| Bio |
ALCOHOL AND RAZOR BLADES, POISON AND NEEDLES:
THE GLORIOUS WRETCHED EXCESS OF
ALICE COOPER, ALL-AMERICAN
by Jeffrey Morgan
"The sicker our fans get, the
sicker we'll get."
--Alice Cooper
Of course, when Alice said that, he knew full well that he was sowing the seeds
not only of North America's cultural demise but also of the world's. Laugh if
you will, but once you've finished drying your eyes, take a good look at what's
going on around you and try telling me that Alice Cooper wasn't there first.
DecaSexual gender bending? Hey, any guy can dress like a girl these days, but
it took a real man to change his name to Alice and have it accepted the world
over as one of the most masculine monikers in the history of popular culture.
Sex and violence? Are you kidding? Everyone takes a back seat to Alice when
he unleashes the dark and sinister side of his personality, everyone. When's
the last time you saw anyone else chopping up babies with an axe? Or defiling
a deceased dame in front of an open fridge?
However, if that's not stomach-churning enough for you, then consider this,
perhaps his sickest outrage: Alice Cooper actually ran for President of the
United States against that other paragon of perversion, Richard Nixon. What's
really sick, though, is that Alice lost.
Face it: there are few trends in modern music that Alice Cooper didn't anticipate;
fewer still that weren't incorporated by this innovative showman into one of
the most bizarre and entertaining rock attractions of all time.
The audacious, precedent-shattering, inspirational, taboo-defiling hoodlum flamboyance
of Alice Cooper did more than forever alter the face of rock 'n' roll as we
now know it. He virtually invented rock as theater, created new fashion trends,
sparked a new sexual revolution, established higher standards for teenage decadence,
and found time on top of all this to write and record a library of classic rock
'n' roll albums. The fact that Alice Cooper is rock 'n' roll's foremost legendary
statesman of outrage is far beyond reproach. Any act worth its weight in rock
'n' roll, theatrics, makeup, and in-your-face, kick-ass punk attitude owes more
than just a passing nod of respect in the direction of this malignantly macabre
culprit.
And if you need proof, just ask Kiss, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, the New York
Dolls, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Iggy & The Stooges, Mötley Crüe,
Lou Reed, Hanoi Rocks, Boy George, Slade, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Tubes,
T. Rex, Elton John, The Runaways, Guns N' Roses, Gary Glitter, Aerosmith, the
Dead Boys, Adam Ant, Poison, Prince, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Twisted Sister,
Devo, Megadeth, the Plasmatics, Madonna, Gwar, Cheap Trick, Zodiac Mindwarp,
Alien Sex Fiend, W.A.S.P., The Rolling Stones, The Cramps, Rob Zombie, Ozzy
Osbourne, David Lee Roth, or even Elvis (the next time you see him at a White
Castle)--to name only a few.
And no less a personage than Bob Dylan (who's been known to dip into the mascara
himself from time to time) publicly proclaimed in a January 26, 1978, Rolling
Stone cover story: "I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter."
PART ONE: READY, WILLING, AND UNSTABLE
The Alice Cooper story begins on February 4, 1948, in Detroit, Michigan, when
Vincent Furnier, displaying the ear-splitting vocal calisthenics that would
serve him well in the decades to come, came kicking and screaming into an unsuspecting
world. After several years of living in the oppressive shadow of massive automobile
factories, the family decided to change their environment by relocating to the
desert ambience of Phoenix, Arizona.
This fortuitous move meant that Vincent would be fated to enroll at Cortez High School, where his naturally abundant supply of cheap wit landed him the opportunity to write for the school newspaper. "Get Outta My Hair," his wise-guy column, brought him the friendship of two fellow student journalists: soon-to-be lead and bass guitarists Glen Buxton and Dennis Dunaway.
As luck would have it, all three were looking for a way to score with the female
Cortezians. And, hey, what better way to get to first base than by forming a
rock `n' roll band, right? Not quite. Instead, Vince and Dennis decided to join
the Cortez track team, of all things, whereupon their marathon running prowess
made them instant varsity heroes.
This first exposure to fame was sufficient enough to embolden their self-confidence
to the point where, along with fellow marathoner John Speer (on drums), Glen,
and Glen's pal John Tatum (on lead guitar), they decided to don wigs and enter
their lettermen's talent show as a Beatles parody. They even went so far as
to hire several of the once-elusive Cortez beauties to scream for them from
the foot of the stage during their mock performance. That little display of
adulation, however bogus, was all it took to convince the future anarchists
that this was the life for them.
So what if they didn't know how to play their instruments yet? Since when was
musicianship a prerequisite of forming a rock 'n' roll band? They would learn.
They were 16. They called themselves the Earwigs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Bruce, meanwhile, was making his own athletic mark as a member of Cortez's
football team. An ace axe maniac, who liked nothing better than to run rampant
over the frets as well as the turf, Michael was frustrated with his role as
rhythm guitarist for a rival band called Our Gang. What he was looking for was
music that better suited his more aggressive personality. He found it when he
joined the 'Wigs, who were now calling themselves the Spiders.
With Michael replacing John Tatum, The Spiders began their evolution into a
Stones/Yardbirds garage band, who were adept enough to actually record two singles--one
of which, "Don't Blow Your Mind," was a big enough hit in Phoenix
to establish the band as a minor attraction in the Southwest.
Fresh from this success, with high school now nothing but a memory (albeit a
lasting one that would come back to haunt AM radio for months in 1972), The
Spiders changed their name once again, this time to The Nazz (inspired by the
Jeff Beck/Yardbirds classic "The Nazz Are Blue"), and began making
treks to Hollywood to perform.
Like all up-and-coming bands, The Nazz suffered and starved for a long time.
Their attempts to establish themselves on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles were
offset by the reality of having to return back home to Phoenix from time to
time in order to pay bills and ease severe ego deflation.
Despite their new surroundings and the somewhat encouraging fact that they were
landing the occasional gig as the opening act for the likes of booze buddy Jim
Morrison and The Doors, as
well as The Yardbirds themselves (for whose audience they played nothing but
Yardbirds covers), The Nazz had not yet even reached glorified bar-band status.
Eventually, however, Hollywood became their new home.
By this time, due to creative differences, John Speer was replaced by Phoenix
Camelback High alumnus Neal Smith. With Neal as their new drummer, the stage
was now set for the unleashing of a phenomenally twisted and grandiosely incendiary
rock 'n' roll assault on decency itself--a sharp, satiric bite from the dark
side of life, the likes of which middle-class America had never seen before.
Still, there was one vital piece of the puzzle missing. When news from Philly
arrived that a young whiz kid by the name of Todd Rundgren had the temerity
to name his new band the Nazz, necessitating still yet another name change,
that last piece finally fell into place. For little did Arizona's Nazz know
that this time their new name would soon become universally synonymous with
outrage, delinquency, and immorality on an international scale.
