Neal Smith (born 23 September 1947 in Akron, Ohio, USA) was the drummer for the rock group Alice Cooper from 1967 to 1974. He performed on the group's early albums Pretties For You and Easy Action, the breakout album Love It to Death and the subsequent successful albums Killer, School's Out, and Billion Dollar Babies. His last album with Alice Cooper was Muscle of Love.
Neal Smith graduated from Camelback High School in Phoenix, Arizona, while the rest of his band mates graduated from Cortez High School. Smith talks about his high school in the song Alma Mater sung by Alice Cooper. It has been stated by Alice Cooper and Bob Ezrin, producer of the band, that Smith would frequently call the drummer of The Who, Keith Moon, and ask him how many drums he had. It was a priority of Smith's to always have one more drum than Moon. Alice Cooper confirmed this in an interview included in the video compilation "Prime Cuts". Neal Smith's drum part on the title track of the number one album in the U.S and UK Billion Dollar Babies, is considered one of the most original and dynamic amongst musicians and fans of the group.
Billion Dollar Babies was also the name of the band founded by former Alice Cooper group musicians Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith along with Bob Dolin and Mike Marconi after they split from Alice Cooper in 1974. This band was embroiled in a legal suit over the usage of the name. They only released one album, 1977's Battleaxe, before disbanding.
Smith has been selling real estate in New England since the early 1980s. He is also still active in music, and has performed with Alice Cooper during a show in 1998. In 1999, he released his first solo album, Platinum God, recorded in 1975. He is also currently the drummer/percussionist and songwriter for Bouchard, Dunaway & Smith (BDS), composed of Smith, former Blue Öyster Cult bassist, Joe Bouchard, and original Alice Cooper bassist, Dennis Dunaway. The band has co-written songs with Ian Hunter. BDS has released two albums: 2001's Back From Hell, and 2003's BDS Live In Paris. Smith has also released two albums under the group name Cinematik, with guitarist Robert Mitchell and bassist Peter Catucci, produced by Rob Fraboni. Cinematik has a loose, jam-laden world-beat sound, as opposed to BDS's more classic-rock sound.
Smith has also recorded with Buck Dharma of Blue Öyster Cult (Flat Out, 1982), Plasmatics (Beyond The Valley of 1984, 1984), and Deadringer (Electrocuxion of the Heart, 1989). Neal played on Bruce Cameron's CD Midnight Daydream along with an all-star cast of Jack Bruce, Buddy Miles, Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell, Harvy Dalton Arnold and Ken Hensley.
Neal Smith will appear on Alice Cooper's "Welcome to my Nightmare II"
On July 1, 2010 when talking about the newly retitled album, Welcome to My Nightmare II, Alice said in a Radio Metal interview: "We’ll put some of the original people on it and add some new people, I’m very happy with working with Bob (Ezrin) again.” Names mentioned so far are Slash, Neil Smith, Dennis Dunnaway, Steven Hunter and Dick Wagner. Dennis and Neil have already writing two songs they worked on. No mention of Michael Bruce being on the new album (so far), Michael co-wrote many of the hit songs with some or all of the other members of the original band, and Michael was part of Alice's Christmas show. Michael has stated he has written many songs over the years that could be turned into Alice Cooper classics and would love to work with Alice again. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
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