A longtime friendship is what made the Doors’ Robby Krieger an appropriate guest for the first single from the new album from the original Alice Cooper Band.
Krieger plays electric guitar on “Black Mamba,” the opening track on The Revenge of Alice Cooper — the first full album in more than 52 years to feature Cooper, guitarist Michael Bruce, bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neil Smith (and, by virtue of technology, the late lead guitarist Glen Buxton).
“Every once in awhile Alice calls me to play golf and stuff and I call him,” says Krieger, who also appears on two tracks on the self-titled 2015 debut album by the all-star Hollywood Vampires that Cooper fronts. “We’re buddies from way back in the day.”
Krieger is also good friends with Bob Ezrin, Cooper’s friend since back in the 1970s when he produced the group’s first albums.
“I’ve known Bob for a long time,” the guitarist notes. “He said, ‘Hey, I think this song would be perfect for you to play on, and it really was. I got it on my email, and it was right up my alley. I enjoyed it a lot.’”
Cooper adds that Krieger was an early and instant choice to be part of “Black Mamba.”
“I was listening to it and going, ‘Robby Krieger,’ and he’s perfect on this,” he explains. “I said, ‘I want early Doors, that slinky, snaky stuff that you played,’ and he goes, ‘Okay’ and just nailed it. I couldn’t have asked for anything better than that.”
Ezrin also felt that the Doors’ “integral part of the history of Alice Cooper” made the choice a no-brainer.
“When we were talking about guitar players for this thing, originally, I was thinking, ‘Boy, wouldn’t it be great if Robby did “Black Mamba” with us.’”
Because sessions were being held in Connecticut and Nashville, however, Krieger joined the Cooper crew through technology.
“He preferred not to travel,” Ezrin says, “but we did get this performance from him in Los Angeles, and it added that whole kind of early ’70s, late-‘60s psychedelia to the song, and kind of a legitimacy. Krieger was the guy that Glen would have been most sort of emulating and watching back then.”
For no reason, they let us come in and hear them record, and then we ended up opening for them.”
— Alice Cooper
The Cooper band met the Doors not long after it moved from Phoenix to Los Angeles during late 1967.
“The Doors were the first band that really took us under their wing when we came to L.A.,” recalls Cooper, who’s also quoted extensively in the Doors’ new band memoir Night Divides the Day: The Doors Anthology.
“And for no reason, they let us come in and hear them record, and then we ended up opening for them. And that was an education right there, watching Jim [Morrison] and what he did onstage. Since then I’ve always been friends with Robby and those guys.”
Krieger says it was his wife, Lynn, who met Cooper and company first and subsequently introduced him to them. “They were from Arizona, kind of not too hip, but they were funny,” he remembers. “They were unusual, and they of course were big Doors fans, so we would hang out together quite a bit, and we got tight.”
Bruce relates that it was Buxton who “used to go and hang out with them a lot. He’d hitchhike up there and we wouldn’t see him for days, ’cause he was hanging out with the Doors. We didn’t know where he was.”
Cooper debuted “Black Mamba” on his Alice’s Attic syndicated radio show on April 22, while The Revenge of Alice Cooper album — which includes a version of the Yardbirds’ “I Ain’t Done Wrong,” a tune the band played during its early days, and, on bonus editions, an upgraded remix of “Return of the Spiders” from the group’s second album, 1970’s Easy Action.
We wouldn’t see him for days, ’cause he was hanging out with the Doors. We didn’t know where he was.”
— Michael Bruce
Krieger, meanwhile, continues to perform, including a monthly appearance at the Whisky A-Go-Go in Los Angeles where he plays a Doors album in its entirety (L.A. Woman was the disc of choice for May). He’s also planning a second album by his new band, the Soul Savages, to follow up its debut from 2024, and he’s recorded a rock-reggae album, featuring the late bassist Phil Chen, that he plans to put out later this year.
“I’m kind of excited to get that out,” Krieger says. “I’m still trying to think of a title — maybe Rock vs. Reggaeor something like that. We’re working things out now, but it was really fun to do, something kind of different for me. I really enjoy playing that style.”