It was 1968, and it was about time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just as there are a million stories in the Naked City, so are there at least
as many theories as to how Vincent Furnier transmogrified into the legendary
entity doomed to be revered and reviled the world over as Alice Cooper.
First and foremost of these is the story of what happened late one night while
the group was visiting Dick Phillips (aka Dick Christian), their manager at
the time. Phillips, a colorful character in his own right, had been urging the
group to break out of their run-of-the-mill mold. That evening, just for laughs,
his mother pulled out a Ouija board to do a reading. As soon as it began, however,
the letter indicator began wildly skipping across the board, spelling out the
name A-L-I-C-E C-O-O-P-E-R.
From that little incident, the boys concocted a tale that would only serve to
enhance the Alice Cooper legend in the years to come: that Vince was the reincarnation
of a young woman of the very same name--a woman who had been burned alive at
the stake hundreds of years ago for being a witch!
Then again, Alice has been known to change his stories from time to time. .
.
Sometimes he claims to have chosen the name because it had "a Baby-Jane/Lizzie-Borden-sweet-and-innocent-with-a-hatchet-behind-the-back
kind of rhythm to it." At other times, he maintains: "Alice Cooper
is such an all-American name. I loved the idea that when we first started, people
used to think that Alice Cooper was a blonde folk singer. The name started simply
as a spit in the face of society. With a name like Alice Cooper, we could really
make 'em suffer."
Regardless of which story you choose to believe, of far more importance is the
fact that the word suffer doesn't even begin to describe the damaging, senses-shattering
assault that these guys inflicted on the mores of common decency. The Alice
Cooper manifesto was an unrelenting, rampant commitment to the wholesale slaughter
of every civilized tenet known to society. They created a designed-to-shock
dynasty of decadence by pushing the limits of both rock 'n' roll and theatricality.
The Alice Cooper Group's relentless pursuit of a higher level of satirical sonic
brutality took outrage to its inevitable extreme.
Keep in mind that, back in 1969, the only excuse a couple of rednecks needed
to blow away Captain America and Billy at the end of Easy Rider was the fact
that they both looked like a couple of hippies. Given how that was the climate
across much of middle America at the time, it doesn't take a lot of imagination
to see how well the spectacle of five tough lookin' cross-dressin' guys (one
of 'em named Alice) with hair down to their waists, wearing mascara and jewelry--and
grinding out a sonic exuberance of noise to boot--was likely to have gone down
a full year earlier.
And just how they didn't end up with their brains shotgunned across some steaming
macadam in one of the Southern towns they were so fond of invading is anyone's
guess.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which isn't to say that the reaction in Los Angeles was any more open-minded.
By now, the group was performing an alarming Dadaist din that gained them the
reputation of, in Alice's words, "the most hated group in Los Angeles."
No less a connoisseur of chaos than Frank Zappa deemed the group's auditory
abrasiveness to be so sufficiently twisted that it deserved a spot on his new
record label, Straight, alongside such esteemed labelmates as The GTO's and
Wild Man Fischer.
How corrosive was the Alice Cooper Group? Just ask any of the Los Angeles audience
who were inside the Cheetah Club the night Alice Cooper took the stage as the
first act to perform as part of a memorial concert in honor of haunted monologist
Lenny Bruce.
All it took was a couple of songs before the throng, almost as one, stood up
and headed for the door in disgust. When the feathers had settled from the group's
onstage pillow fight, there were only four people left. Alongside two of The
GTO's and Zappa was an aspiring entrepreneur who was more than impressed by
what he saw. Shep Gordon realized that any group capable of evoking so negative
a reaction that it could clear a room of 2000 people in the space of a few songs
was not only a force to be reckoned with but also a group destined for truly
great things.
Consequently, along with Joe Greenberg (his partner at the time), Shep introduced
himself to the group and offered to become their manager. When he promised them
that he wouldn't give up hustling on their behalf until they were all millionaires,
the fact that he knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about how to manage a rock
group didn't matter.
He knew enough.
Just as the Coopers bucked tradition by being unconventional musicians, so was
Shep an equally unconventional manager. Together they forever altered the dynamics
of the traditional manager/artist relationship by reinventing the rules of how
to generate outrage and create spectacle. Simply put, they were blissfully ignorant
of the customary constraints the music business had placed in their way.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are the only censor. If you don't like what I say, you have a choice. You
can turn me off. That was the message heard at the beginning of the final track
on Easy Action, the group's second recording for Straight. It was a sage piece
of advice that the majority of record buyers across North America had already
taken Alice Cooper up on. They stayed away from it--as well as their debut Straight
release, Pretties For You--in droves.
Part of the reason was because both albums were too freakishly experimental
and just plain weird to wade through. Some numbers, such as "Living,"
"Reflected," "Levity Ball," and "Return Of The Spiders,"
exhibited more than adequate proof of the group's songwriting potential. Others,
however, had far too many key and tempo changes, which were beyond the audience's
tolerance at the time.
Under the watchful eye of Zappa, the group, relying on its own ornate, twisted,
and highly unconventional arrangements, self-produced their first album. And
while it's true that Neil Young producer David Briggs managed to marginally
improve the sound of their second album, there nevertheless was something else
that was being lost in the translation from studio to stereo: the purity of
the group's vision. Shep began looking for the right producer--someone who would
be enthusiastic enough about the group to allow their ideas room to breathe,
but tough enough to be able to nurture their strong points.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was at this critical juncture in the group's fledgling career that three
key events occurred in rapid succession--events that would lead to the group
becoming a worldwide phenomenon of legendary proportions. The first of these
events was the decision to relocate the group to Alice's own hometown of Detroit.
At this time, the Alice Cooper stage show (as preserved forever in a brief appearance
in the 1970 film Diary Of A Mad Housewife) was one of free-form anarchy that,
in the beginning, was just too intense an experience for most concert-goers
to endure. As Alice would later explain: "We literally had nothing to lose.
We couldn't afford anything, so a lot of our props would be things we'd steal
from hotels, like fire extinguishers and bed sheets. In fact, we'd use anything
we could get our hands on." Inevitably, with each new performance, word
began to spread across the Midwest that the Alice Cooper Show was not your average
evening in an auditorium.
Nowhere, though, were they taken to heart more than in the Motor City. For years
Michigan had spawned a formidable array of its own legendary local talent: most
powerful bands such as The Stooges, The Amboy Dukes, MC5, and Grand Funk Railroad.
What better place, then, for Alice and his gang of noise boys to settle down
in than the real Cooperstown--Alice's actual birthplace.
