Alice Cooper Guitarist Ryan Roxie's Solo Music & Rocky's Rock and Roll Symphony

0:04 Hi, you love done to censure, Wow for you your dreaming Vegas. So this is the pipe Man here on the Adventures of Pipe Man W four c Y Radio. I'm super excited about our next guest and and and actually where he's at because we were just talking about that before the interview.

0:44 So let's welcome to the show, Ryan Roxy. How are you up? What's happening? Pipe Man? Great to be on the show, Oh Man, Great to have you. Uh. First, I have to say right off the bat, I love your studio back in there with all those guitars. Let's start there. Tell us about those guitars, because I'm sure each one of those the way you have them placed has some special significance to you. The only significance it has is that I actually need every single one of the guitars that sort of put around the room. Expect you This one, especially because it's a original Alice Cooper Band guitar, was the Gibson SG.

1:26 Both the original OG's Michael Bruce and Glenn Buxton played the SG. So there, in fact, I have to learn a lot of those songs and their parts makes it easier to do on the SG. I thought you'd like to talk about the room because, like, to be honest with you, I can go and pick up that guitar. It's not even a green screen. Which for the longest, longest time, I have done a podcast called the End of Trenches podcast, and I always had a studio green screen, and people always thought, oh, man, yeah, that's a cool studio. But I actually have a cool see that looks cool to me. I'm like, I wish I had that as a green screen.

2:07 I'll send you a screenshot of of just the studio, but no, I'm very lucky to have this and be able to record music. I recorded the last two singles of the guitars and vocals right here in this room, and then it kind of an international affair. The drums recorded in Albuquerque and his home studio, and then we send up all the tracks to Canada to our producer Robbie Miller, and he basically, you know, puts all the love in, puts in all the hard work making it right, and it becomes international sort of recording, especially with this newest single that we just have called Fight Another Day. We had a keyboard player from the UK, Keith Wheer.

2:50 He emailed his tracks in to Canada, from the UK and then Bridget West from the New York Loose. She sang some backgrounds on it and she was I'm wearing Europe and she laid her vocals down, So truly is an international affair. And first of all, I. Want to say, I love the name of that song alone because I lived that my whole life. Okay, another day always you know that that to me like says it all. Like I don't even have to listen to his song yet and know that that is all me. And I'll tell you what tripped me out too. Okay. So I'm wearing today a Grateful Dead shirt because my live show in a couple hours I'm going to be dedicating most.

3:36 Of it to Bobby Weir. And I was like, trip it out when I saw the same name, and I'm like, wow, that's really weird. He's weird. Yeah. On the keyboards and on the piano, he's great. He was in a band called the London Choir Boys. He's been there for years and now he's him and Griff has their own band together, Griff Griffin from the Choir Boys. They've got their own thing together and it's sounding real good. But you know, the. Grateful dead if you're doing a whole show, and it shouldn't you be like bong Man and not pipe man. You know what's so funny about that? So I go on tour and I do festivals all over the US, UK, Europe, and you know, the one question I don't ever ask artists is the question that's asked of me all the time by.

4:28 Artists like so, I never asked, how'd you get your band name? You know, because I know from a lot of my friends too, that's like the number one hated. Question that they get. And they all go to me. They all go, well a word, pipe man come, and they always make these assumptions and then they literally will write a song in the middle of the interview and like sing this song and it always either has to do with plumbing or what you just mentioned, bongs. So everyone knows you were a former adult actor, So you know, pipe man was your sort of your nickname.

5:09 I guess, yeah, there, there you go. He was your he was your moniker sending the pipe man. That's right, exactly, see, and I surf So it could go along with that too, like it could go so many different ways. I think that's where it actually came from, you know, cause you're in the pipe, you're in. You know, or skateboarder. I'm a skateboarder too. But guess what my last name. Yep, my last name is Piper. That's where it came from. It's as simple as that. And that's what I find if people ask how people got their band names, because usually there's not some big story behind it. It's some simple thing or like, hey, we were just hanging out, we were stone and.

5:56 The name sounded good. Well, yeah, Roxy seventy seven, which is the name of my solo band. That is pretty obvious, is my last thing. Oxy seventy seven made sense. The band before that that I had a kind of my my solo band, but I put a band named to it was Dad's Porno Mag DPM, with the great Mike Fazano on the drums and Will Efforts on the base. But that was Dad's Porno Mag. And that's again pretty self explanatory. The first time you found out about sex, first time you found maybe he saw another another person of the opposite sex with no clothes on, was probably your dad's pornomag at least from my generation.

