Alice Cooper Parts Ways With Guitarist Orianthi

Alice Cooper has parted ways with guitarist Orianthi. Cooper will be heading out on tour this year with Nita Strauss who was voted number 1 female guitarist.

Nita, who has made her name in bands, including The Iron Maidens and Femme Fatale, joins Alice’s band’s three-guitar attack, which also features guitarists Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen, plus longtime bassist Chuck Garric and drummer Glen Sobel.

Alice Cooper has completed work on a covers album featuring songs that were originally written and recorded by The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and The Who, members of the so-called “Hollywood vampires” of the early and mid-’70s. The disc, which is expected out in early 2015, will also include “four or five new songs,” which the legendary rocker wrote specifically for the new CD. He told VH1 Radio Network’s Dave Basner: “We decided that in order to set up the ‘Hollywood Vampires’ thing, you had to kind of tell the story, and you had to write songs that were going to set up the story, and then get into the covers. So we had fun sitting there writing these new songs around it. So it’s going to be quite a package, this thing is.”