"The reason our music changed when we got to Detroit was because the audiences
there were literally raising fists at us instead of making peace signs,"
recalls Alice. "That's the difference right there. I've said it before,
and it's absolutely true: we were the group that drove a stake through the heart
of the love generation."
The second event concerned the group's notorious Varsity Stadium appearance
at the 1969 Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival when, during their set, a live chicken
was thrown on the stage by an audience member. As he patiently explains each
and every time the subject comes up--and as evidenced in the documentary footage
featured in the Alice Cooper career retrospective video/DVD, Prime Cuts-The
Alice Cooper Story--Alice, believing that chickens could fly, swooped up the
hapless bird in mid-waddle and gracefully arced it into the air, fully expecting
it to take flight. Alice was mistaken. The chicken landed somewhere within the
first ten rows, whereupon it was promptly torn to pieces by rabid fans.
Alice's protestations notwithstanding ("Believe the humor, not the rumor"),
once the press got hold of the story, they ran with it. The next morning you
couldn't pick up a newspaper without seeing the sordid story of how a sick,
depraved male rock star with a woman's name bit a chicken's head off onstage
and drank its blood.
As a result, the ASPCA began monitoring the group's performances to safeguard
against possible future fowl atrocities. The truth of the matter, however, is
that the inadvertent chicken sacrifice was never repeated again. That is, until
Ozzy Osbourne "borrowed" the idea years later when he allegedly bit
the head off a live dove.
In any event, it was the kind of myth-making publicity that legends are made
of. Thus began an unprecedented spate of press items that would continue unabated
for several years. It may have been the first time, but it certainly wouldn't
by any means be the last time in his career that Alice Cooper would become notorious
for something that he didn't actually do.
Of course, not everyone was gullible enough to believe such a story. One person
who did fall for it, though, was Who guitarist Pete Townshend. Shocked about
what had supposedly happened, a misinformed Townshend literally went on record
to denounce the group by writing, "There are bands killing chickens"
in The Who's "Put The Money Down."
Over a decade later he once again returned to the subject in a June 24, 1982,
Rolling Stone cover story entitled "Stone Cold Sober." In it, Townshend
claimed: "I remember being horrified seeing Alice Cooper beheading live
chickens onstage. And it didn't really redeem him that I had smashed guitars,
you know? Somewhere, there was a line. I don't know whether it was because it
was live, or because it was real blood. But the fact that he later went on to
make some great records didn't redeem him, either. He's sick, tragic, pathetic--and
will always be that way. I'll say hello to him on the street, but I'll never
tip my hat to him."
Beliefs such as these are indicative of the kind of extreme reactions that the
Alice Cooper Group brought out in people. Many other rock bands, rock journalists,
and, yes, even rock fans hated the group because of how they looked, what they
sounded like, and what they stood for.
Although bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were to pose a serious threat
to the idle complacency of the rock 'n' roll hierarchy in the years to come,
there was a big difference between the negative reaction garnered by those bands
and the savage abuse that the Coopers received. By the time the punk movement
arrived, the world was no stranger to the bizarre, having already lived through
the shock theater of the glitter/glam era. The Alice Cooper Group, however,
in kicking open that particular door, had to take the brunt of their peers'
narrow-mindedness.
Under these circumstances, it isn't hard, then, to imagine the reaction that
ordinary parents all across the land had to this . . . this . . . monster that
was fast gaining the rapt attention of their impressionable young children.
The third and most vital event involved an appointment that Shep Gordon had
made while the group was in town. Toronto's Nimbus 9 was world-renowned as the
recording studio where The Guess Who cranked out hit after hit. In a desperate
attempt to get someone to help the group attain a more palatable sound that
would appeal to a wider audience, Shep hoped to secure the services of Nimbus
9's in-house producer, Jack Richardson.
Like it did everywhere else Shep went, the group's reputation had preceded him:
Richardson wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the Alice Cooper Group in any
way, shape, or form. Shep, however, wouldn't take no for an answer. In a last-ditch
attempt to get Gordon off his back, Richardson asked his production assistant
to go to New York and see the group perform live, knowing full well that the
resultant negative review would finally get rid of the manager, once and for
all. What Richardson hadn't counted on, however, was that not only would his
assistant be totally captivated by the group's stage act, but he'd also want
the assignment of producing them himself. His name was Bob Ezrin.
Their days at Cortez and Camelback may have been over, but the bell was just
about to ring for the most important class the Alice Cooper Group would ever
attend. For months the group went to summer school--first on a rented farm in
Pontiac, Michigan, and then in a studio in Chicago. Under Ezrin's tutelage,
they were re-educated in the Three R's: rehearsing, writing, and recording.
Concerning the role Ezrin played in the group's restructuring, Alice says, "He
helped create Alice Cooper. He took us apart and put us back together again,
even though he didn't know exactly what he was doing."
He knew enough.
At the end of the semester they emerged with two things they'd never had before:
a stage show so tight you could bounce a dime off it and a master plan for world
domination.
They called it Love It To Death.
PART TWO: NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS
Love It To Death was the foundation for an astonishing and unparalleled ascent
that, within two years, would culminate in the crowning of Alice Cooper as the
undisputed #1 heavyweight champion rock 'n' roll act in the world.
The very first song, "Caught In A Dream," perfectly encapsulates many of the themes that audiences have come to expect from Alice Cooper: the punk attitude ("I'm caught in a dream, so what?"), the greed ("I need everything the world owes me. I tell it to myself and I agree"), the confusion ("Thought that I was living but you can't really tell. What I thought was Heaven turned out to be Hell"), and the insanity ("When you see me with a smile on my face, then you'll know I'm a mental case").
Other familiar Cooper topics also rear their heads: religion ("Hallowed
Be My Name," "Second Coming"), resurrection ("Black Juju,"
"Sun Arise"), and the ever-shifting battleground of relationships
("Is It My Body," "Long Way To Go").
There was something else, as well. Teenage years are never the easiest of times,
which is why "I'm Eighteen" was such a revelation. Never before had
anyone ever talked to teens on their own level about the awkward pain and loneliness
of growing up and mutating into something altogether . . . different. But Alice
did. And this time, when Alice talked, the youth of the world listened. And
what they heard was that Alice understood. And the reason he understood was
because he was just as messed up as they were! He was one of them. It was that
bonding between artist and audience that helped "I'm Eighteen" climb
to #21 on the pop singles chart.
At the time, Steve Demorest wrote in his Alice Cooper biography: "Vincent
Furnier's anthem had been The Who's `My Generation.' But for a whole new generation,
that anthem would be `I'm Eighteen.'" Echoing that sentiment years later,
Detroit journalist Gary Graff explains: "With `I'm Eighteen,' Cooper created
a `Smells Like Teen Spirit' for the posthippie generation." The Village
Voice proclaimed: "`I'm Eighteen' changed Alice Cooper from the group that
destroyed chickens to the group that destroyed stadiums." And the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has enshrined the anthem as one of the 50 most
important songs in the history of rock 'n' roll.