6:38 You know, Yeah, that's true. It is true. It is true. And that's somebody that used to hang out at the Rainbow with Lemmy and uh Ron Jeremy. It is true talking about a pipemin there you go, pipe man. And I want to know too, Like, so. I heard that Alice Cooper is like one of the greatest to work with, you know, like and encourages stuff like you're doing now, doing your own thing, doing your own creativity, having your own projects. So and I don't think everybody's like that. In fact, I know not everybody's like that. So how cool is he that?

7:23 Being secure in your own ego and in your own legacy. For Alice, he really is. He's the best boss I ever had. And trust me, I've worked a lot of fast food restaurants, so I figure he is the best as far as letting you shine because of that sort of being relaxed in his own legacy and stardom and household name status. When you play guitar solo, he wants you up in front and center. He doesn't want you sitting in the back sort of you know, pulling a Jeff Beck and putting your putting your back to the audience or anything like that. No, want you boom up in the center in the spotlight. And I really appreciate that about him because he's always supported us, everybody that's in the band, with our solo projects. And you know what, if I can just get him to listen to the new single, I think he'll really like it.

8:17 There you go, well, let's do that. And you know it is It's funny because it's true, because like I'm friends with Nita, and I just thought it was very cool. You know, she went and did something else for a little while, but then she was just welcomed back with open arms. When she realized it was time to come back to Alice. She did her version of tal Bachman of what I If anyone knows that name, if you know, you know, but I was in a band between the during the Alish years, between tours and stuff. It was an artist called tal Bachman, and there was you might not know the name, but you know, obviously there's big pedigree in that. Randy Bachman was the father. It's Buckman in or Overdrive.

9:00 It was his kid, his son, and his son wrote a bunch of great songs tal did and I was part of that album and part of this song called She's so high. So the next time you're writing in an elevator, you're at a pizza hut and you hear some muzak, or you're on your peloton, you'll probably hear that song come up once or twice. But that's my guitars and my guitar solo. But that being said, that did not pan out into the world of getting up into the front of the stage and being able to selo your ass off. So when I realized that that was sort of the writing on the wall, I'm very happy that Alice did ask me back and we were able to get back on stage together and rock as a unit as we have for the last God, what did I get back in the band? I was in it from ninety six to two thousand and six, took a small break, moved to Sweden, did some gigs in Sweden, few bands in Sweden, did my own stuff in Sweden well, But then back in twenty twelve, got asked back and we've been touring every year since then, so on and off since nineteen ninety.

10:08 Six, and there's definitely chemistry there. Like I've seen you guys quite a few times at the Wimmer festivals, and like there's such you just see it on stage like you can tell. You can tell when there's chemistry or if people are just going through the motions, and you know, like you can also tell that Alice makes it like a family opposed to you know, this is my band, like a lot of bands will do so. And I believe that cohesiveness is basically reciprocal with the audience because the audience becomes the family then as well, because we see so many of the same places. You know, you talk about Grateful Dead and how they travel and they sort of follow the band along caravan. We have our own little Alice Cooper Sick Things caravans that come out in certain sections of the country and they'll just be with us for like one or two weeks, and they'll go to all the shows. And we're very thankful for it because of that sort of relationship that we have with the hardcorese and then with every show, hopefully we're still doing it. I will talk to people that will say, you know what, this is my first Alic Scooper show, but I'm coming back. So that's the best thing to hear is when when you know you've been doing this for as long as we've been doing it, and you still get people that say, this is my first Alice Scooper show. Now I'm a fan. I'm like, I love it all Right, what took you so long?

11:37 But right, but that is amazing, And so what was it for you? What was that first moment, way back, way way way back when you decided playing guitar and being part of music was just a part of you. I think the pretty much the opening first few bars of music of Van Hantalen won right because when Van Halen and again, I grew up in the Bay Area. So I was very lucky to be born and raised by that much of a spectrum of music. There was funk, there was disco, there was punk rock, there was metal, there was classic rock. And I grew up in a very cool time, you know, going to concerts in the late sevenies. One of my first concerts I ever went to was the Jackson five at Oakland Coliseum.

