alice cooper dada tour

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In Defense of … Alice Cooper’s ‘DaDa’

Alice Cooper can’t recall making DaDa , but that doesn’t mean that the 1983 album isn’t worth remembering.

The rock legend’s 15 th studio LP (eighth after breaking apart from the Alice Cooper band in the mid-’70s) is the third installment in Cooper’s “blackout trilogy.” That’s the term for the series of Special Forces , Zipper Catches Skin and DaDa – retroactively applied because Cooper was so deep in the throes of substance abuse in the early ’80s that he has no memory of recording any of the albums.

Although Forces and Zipper have their merits, DaDa is the lost classic of his career. It’s a strange semi-concept record that displays all of the hallmarks of classic Cooper: hard rock, killer melodies, macabre details and a bit of Broadway-style razzle dazzle. In the midst of an arc that involves multiple personalities, gender confusion, suicide and daddy issues (hence that winking title), the album is also a slice of dark comedy. After all, Cooper becomes a department store Santa and plays a used car salesman on the ’Murica send-up “I Love America.”

Listen to Alice Cooper's 'I Love America'

DaDa was probably too twisted to be a hit (even Cooper later called it “a really sick album”), although circumstances certainly conspired against it. In no shape to promote the LP with a tour, Cooper instead made his way to rehab and got clean for good after making the record. Warner Bros. essentially buried the album, failing to even release a single from DaDa in the States. Cooper had been on the label since “I’m Eighteen,” but with his mounting addiction struggles, the folks at Warner were only too pleased to have his contract fulfilled and their relationship severed (or, perhaps, guillotined).

Yet Warner Bros.’ lack of interest in Cooper helped make DaDa a more compelling album. According to longtime Cooper collaborator Dick Wagner, the label’s hands-off approach was freeing for the record’s primary creative team – Cooper, guitarist (and associate producer) Wagner and producer Bob Ezrin , who had built his career on releases for the Alice Cooper band. With no commercial expectations placed on the project, the guys ran wild in the studio.

Knowing that Cooper was about to be a former Warner Bros. recording artist, Wagner named a character “Former Lee Warner” – although it was later changed to Former Lee Warmer, suggesting that "Lee" might be some sort of undead creature. The album’s title wasn’t just a joking reference to parent-child matters (Cooper growls “ I just want to tell you you’re a lousy Dad ” on “Enough’s Enough”), but also a nod to the Dada artistic movement, which rejected the norms of society in favor of chaos. Surrealism, which came out of Dada, was represented on the album cover via a riff on Salvador Dali’s Slave Market With the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire   painting.

All of that could have become self-indulgent quickly, but even in his blackout phase, Cooper was too indebted to his ’60s music heroes to sacrifice songs for concept. As a story, DaDa makes about as much sense as Welcome to My Nightmare , because the melodies rightly take precedence over the plot. Logic goes out the window (keeping DaDa thoroughly Dada) as Cooper and Co. deliver a series of tuneful vignettes.

Listen to Alice Cooper's 'Scarlet and Sheba'

Inspired by flirty waitresses, “Scarlet and Sheba” presents a pair of seductive torturesses in a bold power ballad. Cooper runs his mouth a mile a minute as a truly Bad Santa on the hook-laden “No Man’s Land.” “Dyslexia” mixes bad puns and bouncy New Wave, but is a real head-sticker. “Former Lee Warmer” seems to take both its sonic and thematic cues from Phantom of the Opera .

On the dark end of the scale is the sinister title track, which opens the record with Floydian foreboding (no surprise that it was composed wholly by Ezrin, a Pink Floyd collaborator) and a child’s voice crying for “da-da” in the darkness. On the other end of that spectrum is the gloriously goofy “I Love America,” which finds Cooper sending up himself, his country, capitalism, misogyny, government, war and anything else that gets in the way of his performance. It’s sledgehammer satire delivered by a Hollywood vampire.

In between the haunted-house sound effects and the more comedic moments, DaDa also allows room for Cooper to delve into some of the actual demons that were ruining his life at the time. No stranger to confessional songwriting (see his 1978 rehab-themed LP From the Inside ), Cooper admits to some deeply disturbing problems on the album. It was likely no accident that one song was titled “Enough’s Enough,” while other songs dealt in the “personalities” that were brought forth by Cooper’s drinking and drugging.