But if "I'm Eighteen" was the tender morsel that first drew people
into the Alice Cooper web, it was "Ballad Of Dwight Fry" that paralyzed
them into staying longer than they had planned. "Ballad" is named
after character actor Dwight Frye (the actual spelling of his name) who, in
1931, appeared as a lunatic in both Universal Pictures' Dracula and Frankenstein.
A six -and-a-half-minute harrowing descent into one man's madness, "Dwight
Fry" is a torment made all the more chilling by Alice's superb vocal stylizations
and adept skill at concocting various personas.
Bob Ezrin explains: "I always considered Alice to be as much an actor as
a singer. With many of his songs, he was playing a role; sometimes multiple
roles within one song or multiple facets of a single role. And one of the best
ways for us to portray that was through the use of a different subscore. Just
as you would shoot scenes in a movie by using different lighting or lenses,
on the records we would use different microphones, different vocals sounds,
and different styles of delivery. We'd also surround Alice with different-sounding
tracks. Switching from vocal to vocal or sound to sound signified that there
was something going on with this character."
In the group's new stage show, Alice portrayed the ultimate insane asylum inmate--a
raving mad lunatic who sang "Dwight Fry" from the confines of a straitjacket,
only to break out of his restraints during the song's climax and strangle the
nurse assigned to look after him.
For all the bloodletting prevalent in the group's performances, however, it
must be remembered that at the center of the action was a morality play: Alice
was always executed at the end of each show. At first, during the Love It To
Death tour, he went to the chair and was electrocuted. Then, as his transgressions
escalated from bad to worse, so did the punishments: on the Killer tour he was
hung nightly from the gallows; by the time of the Billion Dollar Babies tour,
he was being strapped into a life-size working guillotine and beheaded.
Of course, Alice had to die as a way of absolving the audience from the sin
of vicariously reveling in his crimes. No one, however, ever said that, having
been killed, he had to stay dead. Keep in mind that resurrection is an important
element of the Cooper oeuvre. Accordingly, Alice always rose from the dead just
in time for the encore.
With their new success, it was decided that Warner Bros. Records, who up until
then had been merely distributing the group's albums, would now become their
sole label. With the considerable support of Warner Bros. now behind them, Ezrin
and the group returned to Chicago to record the group's next album.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From lady killers ("Be My Lover") to baby killers ("Dead Babies"),
the Cooper's fourth album was an extremely conceptual one. A veritable soundtrack
for the calculated outrage and disruptive, corruptive congestions of their stage
show, Killer focused on the alienated outcasts of the world, either through
premeditation for gain ("Desperado") or as a result of society's neglect
("Killer"). From the bludgeoning metasonics of "Under My Wheels"
and "You Drive Me Nervous" to the extended disciplined meanderings
of "Halo Of Flies," Killer had something for everyone.
With increased sales, the Coopers could now invest more time and money into
making their stage production bigger and better. Their goal: to give their audience
the most creative show they could imagine.
They succeeded.
Alice's wardrobe evolved from thrift shop trash 'n' drag rags to attire more
befitting a hard-working master agitator. Torn tights, thigh-high boots, and
leather bondage vests were now the new issue. The most important change, however,
was in the evolution of Alice's eye makeup from mincing to menacing. The fem-demented
spider-eye design was gone. In its place were now two dark, malevolent orbs
of death, which--along with a newly carved on clown frown--would instantly become
known as Alice's trademark visage. Accordingly, his new persona was as chief
atrocity exhibitor of a new brand of dementia: Evil as a commodity.
And speaking of commodities, there was one additional accessory that the group
required. "No one in the group did drugs," Alice explains, describing
the onset of the group's hyperextended lost weekend. "We drank beer."
Actually, they didn't just drink beer. They drank a lot of beer. So much, in
fact, that by 1972 the group was spending over $32,000 a year on suds alone.
"It had a weird kind of all-American sickness to it," Alice says of
the time. And because the group's unofficial motto was "Nothing in Moderation,"
the Alice Cooper juggernaut began fueling itself with an additional high-octane
blend of Budweiser and Seagram's V.O.
For lesser mortals, the first reaction to an addiction is to deny. For Alice,
it was to publicize. Eventually, it seemed like you couldn't open up an issue
of Creem, Hit Parader, or Circus without seeing a photo of Alice with his leather-gloved
hand wrapped around a Bud. Indeed, by 1973, when Creem's readers voted Alice
"Punk of the Year," the magazine ran a cover story on the group featuring
"The Alice Cooper Alcohol Cookbook," for which each group member submitted
his own favorite booze-laden recipes.
These monumental lapses in good taste didn't get past the media watchdogs. As
early as July 1971, Albert Goldman in Life magazine was pillorying Alice as
a "frightening embarrassment" who also just so happened to be a "shrewd
operator."
While the Coopers were making headlines as social misfits and world outcasts,
they were also doing something else that, at the time, went quite unheralded.
As a touring act, they were single-handedly expanding and raising the standard
of rock concert productions. In addition to their innovative introduction of
props, makeup, and costuming, their very concept of staging--which involved
the use of tiers, platforms, and runways--went far beyond the usual bare-stage
standard that everyone in the concert business was accustomed to.
The innovative techniques of their original lighting director, Charlie Carnal,
who designed and operated the lighting set-ups, contributed visual emphasis
to the Alice Cooper stage show. Given the group's unbridled strum und drag style,
it's hard to imagine what rock 'n' roll would look like today had the Alice
Cooper Group not been there first to pave the way to theatrics.
Go back and take another look at that long list of performers who owe a debt
to Alice Cooper. Study it carefully, for they all had their greatest successes
after the advent of Alice. David Bowie may have worn a dress on the cover of
The Man Who Sold The World in 1971, but Alice had already flirted with transvestism
in 1969. Marc Bolan admirably defined Gangster Glam on Bolan's Zip Gun in 1975,
but Alice had already been there and gone by 1973. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne
Westwood may have refined the punk rock look in 1977, but guess who invented
it by wearing S&M gear as well as the slashed 'n' shredded safety pin look
as early as 1972? The freshly dug-up Gothic gloom 'n' doom look of Siouxsie
And The Banshees? Alice. The grease-paint personas of Kiss? Alice. The bloodletting
of Gwar? Alice. Marilyn? Alice. Everyone else? Alice, Alice, Alice.
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters put it this way: "No one in this band can play
a guitar like Eric Clapton or a stage like Alice Cooper." Nobody ever before
looked like him, sounded like him, or acted like him. And nobody could shred
the speaker of an AM transistor radio like Alice Cooper. He was a first-class
hit disturber--and his greatest class disruption exploded onto the airwaves
in the summer of 1972 with all the subtle impact of ten fingernails shrieking
across a classroom chalkboard.