12:31 Wow. Then my second concert was right across the street at the at the that was the Oakland Arena Jackson five, and then across the street was the Oakland Coliseum. I went to Day on the Green with Journey and Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio, the late Great Ronnie James Dios on lead vocals and Journey headlining the gig. It was, I mean like I was very lucky. But then those guitar heroes that came out, man Edward van Halen, he just kind of made you listen and go, how is that done right? And how can I do it? How can I catch it on that?

13:11 Like one of the first songs I ever learned on guitar was ain't talking about Love. And Heaven and Hell. My first three songs were not Smoke on the Water. They were Ain't talking about love, Heaven and Hell and twenty five or sixty four by Chicago. Oh wow, that's a good one. Well became that Green Day song. I love it right then. But then it was like my first was Smoke on the Water, just like everybody else, I'm one of you smoking my back. I think the second one was your Mama, Don't Dance, Daddy, Don't rock and Roll? Not the Poison version, No, No, it was Kenny the real version, Loggins and Messina, And then I think my third might have been It's a toss up between Jumping Jack Flash by the Stones, or it was do you feel like we do. Peter Frampton, who again another one of my guitar heroes, that again, I would stare at that album, and I know that that album came out before van Halen, so I might have to read I might have to switch my story around a little bit, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story, so we'll stick with van Halen. No right comes alive. Come on, man, that that was a game changer as well.

14:28 So speak of ed Hell and I'll just tell you just because it's funny. My favorite, I think, one of my favorite memories and of thousands and thousands of shows in my lifetime, was nineteen eighty three the US Festival in sam Bernardino. Van Halen was headlining heavy Metal Day and they did start ain't talking about love. There's three hundred thousand people there, and Eddie's looking over at Dave because he ain't singing, and then Dave just goes into the mic and he goes, I fucking forgot the words, and the whole place roared like that was the best thing that ever happened, except one dude who heckled him.

15:12 And he turned to that dude and he's like, I will fuck your girlfriend. And like, I'm just thinking that's live music. Like like. People talk about backing tracks and stuff like that. That was so live music right there, because like, you're a good front man if you can overcome forgetting the words by doing shit like that. And I love the fact that he probably said that line in every town and every like concert. But you know what, for you, for me one that was the one that did. And for me it was the same thing at the Cow Palace when he said it to some guy and at the Cow Palace exactly never let the truth get in the way of a good story, because that guy deserved it. Yeah, I think I think at the Cow Palace, somebody threw an orange up on stage. That's what that was the thing war jet me up on That's okay, pal because after the show, I'm on a fuck yard girlfriend and so we all have that David Lee Roth moment.

16:19 It's true though, you know, like you go and it it's the first time for you, so you think this is like, oh my god, I'm at this special thing that never happens. Well, you're almost I almost didn't last that show at the Cow Palace because that was on the Diver down tour, and I was. You know, pretty young, up and front, pushed up in front, and I wasn't tall at all. I'm still not, but my girlfriend at the time was even smaller, And all of a sudden, the show starts and she goes under and I go, what the hell? Where is everybody? And then I get pushed in this thing And we were lucky to make it out of that one because that was way before GA. That was way before GA guy banned in general, admission was just the way you did it at concerts. So yeah, I love Van Halen's stories.

17:10 But the US Festival, I think Motley Crue I think it opened it. Didn't they open medal. Day on that one. No, I think Quiet Riot opened it because you had Quiet Riot, you had Crew, you had Ozzie, you had Priest, you had Triumph, you had Van Halen. I'm trying to think who else was that day. It sounds like a twenty tour I know, right, I just came up the road breeze uh and it, you know, what was a trip about. I think it was that year that that happened that I saw Ozzie with three separate guitarists. In one year, because because Randy Rhoads. I saw Randy New Year's Eve right before he died.

17:53 Then you saw Jake. Well, actually I also saw Pat Travers Pat Travers for a short period after Randy played, and I caught one of the shows. Pat Travers taught me a great way of playing schools Out. We were we did a we did a show with him years ago, and we asked him to come up on stage for Schools Out. And everybody you know says they know schools Out, and then when it comes right down to jamming it, it's a little trickier than most people think. But Pat Travers actually knew it better than I think I did. And he played his part in the No Mo fanzas No Mo Books. He played that part and he literally taught me a new way of playing it that I play today. So I never got to thank Pat for for I haven't seen him since that gig, And thank you Pat for teaching me a very new, cool way to play Schools Out and I do it today.