Listen to Alice Cooper's 'Pass the Gun Around'

But no song was more of a cry for help than “Pass the Gun Around,” DaDa ’s dark closer that combines AM pop sensibilities with Beatlesque guitar by Wagner and true details from Cooper’s unhappy life. Cooper begins the tune by describing a character who requires vodka to start his day and is bleeding from his eyes due to the stuff in his body (both of which happened to Cooper). Soon, he switches to first person – “ I’ve had so many blackout nights before / I don’t think I can take this anymore ,” he wails. Cooper begs to be put out of his misery in the chorus.

The soaring ballad ends abruptly with a loud noise, though it sounds less like a gunshot than a lightning bolt (perhaps forecasting Cooper’s sobering wake-up call?). After DaDa came out and promptly flopped – failing to make the U.S. charts and barely scraping the U.K. ones – Cooper got clean and took an extended hiatus from recording. He returned as a pop-metal singer in the late ’80s, with songs positioned to hit the charts, but albums that lacked the craft, intricacies and sonic variety of his best solo work.

In so many ways, DaDa was the end of an era – Cooper’s time with Warner Bros., his partnership with Wagner (the two would never again work on a full album together) and his collaboration with Ezrin (who wouldn’t return, in full, to the world of Alice Cooper until 2011). DaDa was locked in the attic, dismissed as part of Cooper’s blackout era and disregarded for years by everyone but the most dedicated Cooper fans. Cooper has never performed any of the LP’s nine songs in concert. Decades later, the album deserves to be reassessed. Even in a severely compromised state, Cooper was capable of disturbingly great music.

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HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: DaDa – Alice Cooper

The start of the 1980s was not a good time for ALICE COOPER – both the man himself, born Vincent Furnier , and the music career he had embarked upon under the same name. As the new decade reared its head, Cooper found himself back in the throes of an alcohol addiction that he had seemingly kicked several years prior (as immortalised in 1978’s From The Inside ). Since then, Cooper had dabbled with a few new habits along the way, both chemical and musical. Kicking off the decade with a stylistic shift in new-wave influenced Flush The Fashion (1980), Cooper went on to release three more records he would later refer to as his ‘blackout albums’. At the tail end of this trilogy was DaDa , a haunting collection of tracks that still stands as Cooper ’s most unsettling.

Released in 1983, DaDa saw Cooper reunite with two of his most significant long-time collaborators. Producer Bob Ezrin had been part of the Cooper camp since the original band’s breakout and even guided the ship as Alice went solo, but had been absent from the musician’s records for the last six years. Guitarist and songwriter Dick Wagner had joined the fold when Cooper went solo and helped shape most of his 1970s solo output. Taking on similar roles as before, both Ezrin and Wagner would help write much of the material across DaDa . But they were also instrumental in getting it made in the first place.

Ahead of DaDa , Alice Cooper was contractually obliged to record one more album with Warner Brothers . However, Cooper was not in much shape to produce one nor particularly wanted to. Wagner – at the request of Ezrin – coaxed Cooper in to writing, staying at his home in Arizona and constantly riffing ideas in Alice ’s presence. Cooper eventually bit and the two started laying out the foundations of DaDa , before upping sticks to Toronto where Ezrin was located. Speaking to DecibelGeek in 2014, Wagner detailed that he and Cooper holed themselves up in the two-bedroom suite of a local hotel. They would write songs one day, demo it the next and fill the rest of the time drinking before eventually decanting to ESP Studios . There, they would refine and record with Bob Ezrin .

For the recording, the trio took a distinctive approach to instrumentation. While Wagner contributed guitar and bass, the vast majority of DaDa ’s music comes courtesy of the Fairlight CMI – a digital sampling synthesizer that, at the time, was state of the art. “This was one of the first sequenced and electronic based albums,” Ezrin noted to Carl Linnaeus in 2020. “But it’s dated, because those were the early days.”

Live instrumentation is light on DaDa , with only a few tracks sporting actual drums. The Fairlight took over more than just percussion though, providing multiple layers of odd sounds beyond standard synths – the approximation of horns on Fresh Blood and the pseudo-Native American atmospherics on I Love America for example. Ezrin spent hours painstakingly programming the various sounds, sequences and melodies that would bring the songs to life. As cutting edge as it was for 1983, time has made the Fairlight CMI sound somewhat thin production-wise. Yet, its inhuman sounds were oddly fitting for the strange material that the team worked up for DaDa , especially as Cooper continued to rejig and rewrite lyrics in the studio while the songs came together.

