On the heels of his long-overdue box set comes news that the original shock-rocker, Alice Cooper, has written the songs for a new concept album with a most unlikely collaborator: Oscar-winner Alan Menken, best known for his work on Disney's "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty And The Beast".

"A friend of mine who directed "Beauty And The Beast" introduced me to Alan Menken, who did all the Disney stuff," Cooper is saying down the line from his home in sunny Phoenix, where he's cheerfully talking up his witty new four-CD retrospective, "The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper".

"And as kind of an odd thing, he said, 'Why don't you guys try to write something together?' I said, 'Sure. I've worked with everybody from Henry Mancini to Bon Jovi. We ended up writing something called 'Alice's Deadly Seven', which is like the Seven Deadly Sins, and it's really good, i'm really excited about it. I think it could be the next 'Welcome To My Nightmare'."

The 51-year-old Cooper describes "Alice's Deadly Seven" as "probably the most conceptual piece I've ever written as far as adhering to one subject and the characters recurring."

"I don't know if it's gonna be a stage play, I don't know if it's gonna be a cartoon, I don't know if it's gonna be Alice's next theatre tour. All I know is that it's a real Alice Cooper project. And when (producer) Bob Ezrin gets a hold of it, he's gonna take it to the next level."

Before we get to hear the results of that intriguing collaboration, however, Cooper -- who hasn't released a studio album since 1994's "The Last Temptation" -- plans to cut what he describes as "a pure rock 'n' roll album for the turn of the century."

"In fact, that'd be a great name for an album: 'Turn Of The Century'," he jokes. "The rock 'n' roll one will come first, because I want to give a lot of time to the other one. If I can make a masterpiece out of ('Alice's Deadly Seven'), I really wanna spend some time and make it that. Bob Ezrin is like a George Martin. So I don't wanna rush through this. I wanna give the material to him for a year and say, 'Here, just listen to this for a year and give me all your input and let's produce it and get it going'."

Cooper says he's already written 20 songs for the rock album.

"I'd like to be in the studio and at least start cutting bed tracks in July, so if we tour in August, we could do a week of shows and a week of recording, something like that, and not have any time off. When we're not touring, we're recording."

Cooper, who last recorded for the now-defunct Guardian Records, is "a free agent right now, which is great. I kinda have my pick of who I wanna be with."