Ever the television addict, Alice was sitting around watching a Dead End Kids
movie one night. The Kids were the gang who were to become filmdom's favorite
juvenile delinquents, The Bowery Boys. When gang leader Mugs, using his own
unique brand of diction, told his pal Sach to wise up, Alice heard the words
that would result in the internationally biggest-selling single in the history
of Warner Bros. "Hey Sach," said Mugs, whacking him in the head with
his hat. "School's out!"
A teen paean to indelicate delinquency and academic insurrection, School's Out
was an album that contained more hoods than a used car lot. From the brass-knuckled
back alley brawls of "Luney Tune," "Street Fight," and "Public
Animal #9" to the wistful lawless mobocracy of "Alma Mater" and
"Grande Finale," there was something for every reprobate and miscreant--including
a real cool ersatz jazz make-out piece ("Blue Turk"), as well as one
of the greatest apocalyptic songs ever recorded ("My Stars").
And then there's the title track itself, "School's Out," the #1 single
that Entertainment Weekly deemed one of the Top 10 Greatest Summer Songs ever,
right behind The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City" and The Beach
Boys' "California Girls." Not bad company for a song that contains
some of the rawest, snarkiest, punkiest, and wittiest rock lyrics ever written--including
the brilliant: "Well we got no class! And we got no principles! And we
got no innocence! We can't even think of a word that rhymes!"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BITCH BITCH BITCH read the muscle shirt Alice wore for the School's Out class
photo, and bitch bitch bitch is exactly what everyone was doing about Alice.
If there was something wrong with the world, chances are that the Alice Cooper
Group was being blamed for it. When you're a fast moving target, however, you
can afford to give your enemies lots of ammunition. And that's just what happened
when the Alice Cooper Show invaded millions of North American homes via television
on ABC's very first In Concert program.
So disturbing, in fact, was Alice's performance that a station manager in Cincinnati
actually yanked the show off the air and replaced it with an episode of Clint
Eastwood's Rawhide. Interestingly enough, the identity of the offended station
manager was a man who would later go on to become head honcho of The Walt Disney
Company--none other than Michael Eisner.
In the midst of all this sensationalism, the School's Out tour flew across the
pond to England. Alice's way of saying hello to the U.K.? By accidentally-on-purpose
stalling a flatbed truck smack in the middle of Piccadilly Circus during rush
hour. A truck that just happened to bear a double-sided billboard featuring
Richard Avedon's photo of Alice wearing nothing but his boa constrictor.
Back home, there was the flap concerning the pink panties that were wrapped
around the first pressing of School's Out. That's right, every copy of School's
Out contained a pair of women's panties with 12 inches stuffed inside it. It
wasn't the first time that Alice would raise temperatures because of his innovative
album packaging, nor would it be the last.
First, there had been the exposed panties in the cover painting on Pretties
For You, a problem easily corrected by the application of a large yellow sticker--not
just on the shrink-wrap, mind you, but on the actual cover itself. This was
followed by the come-hither con of Easy Action, whereupon what appeared to be
five topless babes with long hair on the front cover turned out to be five ornery
male freaks on the back. Next, there was the small matter of Alice's finger
slyly poking out from between his legs on the cover of Love It To Death, prompting
the immediate airbrushing out of said offending rigid digit. Then came Killer's
controversial detachable full-color 1972 calendar depicting a beaten and bloodied
Alice hanging, quite dead, at the end of a noose.
By the time of School's Out, fans were treated to a Grammy®-nominated album
cover that folded out into an actual school desk, complete with fake metal legs,
vandalized hinged lid, and a depiction of interior contents such as a slingshot,
a switchblade, marbles, a copy of MAD magazine opened to a comic strip about
Liberace, credits written in the style of a true or false quiz, and a photo
of the group as a hard-drinking gang of high school toughs taped to the inside
lid. There was even a slab of chewing gum stuck to the bottom.
As for those panties: no doubt it was the first time that many a male fan managed
to literally get his hands on a pair, but it almost wasn't to be, for the materials
the panties were made of were flammable. In a rush, fire-proof panties were
hurriedly manufactured so that they could be shipped across state lines (prompting
headlines once again).
As it happens, 1972 was also an election year--and what better sacred cow for
Alice to slash to ribbons in the middle of Main Street, U.S.A., than that much-vaunted
symbol of democratic pomposity, the American electoral system? "I hate
politics, it's boring," Alice proclaimed. Following their leader, his fans
responded by casting their votes for "Elected." Ironically, one of
its strongest showings, given the song's rampant Americanism, was in England
where it blitzed straight to #1.
On the subject of the U.K., much has been written about how the Sex Pistols
were at the vanguard of extolling nihilism as a way of life with their official
slogan, "We Don't Care." Alice, however, accurately reflected the
ruling apathy of the times when, half a decade earlier in "Elected,"
he issued this Declaration of Indifference: "I know we have problems. We
have problems in the North, South, East, and West. New York City. St. Louis.
Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago. Everybody has problems. And personally,
I don't care."
"Elected" was also one of the first rock videos in history to portray
a rock band acting out a narrative situation, as opposed to having them merely
playing their instruments. In it, Michael, Neal, Dennis, and Glen flank Alice
as he campaigns for President, presses the flesh with the man on the street,
and bathes himself in money delivered by his chimpanzee campaign manager.
As Alice often explains: "We always made fun of three things, and that's
sex, death, and money." So far, they had the first two bases covered in
spades. Now it was time to steal third and head home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rock journalist Ben Edmonds said it best when he wrote, "Money talks, and
1972 was the year that Alice Cooper found their voices." The video for
"Elected" foreshadowed what was about to come, but the title of their
next album screamed it out loud and clear with a typically defiant and brazen
shamelessness.
Billion Dollar Babies was the #1 album, which confirmed that the Alice Cooper
Group was the biggest and most spectacular rock 'n' roll band in the world.
This time around, the album packaging (which garnered a second Grammy nomination
for album graphic design) was in the shape of a giant snakeskin wallet, complete
with a one billion dollar bill and detachable signed photos of the group. In
addition to "Elected," the album also contained the hit singles "Hello
Hooray," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and the PsychoErotic title track.
"The whole idea behind the album," said Alice, "is to exploit
the idea that everyone has sick perversions. But they've got to be American
perversions; we're very nationalistic, you know."
Although Alice was pumping up the economy by blowing his wad all over the place,
money wasn't the only thing on his mind this time around. Reverse sexual harassment
was another taboo subject that Alice tackled as the victim who was left "Raped
And Freezin'." He also proved that he could still genderbend with the best
of them (the uneasily hilarious ballad "Mary Ann"), stick his finger
deep into the pulse of the prepunk zeitgeist (the precognitive "Generation
Landslide"), delve into pulseless nocturnal defiling (that NecroExplorative
double dosage of disgust, "Sick Things" and "I Love The Dead"),
and then top it all off with "Unfinished Sweet," a song about that
scariest of all experiences: a trip to the dentist.