A concept album of sorts, the narrative thread on DaDa is loose at best with each track feeling like its own self-contained vignette. The central character, Sonny , seems to be someone dealing with multiple personalities that span the gamut from maligned son to shopping mall Santa. And while it’s played for laughs at points ( No Man’s Land features said Santa in an identity crisis, whereas I Love America is a sarcastic dressing down of the USA’s cultural idiosyncrasies), DaDa also provides some of the darkest material Cooper has ever committed to record. The disconcerting conversation of the opening track wouldn’t sound out of place introducing a KING DIAMOND record, whereas its follow-up Enough’s Enough bleakly details a child’s life being turned upside down. Even a dig at label Warner Brothers is transformed in to a piano-driven nightmare about an aging shut-in on Former Lee Warmer . But it’s closing track Pass The Gun Around that is the album’s emotional nadir, with protagonist Sonny seeing blood run from his eyes as he reaches for a morning drink. Speaking about the song to Linnaeus in 2014, Cooper mused, “When a writer writes, they’re always confessing a certain amount of what’s going on in their life.” Pass The Gun Around in particular paints a dismal picture of where Alice himself was at that point.

When Cooper , Ezrin and Wagner turned in DaDa to the label, Warner Bros . were surprised to say the least. The relationship between artist and label was already strained as a result of Cooper ’s last few albums tanking and Warner expected him to take the budget and part ways. As a result, DaDa instead released with little fanfare. With no promotion from the label and no tour from Alice , it made few waves commercially – in the UK, it squeaked on to the charts at #93 briefly, but didn’t even get a look in in the States. It wasn’t long after recording that Cooper himself would hit rock bottom and finally resolve to get clean for good.

As Cooper has no recollection of recording the album, it has been nixed from the musician’s modern narrative and none of its material has ever been played live. With no commercial aspirations for the record, DaDa is an honest and authentic representation of where Alice Cooper was artistically in 1983, reckoning with his problems through metaphor and dry humour.

Cooper has often spoken about ‘ Alice ’ being a character. When ‘ol’ black eyes’ returned three years later with Constrictor (1986), the ‘ Alice ’ introduced was almost a caricature of the original’s unhinged edginess. Surrealism was dropped for slasher flicks, art rock for hair metal and ‘ Alice ’ only existed on the stage. Off-stage, while sharing the same name, it seemed like the affable ‘ Vince ’ had regained control. The preceding decade had seen the distinction between ‘ Alice ’ and ‘ Vince ’ blurred as the man behind both fell deep in to addiction. DaDa in many ways marks a point where ‘ Alice ’ had won the power struggle entirely. Considering the record’s themes of split personalities and Sonny ’s difficulty dealing with their actions, DaDa feels like the last confessions of a now latent ‘ Alice ’ persona.

DaDa was originally released on September 28, 1983 via Warner Bros.

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3 thoughts on “ HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: DaDa – Alice Cooper ”

This made for good reading. Thanks. Dada is a beatufil album

My favourite album of all time. When Dick Wagner hits that note at 3:32 in Pass the Gun Around it’s pure magic. Fresh Blood is a masterpiece. No Man’s Land would’ve made a brilliant video.

My favorite Alice Cooper album! Even did a podcast on it recently. Also, the interview with Dick Wagner referenced here, if you are a fan of DaDa, is WELL WORTH a listen. Great article Sam! Very well done.

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The spectacularly strange and ambitious DaDa boasts all of Alice Cooper’s trademark moves, yet they’re reimagined for a generation raised on ’80s gothic rock and horror-movie soundtracks. The cinematic title track cloaks his hushed, half-mad murmurings in malevolent electronic textures, and “Former Lee Warmer” dips his obsession with Poe-style storytelling in orchestral darkwave. As for Cooper’s genius for social satire, “I Love America” is a biting takedown of Reagan-era patriotism riddled with machine-gun fire, military marches, and an A-Team reference.

September 1, 1983 9 Songs, 42 minutes ℗ 2007 Warner Records Inc. Manufactured & Marketed by Rhino Entertainment Company, A Warner Music Group Company

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Your home for metal album reviews, concert reviews, and interviews., from my collection #6: alice cooper – dada.

February 24, 2021 Joe Miller From My Collection 1

Welcome to another edition of From My Collection. Today, we take a deep dive into the catalog of one of rock’s most important figures, Alice Cooper. This Friday, the Coop will be releasing his twenty eighth studio album, Detroit Stories. And while I look forward to reviewing that album, today it’s all about album #15: DaDa.

