Alice Cooper is happy to talk about who he is, and not just during interviews.

“I’m Alice. I’m the master of madness, the sultan of surprise,” he sings on “I’m Alice,” the lead track of his new album “Road.” On track two, “Welcome to the Show,” he adds, “I play the creature ‘cause I know how. My lips are red, my eyes are black. I’m as scary as a heart attack.”

On “I’m Alice,” Cooper maintains that he was created by the audience. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Alice Cooper came into being in the late 1960s when Vincent Furnier took the name of the band he was fronting and transformed into the “shock rocker” who brought theatrics into the world of rock ‘n’ roll.

Cooper will perform Thursday at Pikes Peak Center.

“I always thought that the lyrics should be the script for the show,” he said. “In other words, if I say ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ in the song, I don’t just say that, I give you the nightmare. Nobody was doing that. I couldn’t understand why other bands didn’t do that. So I created this Alice Cooper character to be rock’s villain rather than rock’s hero.”

The Alice Cooper Band broke through out of Detroit in the early 1960s. Teaming up with producer Bob Erzin, Cooper landed his first hit, “I’m Eighteen,” in 1970 and piled up a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career thereafter, riding a string of hits in the 1970s and 1980s.

“Road,” which was recorded live in the studio with “the best band I’ve ever had,” is perfectly timed, coming out as he’s in the middle of what will essentially be a year on the road.

The new songs “I’m Alice,” “Welcome to the Show” and “White Line Frankenstein” might make it into Cooper’s set this fall. But there’s no guarantee.

“I think the audience would pretty much kill us if we didn’t do ‘School’s Out’ or whatever,” Cooper said. “In fact, the hardest part of putting a show together is the set list. The band knows all the songs. But then you realize that there’s about 15 songs that you have to do. Over the years, it’s 30 albums, but there’s 15 songs that the audience would feel cheated if you didn’t do those songs.”