Alice also set yet another lasting trend when he teamed up with Donovan to record
"Billion Dollar Babies," the world's first duet between two rock 'n'
roll superstars.
Nobody knew better than the Coopers that you've gotta spend money to make money,
so they poured in excess of 1.2 million smackers into their brand-new brain-boggling
stage show. It was cash well spent: the Billion Dollar Babies tour reaped a
cool 4.6 million bucks--1.4 million more than the Stones' Tour Of The Americas
pulled in the previous year. All in all, the group raked in an astounding 17
million dollars that year: big numbers for 1973.
And although he was still every rock rag's favorite cover felon (having already
appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone twice), now everyone else--from Time
to Cosmopolitan and 16 to Penthouse--was vying for Alice's attention. Twenty
years before Mick and Keith were given their chance to grace it, Forbes magazine,
the bible of capitalism, put Alice on their cover for a story about the big
business of rock 'n' roll entitled "A New Breed of Tycoon." "I'm
the most American rock act!" Alice bragged with justification. "I
have American ideals: I love money!"
Indeed, just as he had predicted in "Elected," tycoon Alice was taking
the country by storm. Those who were fortunate enough to attend a show on the
Billion Dollar Babies tour were exposed to an extraordinary display of astonishing
inventiveness, shock, and outrage.
The success of the stage show was due in part to Joe Gannon, the Coopers' stage
designer. Expanding upon creative input from the Coopers and Shep, Joe was responsible
for turning the Alice Cooper vision into a tangible, three-dimensional nightmare
reality of magic and wonderment. Their set designs resulted in the most elaborate
stage and light presentation of any rock show ever, setting the standard in
terms of sheer massive size.
The new and improved Cooper hellbox of unearthly delights contained a guillotine,
swords, whips, mannequins, hatchets, baby dolls, blood, fist fights, leopard
skin platform boots, balloons, giant teeth and dental drills, free posters,
free money, smoke machines, bubble machines, snakes, and ladders . . . everything,
in fact, but the proverbial kitchen sink.
During the Christmas leg of their tour, columnist Bob Greene joined the group
dressed up as Santa Claus, only to get beaten up onstage by the Coopers each
night as a reward for his trouble. In his book about the experience, Billion
Dollar Baby, Greene wrote: "The reason Alice Cooper is currently the biggest
of all rock 'n' roll bands stems from the Cooper stage show. A combination of
leering sexuality and blood-drenched simulated violence that has prompted in-print
reactions labeling the group as sick, perverted, obscene, and `Nazi-like.'"
Indeed, British member of Parliament Leo Abse requested that the government
ban the group from performing in England, claiming that Alice was "peddling
the culture of the concentration camp." Said Abse: "Pop is one thing,
anthems of necrophilia are quite another."
But as Brown, Esbensen, and Geis state in the textbook Criminology: Explaining
Crime And Its Context, their 1991 treatise on the subject: "Crime and deviance
continually test societal constraints, thus forcing an ongoing evaluation of
group norms. This confronting of the legal limits introduced the possibility
for social change. Think, for example, of the changes in society brought about
by such `criminals' and `deviants' as Socrates, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin
Luther King and Alice Cooper."
Strangely enough, it was at this point that, despite coming off the greatest
success of their career, cracks were beginning to form in the group. For one
thing, there was the matter of Glen Buxton's continuing health problems. To
further complicate matters, some of the group members felt that the theatrical
aspect of the act should be toned down, if not dropped altogether. Alice, though,
feeling that this would be a big mistake, disagreed. His reasoning was simple:
if these were the very elements that had brought them to the top, why abandon
them now?
The album that came out of this unplanned uneasiness was Muscle Of Love. Ostensibly
about sex in the big city, at first glance it seemed to have all the cohesive
unity of their previous albums. The packaging--a grease-stained cardboard box
complete with Institute Of Nude Wrestling book cover--was as innovative as ever,
and there was no denying that many of the album's songs --"Big Apple Dreamin'
(Hippo)," "Never Been Sold Before," "Working Up A Sweat,"
and the title track--were all worthy additions to the Cooper canon. Still, something
was missing.
Supplementing their stage show with selected songs from Muscle Of Love, the
group embarked upon a brief East Coast Billion Dollar Babies Holiday Tour, as
well as a South American jaunt that smashed world records for attendance.
By 1973 various manifestations of glitter, glam, and flash rock were in full
swing. The exotic musical wilderness, which Alice had so successfully trailblazed,
had now become a beaten path down which many others were following to fame and
fortune. And although few would've blamed him for feeling ripped off by the
scores of imitators appearing in his wake, Alice himself was unmoved. His unique
brand of shock rock was always intended to be not merely a means unto itself
but also an open door through which other bands could expand their horizons.
During this period, the Cooper camp successfully marked time by releasing their
Greatest Hits album. Fittingly, its cover portrayed the public enemies as James
Cagney-styled gangsters billed as the "hit men of rock." Prophetically,
the album would also prove to be the Alice Cooper Group's last stand as well.
Michael and Neal decided to begin recording their own prospective solo projects,
which, in turn, prompted Alice to begin working on one of his. Contrary to popular
belief, though, they were never fired by Alice. Instead, like many other popular
bands before them, Alice, Michael, Glen, Neal, and Dennis simply went their
own separate ways.
It was at this point in his career that Alice decided to pull his most infamous
scare tactic yet by declaring in interviews, "Alice is just a character
I play. Offstage, I'm just a normal guy!" This set the scene for the King
of Shock Rock's most horrifying role. It wasn't played out, however, before
tens of thousands in a sports arena. Rather, it was enacted before a television
audience of millions when Alice Cooper showed up on a couple of episodes of
The Hollywood Squares game show.
This was Alice at his most subversive, and, in an ironic way, it made him as
twisted as ever. Most fans, though, didn't get the joke. Indeed, many still
regard this period as the low point of Alice's career. The punch line to these
appearances, of course, was the fact that, by now, there truly was no escaping
Alice. No matter where you went, there he was. Parents who screamed at their
kids to turn down his records now couldn't avoid the rock star themselves--not
even in the supposedly safe sanctuary of their favorite TV show.
After all, what could possibly be worse for straitlaced contestants with a hate-on
for the long-haired freak than to have them end up being forever in Alice's
debt because he was the one who had provided them with the grand prize-winning
answer?
