Alice Cooper back in Scotland for first time in five years

Not only has the 69-year-old released the 27th LP of a recording career stretching back to 1969, but he’ll also be heading this way to promote it, and he can be seen at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro on Sunday, November 12.

That will be his first date in the city since 2011 and his first in Scotland since one at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall the year after.

Paranormal, the album Cooper is on the road to plug, is his first top 10 hit here – or, indeed, anywhere – since 1994’s The Last Temptation, having matched that album’s No 6 chart placing following its release at the end of last month, and also his first for Edel’s EarMusic label.

Produced – like 10 previous Cooper albums, including his last one, 2011’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare, plus 2015’s Hollywood Vampires collaboration with the likes of Paul McCartney and Joe Perry – by Bob Ezrin, it’s a game of two halves, being a double album, and both are well worth playing.

Disc one’s 10 tracks find Cooper, assisted by guests including U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr and Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, in fine form, alternating his default pantomime villain persona with more considered reflections on subject matter including rodents and televangelists. Its highlights include two explorations of mental health issues unlikely to be referred to by trainee psychiatrists as textbook material, Paranoiac Personality and Private Public Breakdown, and Dynamite Road, a variation on the time-honoured race-with-the-devil theme.

Disc two reunites the singer with three members of the original Alice Cooper band that he took his stage name from after they parted ways in the mid-1970s – bassist Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith and guitarist Michael Bruce – for two new songs, Genuine American Girl and You and All of Your Friends, and also features six live tracks recorded on tour in the US in May last year including School’s Out and Feed My Frankenstein.

The Mission and the Tubes will be supporting him on his six-date British tour, also taking in Leeds, London, Birmingham and Manchester, and Dunaway, Smith and Bruce will be joining him on stage too.

Tickets for his Glasgow show cost £45.40 or £53.90. For details, go to www.thessehydro.com/events or www.alicecooper.com