was kind of striking and the only word that I could come up with was “paranormal.” The word paranormal actually means “next to normal,” not being normal, and my whole career has been that. So the paranormal thing just really stuck. It just felt really good. It just seems very Alice Cooperish.

You had some great people contribute to this album – Larry Mullen, Roger Glover, Billy Gibbons. How did those collaborations come about?
Most of the time, when you do a song, then you kind of say, “Boy you know who would be great on this song…” and that’s kind of what happened. “Fallen in Love” was so Billy Gibbons that it was impossible to not make it with Billy. We called him up and he nailed it in two takes. Roger Glover is on the only song on the album that has any prog sort of feel to it, which is “Paranormal.” The Larry Mullen thing was totally different. Bob said, “Let’s do something that is revolutionary for us. Let’s go with a whole different kind of drummer, a drummer that wouldn’t normally play with Alice Cooper” and Larry Mullen was the perfect guy. I’ve never had a drummer who ever came to me and said, “Let me see the lyrics” because drummers usually care about what the bass player is playing. So the idea that he listened to the lyrics and he interpreted the lyrics was really kind of unique to me. I really liked what he ended up playing on every single song. The guy really changed the sound of the whole album.

You’ve put out 27 studio albums. Do you have a standard process of how you tackle writing and being in the studio or has that evolved over time?
When you’re working with different people - I’ve worked with everybody from Henry Mancini to Carole Bayer Sager to Jon Bon Jovi. I’ve written songs with everybody. It’s always one of those things when you write something and you look at each other and you go “Oh yeah.” In other word, that lyric is married to those chords and they really work together. And then there are also times when you look at each other and you go “This doesn’t work does it? OK let’s go onto something else.” You can always feel when there is something wrong but equally, you can feel when something is really right on the money and it just fits perfectly. This album seemed to really write itself. It was very simple to write. I was in the room with four writers who were all experienced writers so we knew when we were up against a wall and we knew when everything was just flowing.

You had the original Alice Cooper band perform on several of the tracks. How did that come about? And was it instant chemistry again when you guys got together?
The great thing about the original band is that when we did break up, we didn’t break up with any bad blood. There were no lawsuits, nobody was angry, nobody was mad at each other. It was more of a separation instead of a divorce so we stayed in touch with each other and that was very important. Neal Smith called me up and said, “Hey Mike Bruce is in town.” And I said, “Well I’m writing for the new album, why don’t you guys come over and we’ll write something?” So, they came over for a week to my house in Phoenix and we wrote about six or seven songs but two of the songs really stuck out as being real potential Alice Cooper songs. It was the first time that I was able to get Neal, Dennis, and Mike all in the studio together in Nashville and then me on the mic. I said, “Listen. Let’s record this live. Let’s not layer it. Let’s do this live.” It just sounded exactly like what Alice Cooper sounded like in 1974. The guys haven’t changed the way that they play. I haven’t really changed the way I sing and then all of a sudden, there it was, it really did work.

Is it harder or easier for you to write songs at this stage of you career?
Well, I’ve written so many songs at this point -- because I do write the lyrics and a lot of the melodies for most of my albums -- that if you came to me and said, “I’m writing a play about an elephant and a giraffe on top of The Empire State Building. Can you write a song about it? I would says, “Well do you want it to be a love song? Do you want it to be funny? Do you want it to be scary?” I can pretty much write what you want me to write. I kind of know how to do it now. I try to find the punch line first and write backwards from there.

You have such a great live band and seeing you with them really gives a new edge to some of your more classic material. Tell us about teaming up with players like Nita Strauss.
Nita is great, I was looking for a shredder, I was looking for a girl that could really shred on guitar. I wasn’t even looking for a girl; I was just looking for a guitar player who was a little more metal than the other two guys I have, because I already have two guitar players. I was looking for somebody who was really going to give me more of a modern sound and I heard her play and I said, “Whoever that is, I want that person.” She came on board and just nails it every night. She’s so good. Every once in a while, you just find the perfect fit and she just fit right into the band. The best thing about this live band is that everyone are best friends. You never hear any yelling or screaming or arguing backstage. It’s always just laughing. That makes a big difference when you’re touring. It just makes everything so easy and it’s like that every single night. If we do 100 shows, it will be like that every single night. A lot of guys when they’re in bands together, ego starts creeping in and soon you have a mess.