Editor’s Note: In a recent conversation with Mr. Cooper, he confirmed that “Scarlet and Sheba” was indeed based on two cocktail waitresses. However, it was guitarist Dick Wagner who partook in the encounter that the song details, not Cooper himself.

The early 1980s were strange times for Mr. Vincent Furnier, better known to the general public as Alice Cooper. While the rest of his 1970s peers did their best to keep up with the heavy metal craze they started a decade earlier, Cooper took a creative 180 and went new wave. Mind you, when I say he went “new wave”, I don’t mean he started dressing goofy and relying solely on synthesizers. That menacing Alice Cooper edge remained present in both the lyrics and music. If anything, it was more intensified than on his late 70s releases. This was no coincidence.

By 1983, Alice Cooper’s drug dependency had reached an all time high. He was hitting the bottle harder than ever. Worse yet, he developed a crippling addiction to crack cocaine. This nearly killed him. In the midst of his boozed and cracked out insanity, Alice Cooper managed to write an unsung masterpiece; a musical suicide note within a meandering manifesto: DaDa . There’s only one little problem. The very man who wrote and recorded this album has zero recollection of doing so. Not only this, but he’s gone as far to say he has no idea what he was trying to communicate on here. This is where I come in. Mind you, what you’re about to read is NOT definitively what Alice Cooper was thinking at the time of writing and recording, but merely my interpretation and analysis based off research and critical listening.

According to late guitarist Dick Wagner, Cooper presented DaDa as a concept album. This wouldn’t be his first rodeo. After all, this is the man who gave us Welcome to My Nightmare and From the Inside . But while Welcome to My Nightmare was a collection of hard rock horror stories, and From the Inside a Broadway style extravaganza based on Cooper’s real life sanitarium stay, there was something darker and different about DaDa . The story centered around Sonny: a cannibal with multiple personality disorder. Each song would unveil one of his personalities. It was then up to the listener to determine which one of these personalities was the “real” Sonny. We can best guess that the “real Sonny” doesn’t exist in any of the songs, but rather in the voice of the man singing them. DaDa was a lyrical and musical reflection of Alice Cooper’s deteriorating mental state, whether he knew it or not.

The album opens with a nearly 5 minute soundscape. It’s dark and foreboding, almost as if what happens between now and the end of the album is irrelevant. No matter what happens, things aren’t gonna end well. In between the pulsating synthesizers, we hear Sonny mumbling to his therapist. He utters something about “nasty feelings” and “his son…and his daughter”. The therapist corrects Sonny, insisting he doesn’t have a daughter and Sonny agrees…or does he? In this story, the line between truth and fiction is thin.

“Enough’s Enough” introduces us to Sonny’s nameless son. Based off the lyrics, we can assume he’s a cowboy of some sorts. Or maybe that’s just a pet name given to him by his parents (“little cowboy”). Then again, maybe he’s the same type of “cowboy” that Jon Voight was in Midnight Cowboy (“Go buck and fuck and make a buck.”) Interestingly enough, I believe this is the only song in the Cooper catalog to contain use of the word “fuck”.

In “Former Lee Warmer”, we learn about Sonny’s brother mentioned in “Enough’s Enough” (“Why’d you hide your brother?”). That’s a good question. Why was Former Lee hidden? We’ve heard true life horror stories of families in the 1800s banishing a child to the attic for having a deformity. In those days, it was a mark of shame to be seen in public with such an “abomination”. Perhaps this was one of those circumstances. Sonny laments over his brother; locked away for eternity with nothing but a piano to soothe his soul.

“No Man’s Land” is a prime example of classic Cooper camp. In a matter of seconds, we’re transported from the menacing confines of the old Victorian mansion envisioned in “Former Lee Warmer” to a “mall in Atlanta”. The lyrics to this song are almost identical to the premise of Bad Santa which wouldn’t be released for another 20 years. I wonder if Billy Bob Thornton is a Cooper fan. We’re then treated to perhaps the most straightforward track on DaDa , “Dyslexia”. Something is wrong with Sonny and he knows it. He describes his struggles to the tune of a whiteboy reggae flavored beat.

