The early ’80s, to be exact — a period that found Cooper in the midst of a commercial and personal low point while releasing the albums Flush the Fashion, Special Forces, Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa between 1980-83. While plenty of veteran artists tend to ignore their less celebrated work, Cooper seems open to revisiting some of the better tracks from those LPs.
During the first episode of Ask Alice, which you can watch above, Cooper is asked if he’d ever consider re-recording songs he released during that period. “Every one of those albums catches a different part of your life and is a portrait of where you were at that time,” he says initially. “So in some ways it’s kind of taking away from the history.”
And while he doesn’t suggest those records contain his best work, he’s still willing to stand behind them as honest snapshots from a dark time. “I was insane during these four albums, and I think the insanity shows up on the albums and the lyrics and I don’t think I’d want to play with that,” he continues. “It was a certain insanity that was privately mine, and everybody got to see it.”
Still, Cooper admits the temptation to tinker with the recordings is there. “There are certain songs that I keep going, ‘I want to redo that song – that song could be applicable today. It worked in 1981 but it would be really good today.’ So possibly, yeah,” he shrugs. “That’s something producer Bob Ezrin and I would talk about.”
In the meantime, Cooper’s still gearing up for his guest-laden covers album, which may finally arrive in record stores this fall.