18:53 See that's way cool. I love hearing stuff like that. I don't talk about that because you know, I don't know. It's not that Pat Travers and I are in a huge feud or anything like that. I just never have a chance to tell that story when all my brain memory function is working and I'm on the phone with the pipe man, and. There it comes. There it is. That's what you bring out in people, pipe man, that's what you do. You bring out good memories. That's the way it should be too. And how about this, this is a recent good memory probably for you that you guess it on Rocky's rock and Roll Symphony. Good segue. Yeah, absolutely, that was cool. That was a very cool memory. I got hats off to Rocky and hats off to Paul Hunger for setting it all up and promoting it and getting people into the studio because they had never done a live studio audience. And it was a night off that we were having on tour, on this last Alice Cooper Judas Priest tour, and ironically enough, I don't know if it's even ironically, but but I had a gig to do with the with the Rock and Roll Symphony. The bands Judas Priest and Alis were having a band dinner that night and I had to miss it. But retrospect, it was the best missed band dinner I ever had because we had such a good time filming this and and doing it, and it hopefully

20:24 will turn into something that we're able to do in more places, in more UH cities and towns when there are nights off on tour. I love going coming in live studio audience. They asked questions. I play some songs acoustically. I get asked good questions by the host, which is rocky, and then Paul Lunger's there, you know, waving the flag, waving his blinder like that. So it was a good time had by all, I think, So go check it out. I think it's a maybe you can put the links in somewhere. Yeah, I'll put I'll put the links in the description for the podcast afterwards, for sure, because I checked it out and I thought it was pretty cool, for sure, and everybody has to check it out. So is there anything else you got going on in twenty twenty six that you want the listeners to know about.

21:12 I want them to check out all the new music that I have out. I put out a single earlier called Better than You, and then we just released this one called Fight Another Day, and it's sort of it goes they go hand in hand together, So go check them both out on my YouTube channel if you can. All the links are at Ryanroxy dot com. New music is going to continue to come out all throughout the year, and we've got another year of Alice touring all in the works. We're excited about not one, but two shows. There's a Chris Angel Alice Cooper show that's happening in Vegas. Oh, that's gonna be cool. It combines illusions in rock and roll, which is one of the first times I think it's happened. And then we have the Alice Cooper Alice's Attic brand new set list and set pieces as well, so that's something to go check out. And then, you know, if you want to get dive in and become more inner circle, I do this thing every year called Roxy's All Out Excess Pass and it's ed basically like having a backstage pass to everything that goes on, you know, before the show, after the show, backstage post on the bus, getting dressed the days off, so I kind of give everybody a sort of a glimpse into what life on the road is about. And again Ryanroxy dot com, you go check out all Excess Pass, but yeah, look out for new music and I appreciate you taking the time to spend

22:45 with me and giving me some good memories of my own, and best of luck with everything you're doing. Pipe. Man, Hey, you rock and I love what you're doing. I love your new music. Everybody's got to check it out, and I'll have to check out out. So Alice shows us here too, because man, those are definitely show. You don't even have to like the music to love the show. I happen to love the music, but it's just such a great show. There's so much to love about the music because Alice is put together some really amazing bands over the years where it's original ogs, you know, with you know, Glenn and Michael and Dennis and that that musicality of it.

23:30 They're just great and they're the reason why we're still able to tour. Today, that whole original band, Yeah, because we get to we get to play those hits and those iconic legacy hits, and then all the songs that Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner were part of, and then all. The Caine Roberts era stuff. We touch on all of it throughout the show. There's a lot of It doesn't matter if your seventies eighties, nineties aughts, or even up until this last album that we did with the band called Road. It doesn't matter whatever era you're into. Alice. I think you're gonna enjoy the. Show absolutely well.

24:11 You are an amazing musician, and thank you very much for everything you've done all these years, and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Appreciate you having me pipe Man. Enjoy the ride, everybody. We'll see you out there somewhere. What's happening rock and Rollers? Ryan Roxy here, the Alice Cooper Band, and you are listening to the pipe Man right here on W four CY Radio. Rocket Man, thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man. I'm w for CUI Radio.