Steel Notes Magazine Spring 2017 | Page 21

Steel Notes Magazine www.steelnotesmagazine.com and then play and Alice said, “No we should play first.” And he was right. But we’re standing with our backs to the audience with the darkened stage and above us is this screen where they were showing this screen of this video that they put together to show why the Alice Cooper Group was inducted.  Alexxis: Nice... Dennis: It’s like the best of the Alice Cooper Group video footage I guess all spliced together. But man, I looked up and here’s Glen Buxton playing and oh man it was so moving. And I looked over at Alice, he was standing right next time and we were facing Neal and I said, “Can you believe it?” and he said “Nope, not at all.” And then we started, Neal counts down the first song we start playing, we turn around walk out to the audience and who’s there, Springsteen, Michael Douglas, Michael J. Fox everybody in the world you know all the honchos from the music industry. Oh man, talk about it, and then it’s in the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria so everybody’s played there!  Alexxis: Oh yeah, It must have been a very surreal moment. I’m sure it was emotional and touching when you saw Glen on the screen. He was with the band in spirit, looking down in approval. Dennis: You know, you name it! All of these amazing musicians that have been on that stage and so that was it and we ended up in the bar in the wee hours and they were trying to kick us out. Let’s see it was me, Glen Buxton’s sister Janice, and some friends of ours and I can't remember if Neal was there or not. We were having Manhattans and Glen’s sister was saying did you know this, oh, Alice’s guy Toby Mannis brought Glen’s statue and my statue and our awards and gave one to Janice, gave Glen’s award to Janice and she’s complaining that this really sucks you know, we should have been allowed to come out on stage. Glen’s brother Ken and Janice wanted to come out on stage and accept. Alexxis: Right, yeah that would have been nice. They should have allowed them to accept it for him. Dennis: Well, you know The Hall of Fame decided differently but she's going “This really sucks; I get his award in the bar.” And I said “Are you kidding? This is perfect! Glen would love this! He got his Award in the bar!” Alexxis: Yea really! Dennis: Glen was always close to all of us whenever we’d play any of those songs. He’s always in our hearts and forever will be. He was one of the most one of a kind, funniest person I’ve ever known. Alexxis: Yes, he was funny and a great guy! Dennis: Yeah, you know. It didn’t take long to find that out, did it? Alexxis: No, he was always very person- able and had a great sense of humor! Dennis: Yeah, it didn’t take long and you would quick- ly learn what you might avoid saying because if you said it, you were setting yourself up to be in storm. [ Laughter ]  Glen’s sarcastic fire Alexxis: Oh yes! [ Laughter ]  Dennis: He was so funny but if you didn't know him like we did all the way from high school, and somebody would walk in a room that didn’t know the whole group and the whole group was in one room, we would be whittling each other to bits. It would sound brutal and sound like we hated each other, but it was really just humor, long years of this kind of humor, where you put the other guy down and if somebody walked out of the room oh man, they were the target until they got back. Alexxis: Oh yes for sure! Dennis: But it was all in fun, it was all equal, and nobody was made more fun of than the next guy. Everybody was brutally criticized the whole time they were out of the room. When they would come back Glen would go, “SH! He’s back.” [ Laughter ] Alexxis: So since then you started working with Joe and Albert Bouchard from ‘Blue Oyster Cult’ and you have a trio called ‘Blue Coupe’. You were also working with the ‘Fifth Avenue Vampires’ so are you still doing that? Steel Notes Magazine www.steelnotesmagazine.com 21