Can you talk a bit about the evolution of your live show? You seem to always incorporate the classics like the Guillotine and Frankenstein but then you’re always adding in new elements like the Trump and Hillary parodies for “Elected,” like you did last year. Is each tour different in terms of how you’re curating your set?
Yeah, well the one thing about it is that I know what songs I have to do. It’s not like I have a choice. I know I have to do “Poison,” “School’s Out,” “Eighteen,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” and “Under My Wheels.” Those are the songs that you have to do because the audience really demands it. I put in “Halo of Flies” because I want to show off the band a little bit where they have a long section where they just play and kind of show the audience that they’re amazing musicians. Then you’ve got the straight jacket and then you’ve got “Only Women Bleed” and “Cold Ethyl” and “Feed my Frankenstein.” All those things have to be in the show. The tradition is to always end up executing Alice somewhere in the show so you’ve got the guillotine song. At that point, you don’t have a lot of room to add new stuff so to me, I have to surgically implant one or two songs from the new album and to make sure that it flows with the rest of the stuff. The hardest thing is going through 27 albums and trying to please everybody. It’s just impossible. As soon as I get a show done, everybody loves it and then I get emails saying, “How come you didn’t play this? How come you didn’t play that?” And it’s a good problem to have except you have to just get to a point and say, “Look.” So what I did on this show is I started rotating songs in. We do this song and this song and then next week we take those two out and put these two in so you are always getting two or three fresh new songs in the show.

Are you ever amazed at what you are able to get away with on stage? You’ve always been the original shock rocker but we live in a day and age now where everybody has to be so politically correct. Everybody is so quick to jump on Twitter and criticize everything!
It’s so funny because I’m not politically correct; I’m politically incoherent. So I could care less. It’s a show and I keep telling them, “Look. It’s a show. It’s fantasy. It has nothing to do with reality.” So, if you see Alice Cooper beating up a doll, it’s a doll; it’s not a person and then when that doll comes to live and does a ballet and then Alice kills the ballerina, well then, the ballerina has every single right to kill Alice back. Most people come to my show understanding that I’m not trying to tell them anything. I’m not trying to be politically correct or incorrect. You’re there to see an Alice Cooper show, you’re there to have fun and I agree with you, I think we are so politically correct now that we are turning into a bunch of robots.

In the early days, there was nothing but complaints because that was back when I was upsetting everybody. I think now people look at what I do and they get the sense of humor behind it. At the same time, there are a lot of things in the show that are very pointed and kind of make a statement and make you go “What? I don’t know if you’re allowed to say that or you’re allowed to do that” and I can say, “Hey Alice is allowed to do anything that he wants to do.”

How important is it for a frontman to entertain a crowd like that? And does it bother you that so many of today’s artists seem to just stand on the stage and act like they are too cool to move around up there?
When I saw Mick Jagger, I understood what it was like to get on stage and strut. You have to have a lot of ego up there to be a rock star, you get up there and strut your stuff and be sexy and be funny and be cool and be rock. You have to be a bit of an outlaw, the whole idea of being a rock star was to be an outlaw. I think this last generation is just so afraid to stand out. Everybody wants to fit in, whereas I never wanted to fit in, I always wanted to be something different. So did Bowie and so did Jagger and Jim Morrison. We didn’t want to be like everybody else; we wanted to create a new character up there. It’s a little worrisome that there are so many teenagers that are afraid to be teenagers.

So what would your advice be to them in terms of how to captivate an audience?
I would say understand the fact that when you are on stage, you are bigger than life. I’m not trying to make everybody into some kind of theatrical character but when you’re on stage, you become something other than yourself. I am totally different than Alice Cooper, I couldn’t be more different than him. When I get on stage, I play this arrogant villain and if I was just up there going, “Hey everybody, Good to see you tonight. Let’s all have fun,” people would look at Alice and go “Oh that’s not cool.” Alice is supposed to be something other than human so I never talk to the audience. I sort of let what happens on stage talk to the audience.

Between your solo material and the Hollywood Vampires, you seem to be touring more than ever these days. What’s your secret to keeping up your energy and having your shows be as good as ever while so many of your colleagues seem to be slowing down?
I honestly think one of the great things is I’m not stressed about anything. Everything is in order in my life -- I’m happily married for 41 years, financially and spiritually in order and I really like what I’m doing. I can’t imagine being in a band where I just stand up there and sing the songs. That would just bore me to death but the fact that I’m doing exactly what I want to do is probably why I’m still doing it. I also never smoked cigarettes and I think not drinking and smoking has a lot to do with your longevity. I probably have the energy of a 30-year old, rather than a 69-year-old, whereas a lot of guys that are my age get done with a show and are exhausted. I actually feel great after a show!

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