Vince Gill is undeniably one of the most accomplished guitarists in country music, but most fans probably don't know that the country icon also once played on an Alice Cooper album.

Cooper traveled to Nashville in 2011 to work on his most recent studio album, Welcome 2 My Nightmare, with legendary rock producer Bob Ezrin, who had re-located to Music City a short time before. They were working on a track called "A Runaway Train," which Cooper felt needed a very special guitar solo.

"It's sort of like 'Train Kept a-Rolling,' only it really rambles on," Cooper tells Nashville's Tennessean newspaper. "You need this really hot guitar in there. I'm going, 'OK, who do we want to put on this?'"

The pair tossed around various names, including Joe Satriani and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, before Cooper suggested his friend Vince Gill.

"Vince Gill comes over and he's got this Telecaster," Cooper recalls, "and he just rips through the song. When I played it back for my guitar players, who are great players, they kind of just looked at me and said, 'Who's going to play that?'

"The guy is so good you can't even copy it."

Though the shock rocker and the affable country star seem like an odd couple, it wasn't as big a musical stretch as fans might perceive.

"Of course he's a country guy," Cooper says, "but, at one time, he played rock and roll, and as soon as he listened to the track you could see a beam on his face and he said, 'Yeah, let me tear into this.' It is great having guys like that playing on the record."

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