Meanwhile, determined to raise his game to the next level, Vincent Furnier legally
changed his name to Alice Cooper and embarked on a solo career. If Mr. &
Mrs. America had found his TV stint unsettling, it's a sure bet that nothing
could prepare them for what Alice had planned next. Nothing in their wildest
dreams . . .
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incorporating film, dance, theater, and rock 'n' roll, Welcome To My Nightmare
was the pioneering theatrical extravaganza that Alice had always dreamed of
staging. In terms of content and production values, the tour transcended anything
Alice had ever achieved before and far surpassed anything anyone else had ever
attempted. It was rock's biggest spectacle yet, and it solidified Alice Cooper's
status not only as one of the biggest rock and entertainment stars in the world
but also as that rarest of personalities: someone who has become a household
name.
Alice's new persona was Steven, an evolvement of his Dwight Fry character, who
was trying to come to grips with not only his guilt but also his rapidly eroding
sanity. Nightmare was a morality play that touched on all of the classic Cooper
themes. It also provided Alice with enough latitude to utilize all manner of
special effects and costume changes. He was tormented by giant web-climbing
black widow spiders, fought a duel to the death with a giant Cyclops, and encored
with "School's Out" after exploding from a giant toy box.
The most stunning visual effect came towards the end of the show during a filmed
dream sequence that was projected onto a large screen onstage. The on-screen
Alice, being chased by demons through a cemetery, escapes by literally running
out of the movie, through the screen, onto the stage, and then back into the
screen again. Alice used his illusion to astound audiences with great success
every night.
In addition to the title track, Welcome To My Nightmare also contained such
other Cooper classics as the anthemic "Department Of Youth" and the
coolly satiric "Cold Ethyl," a song that so totally offended advice-slinger
Ann Landers with its theme of NecroSexuality that she devoted one of her syndicated
newspaper columns to it, railing against its vulgarity. Good thing Ann didn't
listen carefully to Alice's massive hit single "Only Women Bleed."
This was his most deceptive song yet, not just because it was a ballad but also
because of its neo-feminist subtext.
Alice also enlisted horror master extraordinaire Vincent Price to do an eerily
effective narration for "The Black Widow." It was a nice touch, but
if you want a second opinion just ask Michael Jackson. He liked the idea so
much that he "borrowed" it and had Price do the exact same thing,
less than ten years later, for his album Thriller.
While he was in Toronto recording the album, Alice filmed The Nightmare: the
world's first full-length video concept album, which was subsequently shown
on national TV. And even though the home technology wouldn't exist for it to
be released on videocassette until 1984, The Nightmare nevertheless garnered
another Grammy nomination when it finally was. It's worth noting that both album
and show featured the guitar tag team of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, whose
unique dueling style perfectly complemented the edgy schizophrenic tone of Alice's
new project.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although he was now more famous than ever, events were slowly conspiring to
wear Alice down. For one thing, the constant grind of having to record and tour
was beginning to take its inevitable toll. For another, subsequent albums such
as Alice Cooper Goes To Hell (an "Alice's Inferno" purgatory saga),
Lace And Whiskey (Alice as boozy gumshoe), and The Alice Cooper Show (a live
album), were all introduced into an oversaturated marketplace reeling from the
rapid ascendancy of two new trends: a dreaded abominable aberration called disco
and a cacophonous wallowing of disenfranchised youth that was being marketed
as punk rock.
When Alice heard that John Lydon had sung along to his recording of "I'm
Eighteen" for his Rotten audition, he wasn't the least bit surprised. After
all, the punks were doing little more than heavily appropriating the outrageous
tricks that he'd created years before. And although they'd learned their lessons
from him well, the fact remained that Alice was still the original biggest and
baddest punk around. Still, like so many others, he found himself intrigued
and amused by this new breed of bands.
To paraphrase one of Alice's fans: the times, they were a-changin'.
PART THREE: I ROCKED WITH A ZOMBIE
The stylistic musical gridlock that disco and punk created was making it increasingly
difficult for Alice and the rest of the hard rock community to effectively slug
their way onto the radio. Always one to go against the grain, his instinctive
survival solution was to continue releasing ballads, and the strategy worked.
"You And Me," from Lace And Whiskey, became one of Alice's biggest
hits ever, while "I Never Cry" was a certified million-selling single.
Of special interest to Alice Cooper Group fans was the fact that, around the same time that Alice released Lace And Whiskey, Michael, Neal, and Dennis reunited as the Billion Dollar Babies for an album entitled Battle Axe.
In keeping with Cooperian tradition, the Lace And Whiskey stage show featured
a stage designed like a giant TV set--a concept later "borrowed" by
U2 for their Zooropa tour. It was dubbed the King Of The Silver Screen tour
in tribute to film noir private eyes like Sam Spade and, especially, the habitually-imbibing
Nick Charles. In fact, as the album title suggests, the whole album was hazed
by Alice's alcohol intake.
"Disco drove me to drink," Alice would later say in jest, but his
battle with the bottle was no joke. Alice's penchant for hitting the sauce had
evolved from being a harmless pastime and diversion to being a serious hindrance
and problem. This was also when fans next saw Alice in the legendary (for all
the wrong reasons) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie. Committing himself
into an institution served two purposes. First, it allowed Alice to dry out
in suitable surroundings; and second, those surroundings inspired his next album,
From The Inside.
Working with producer David Foster and collaborating with drinking pal Bernie
Taupin, From The Inside features some of Alice's most personal lyrics. From
"Jackknife Johnny" and "Millie And Billie" to that object
of intimate inmate desire, "Nurse Rozetta," every character study
on the album came from an actual inpatient Alice met while incarcerated. Only
the names were changed to protect the deviant dipsomaniac.
Once again, Alice hit the road to bring his latest album to life with a manic
stage show dubbed the Madhouse Rock tour. The new Cooper extravaganza was performed
on a stage decked out as an insane asylum, upon which, in addition to dealing
with his fellow mental ward psychos, Alice chillingly dramatized his bout with
the bottle by literally duking it out with giant bottles of scotch and rye.
Another film role found Alice appearing in the comedy Roadie, which itself was
inspired by "Road Rats," one of the hot rockers off Lace And Whiskey.
*** *** ***
By 1980 disco had already begun its slow maturation into all forms of hybrid dance music. Punk, meanwhile, proved to be far too raw and radical for mainstream tastes after all. Accordingly, it was immediately castrated by the major record conglomerates who called their new neutered version new wave.
Alice entered the new decade under a banner declaring "Alice Cooper `80."
Flush The Fashion was a direct response to the musical climate of the era. This
time, the concept was that there was no concept. Alice performed with a mean,
lean, and streamlined image sans makeup on the album as well as on the new tour.
