Vincent Price - Live in Rome 2013

This song's title namechecks the American actor, Vincent Price (1911-1993), who was well known for his distinctive voice and performances in a series of horror films. Alice Cooper fans will recognize Price from his voiceover on the shock rocker's first solo album, 1975's Welcome to My Nightmare. Ramping up the fright factor for Cooper was impressive, but his masterwork came on the song "Thriller," where he brought the thrill to Michael Jackson.

Ian Gillian explained the song's lyrical content to The Toronto Sun: "As the ideas come from the jam sessions every day," he said, "you get them some kind of working generic title and this one sounded like the soundtrack to a horror movie so we called it 'Vincent Price'. And when I got to doing the lyrics, I said to Roger [Glover, bass], 'Listen, what would a producer of the '60s or a director want as the ingredients for a horror movie starring Vincent Price?' And I started writing down the lyrics: Clanking chains, creaking doors, bloodsucking vampires, howling dogs, sacrificial virgins, zombies. I said, 'There you go. We're finished. We've done the lyrics.'"

Now What? was produced by veteran Canadian rock producer Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, KISS, Pink Floyd) at his Nashville studio. The legendary producer originally turned down the offer to man the boards as he didn't want to be pegged as 'the guy who does old people.' However, he was persuaded after seeing the group on tour in Canada in February 2012. He explained at a keynote interview in Toronto as part of Canadian Music Week: "I got convinced to go see them here at Massey Hall here in Toronto and 15 minutes into the show, they went into this big long fully prog jam. "Steve Morse stood up and played Rock God and played the most amazing guitar I've ever heard and then Don Airey filled it with these huge keyboards and then the drums and the bass and everything came in and the whole audience went nuts and then I realized we never see that anymore. "That used to be a staple at every concert you went to when I was a kid. The only people doing that are like Dave Matthews and jam bands but that's all like hey-yo (toke sound) but this is all like YEAHHH, this was rock power."