If side A documented Sonny’s “rise” (if you could call it that), side B chronicles Sonny’s downfall, beginning with one of the finest tracks in the Cooper catalog, “Scarlet and Sheba”. On the surface, this song tells the allegedly true story of Cooper’s sordid encounter with two cocktail waitresses. What began as these two young ladies serving the strung out rockstar drinks turned into them serving equal parts pain and pleasure in a BDSM fueled threesome. If we’re to assume this is true, it would contradict Cooper’s claim that he “never cheated” on his wife of 45 years, Sheryl Goddard. Perhaps it’s merely lustful fantasy, just as “Nurse Rozetta” was on From the Inside . There’s an even larger theory that in some bizarre way, “Scarlet and Sheba” serves as a juxtaposition between Christianity (“Scarlet”) and Islam (“Sheba”), but I’m not even going to try and entertain that thought.

“I Love America” is not Cooper’s first song about America and it certainly wouldn’t be his last. If you think about it, one couldn’t exist without the other. I mean, I guess there could’ve been an America without Alice Cooper. It’s just hard to imagine this country without the cultural impact of this black eyed sultan of shock. On this song, Sonny assumes the persona of a patriotic redneck who loves the things that make America great. Among these are: “Velveeta slapped on Wonder Bread”, “chicken Kentucky Fried”, “the bomb, hot dogs and mustard”, etc. You get the idea.

“Fresh Blood” brings us to the present day, introducing us to “the real Sonny”. After stints as a deadbeat dad, befuddled brother, bad Santa, dyslexic, gimp, and redneck patriot, Sonny settles on being a lurking cannibal. As the lyrics demonstrate, Sonny has no set type (“Showgirls, businessmen in suits in the midnight rain. If they walk alone they are never seen again.”) If you’re breathing, you’re a walking target for this sick psychopath. Interestingly enough, there’s reason to believe this tale of bloodlust and perversion takes place in none other than my hometown of Chicago…

“In the paper, seems a florist Found in Lincoln Park, died of some anemia No one raped her, poor Doloris Just detained her and drained her on the spot”

Lincoln Park is a prominent neighborhood on the north side of town. Furthermore, Cooper had a property here in the 1980s because his wife’s family was based in Chicago.

The story ends with the cathartic “Pass the Gun Around”. By now the jig is up. Sonny’s mental illness and reprehensible acts have pushed him to the edge. He sits wasting away in a hotel room, drinking shots of vodka before delivering one final shot: a bullet to the head. The song abruptly ends with the same bizarre bodily noises that opened the album and the coo of a baby: “Da da”.

The story of Sonny is only half of DaDa . Its accompanying soundtrack is equally important. Overall, the album is a 50/50 mix of new wave and hard rock, with occasional elements of rock opera thrown in. Some tracks lean more on the new wave side (“Dyslexia”, “Fresh Blood”), while others lean more on the hard rock side (“No Man’s Land”, “Scarlet and Sheba”). No matter the case, there is one thing that all these songs have in common. They’re very uncomfortable to the ear. DaDa is ugly and abrasive and deranged and twisted…yet there’s something about it that pulls me in over and over again.

If you’ve never listened to DaDa before, do yourself a favor. Before doing so, take everything you thought you knew about Alice Cooper and throw it out the window: “School’s Out”, “Poison”, “I’m Eighteen”, etc. Once you’ve done that, turn off the lights, close your eyes, and hold on tightly to your sanity. You’re gonna need it to digest this one.

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Holy crap that was an awesome analysis. I really gotta check this one out already because coke has fueled some of my favorite Stephen King books. I need to hear what it did for Alice. Maybe I’ll also experiment with crack… for artistic purposes.

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Discographies

County: Mexico

Tracks: Dada [4:46] / Enough's Enough [4:19] / Former Lee Warmer [4:07] / No Man's Land [3:48] / Dyselxia [4:25] / Scarlet And Sheba [5:19] / I Love The America [3:47] / Fresh Blood [6:53] / Pass The Gun Around [5:43]

Released: 1983

Deep Purple on Upcoming Tour With Yes, Partying at Alice Cooper's 75th Birthday and New Album: ‘We Can't Stop'

Deep Purple has had ample opportunities to hush itself, if you will, over the years.

The London-formed hard rock troupe has gone through the kinds of lineup changes during its 46 years that would have debilitated most bands. With Irish guitarist Simon McBride joining in two years ago to replace Steve Morse after an 18-year tenure, the Purple gang is on its Mark IXth lineup. Only drummer Ian Paice has been a fixture since 1968.

But bassist Roger Glover, who along with frontman Ian Glover was part of the famed Mark II - i.e. Machine Head and "Smoke on the Water" - says there was never a thought of consigning Purple to the past.

"We can't stop," Glover tells Billboard via Zoom from his home in Switzerland. "We love what we do; that's the bottom line. And we've had the opportunity to carry on. Most bands don't get that opportunity…well, I don't follow bands that much, but certainly for us that's been the case.

"I'm in my late '70s (78) - we all are except for the new guitarist, who's in his early forties. He's infused the band with a lot of energy. We may have been lacking a little - but not much, I don't think."

Glover says it was Deep Purple's live performances with McBride that sparked the idea to make =1 , due out July 19. It's Deep Purple's 23rd studio album and the follow-up to 2021's covers set Turning to Crime . McBride had been playing with Purple keyboardist Don Airey in his own band for a number of years, which Glover and frontman Ian Gillan had both performed with in recent years. "He seemed the only choice," Glover says. "We didn't even think about anyone else.

"When Simon came in, the tour went very well," Glover adds. "Early in the tour we said, ‘Hey, we should make an album as soon as we can.' So that's what we did last year." Like its four predecessors, the 13-songs set was produced by Bob Ezrin, and the songs took shape via the band jamming together in Nashville rather than coming in with prepared material.

"That's the way we work," Glover explains. "It's like a blank canvas when you go in the studio, all you've got to do is fill it with noises. The songs aren't written; they evolve from personalities and ideas. Someone starts a riff or something and we're like, ‘That's good. How about if you go to an F here…or a B flat?' Once we've got the instrumental part, then Ian Gillan and I figure out what's going on top, the words and the tunes. Obviously, they don't just appear for no reason. We work at it."

Glover adds that the method has been a Deep Purple tradition since he and Gillan joined the band in 1969. "In the early days, before Deep Purple In Rock (1970), we realized that the music came from playing, not from the head, therefore we should share the credits and that's what we did since the early days, shared everything, no matter who came up with the idea. It was freeing in a way - there's no backbiting, no, ‘I like my idea better than yours,' no jealousy. It was very healthy."

The approach only changed once, says Glover, who's in the process of writing a memoir. "When we had the reunion (in 1984) it didn't go back to that - maybe it couldn't, you know?" he remembers. "But as soon as Steve Morse joined the band (in 1994), guess what? It went back to that, which was great. For a band like us, that's the only way to work."

The process continues to be a welcome kind of "challenge," according to Glover, who points to =1 tracks such as the album-closing "Bleeding Obvious" as particularly challenging and requiring "a lot of work" to get right. Meanwhile the opening track, "Show Me," had a particularly interesting gestation that sounds like a rock n' roll warrior story that could have happened during the '70s as much as the 2020s.

"We were all invited to Alice Cooper's 75th birthday party with (Ezrin)," Glover recalls. "We finished early and Simon and Don (Airey) and I went to a bar and hit the tequila a bit too much and I fell over and really hurt my thumb. The next morning was the last day of writing sessions and my thumb was swollen all up and I couldn't play anything. So I said, ‘Excuse me, lads, I have to get it checked out in a hospital or something,' which I did. In the meantime, the idea of ‘Show Me' had started, but it was later on when we worked it out. I couldn't imagine what Ian would sing over that until I was in Portugal with him and he just attacked it and found the right tune and everything, and we had the song."

=1 has been preceded by three singles and videos, starting with "Portable Door" in April, "Pictures of You" during June and "Lazy Sod" at the beginning of July. =1 ‘s release takes the quintet back on the road next month in North America, joining fellow British veterans Yes, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a year after Deep Purple. The 19-date co-bill begins Aug. 14 in Hollywood, Fla., and runs through Sept. 8 in Scranton, Pa.

"We worked with them years ago in the '70s," Glover says. "We did some festivals together - one in particular called the Plumpton Jazz and Blues Festival in '71. Ian Gillan and I had only been in the band a couple of months at that point. There was an argument about who'd be closing the show, and they won the argument and were closing the show. Ritchie (Blackmore, Purple's original guitarist) set fire to his amplifiers and made them explode on stage. So they were delayed a lot and weren't very happy with that."

But, Glover says, bygones are bygones and he expects nothing but friendly relations this summer. "We've met them since. They're a great band. We saw (Yes guitarist) Steve Howe a couple years ago. We got on, no hard feelings. I don't know which state they're in now, which combination of musicians they have, so I'll be happily surprised."

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