The follow-up album, Special Forces, was a continuation of this "new"
Alice but taken a step further with the unveiling of his next twisted sartorial
statement: military drag. The album's theme and tour had the Degenerate General
adopting a Field Marshall Cooper persona, replete with lipstick, leather, and
false eyelashes. Next up was Zipper Catches Skin, an album that might best be
described as featuring songs that displayed a lyrical stream of consciousness
style, wherein Alice explored a myriad of topics ranging from throat-slashings
to alien life forms to fanciful dark fantasies of Zorro.
Alice's early '80s foray was completed with the surreal cerebral musings of
DaDa. Loosely based on the peculiar story of a character named Former Lee Warmer,
DaDa is a traumatic study of a cannibalistic elderly man locked up in an attic
by his brother, who is subsequently forced to supply the old gent with a steady
supply of fresh victims.
Although considered cult classics by some Alice aficionados, these albums seemed
a bit too abstract and personal to attract and keep the typical rock fan's attention.
It was a lesson that wasn't lost on Alice.
Once again, he found himself releasing albums into a rapidly changing marketplace
where hard rock itself was floundering as a viable commodity. Everyone from
Aerosmith to Kiss was feeling the effects as rock 'n' roll underwent yet another
transformation. It was during these turbulent times that Alice successfully
recovered from a little-known relapse into alcoholism. Quitting the bottle once
and for all this time afforded a welcome respite, which also allowed Alice the
opportunity to lay back and assess the situation.
After an extended hiatus, he signed with MCA for his next two albums. With Shep
still by his side (who continues to be at the helm to this day), Alice then
joined forces with Kane Roberts, a particularly adept guitarist who just happened
to have the freaky attraction of looking like a professional bodybuilder. Alice
made Kane his new foil, and together they began creating the music that ultimately
would result in Alice's return to the roar of heavy metal.
Alice also sought out new metal-oriented producers to help put some solid meat
onto the bones of his new musical excess. Producer Beau Hill tightened up Constrictor,
while ace metal mixmaster Michael Wagener helped Alice to Raise Your Fist And
Yell.
Once again, the famed Alice Cooper road show was back in its full gory glory.
As always, Alice could expect his longtime fans to be in attendance. This time,
however, a whole new slew of MTV-weaned headbangers--who, up until now, had
only heard fabled rumors about Alice--showed up to actually see the legend perform
in person for themselves.
The Nightmare Returns is how the new tour was billed, and it was an advisory
not to be taken lightly, for Alice had concocted his goriest and most violent
stage show yet. "We make sure that the first 20 rows are soaked in blood,"
Alice bragged as he went from town to town. And he made good on his threat.
The opening night concert was broadcast live from Detroit as an MTV Halloween
special, and a year later the tour climaxed explosively with a final show headlining
at the Reading Festival in England.
On the movie front, Alice became musically involved in the sixth installment
of the Friday The 13th series, while in John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness,
he stole the show with his ominous portrayal as the leader of the deranged homeless.
Of course, it goes without saying that millions around the world have been entertained
by Alice's worthy appearance in Wayne's World.
Much to everyone's surprise, even in 1986, the man who invented controversy
and turned it into an art form found himself once again in the crosshairs of
countless numbers of grassroots organizations who, all around the world, had
mobilized with the sole fanatical mission of trying to ban Alice from appearing
in their town. In 1988 the German state of Bavaria actually did manage to censor
Alice's doll chopping performance of "Dead Babies" by threatening
him and his cohorts with imprisonment should he proceed with his act as planned.
Meanwhile, back home in the land of the free, Tipper Gore's record-rating PMRC
immediately installed Alice at the top of their Most Wanted list. As always,
Alice wore their disgust as a badge of honor.
With these performances, Alice Cooper once again reclaimed his rightful position
in the pantheon of rock 'n' roll.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Having strongly re-established himself as one of the premier live rock 'n' roll
acts in the business, Alice (who by now had worked the blood 'n' guts of the
MCA years out of his system) signed with Epic Records and trained his creative
sights on the making of what would become one of his biggest successes ever.
Once again, he turned his attention to a familiar subject that had served him
well since the days of "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" and "Is It My Body."
There was no denying that the old dynamics of sex and romance had, over the
years, severely mutated into something scarier than even Alice could ever have
envisioned. It was a source of inspiration just waiting to be used.
Enlisting esteemed hitmaker Desmond Child to cowrite and produce his new album,
Alice once again headed into the studio, accompanied by Aerosmith and Bon Jovi,
both of whom were recruited to sit in on a few tracks. The result was Trash,
which spawned the megahit "Poison" and became the biggest-selling
album of Alice's career.
Alice Cooper Trashes The World was the new tour's theme, and the title was more
than a fair description. Upon its completion, Alice went to work on the follow-up,
Hey Stoopid. Included in the sessions this time around were special guests Ozzy
Osbourne, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Mötley Crüe. Also making an
appearance was Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, thus continuing an association
that dates back to the first time Alice and the Gunners toured together in 1988--tandem
teamwork that includes two collaborations: a hot-wired version of "Under
My Wheels" and Use Your Illusion I's "The Garden."
Their respect for Alice, however, is by no means an isolated incident; countless
others in the music business have also showed their appreciation by covering
Alice Cooper material. A double-CD tribute entitled Welcome To Our Nightmare
features the talents of numerous alternative bands, while Humanary Stew is a
tribute CD that includes, among others, Roger Daltrey and Megadeth.
The Last Temptation, a harrowing theological account of lost innocence, rounded
out Alice's trilogy of terror for Epic Records. From Dave McKean's disturbing
cover photocollage to Sandman author Neil Gaiman's accompanying graphic novel,
it was more than apparent that this time Alice Cooper wasn't fooling around.
"The Last Temptation is the first album I've done in a long time that's
a true concept album," says Alice. "In the '90s, there are certain
words we avoid or think we've outgrown. Words like temptation, sin, redemption.
These words are old words, but they're not dead. These are words that I wanted
to explore with this new album."
In addition to hard-edged fan-favorites like "Lost In America" and
"Bad Place Alone," The Last Temptation also made good use of the unique
songwriting ability and corrosive vocal cords of Soundgardener Chris Cornell,
who helped nail home Alice's various points of view on the dual duets "Stolen
Prayer" and "Unholy War."
Next came a new live album, A Fistful Of Alice, specifically designed to update
his only prior in-the-flesh offering, 1977's The Alice Cooper Show. Recorded
at Cabo Wabo, Sammy Hagar's infamous Mexican watering hole, the album was aided,
abetted, and ably executed by guest guitarists Sammy and Slash. Even everybody's
favorite cool ghoul Rob Zombie (who'd also teamed up with Alice to record the
Grammy-nominated X-Files track "Hands Of Death (Burn Baby Burn)" crawled
out of his casket and braved the harsh Mexican sun, just to hang out and perform
with his horror hero.
But of all the indignities Alice Cooper has inflicted upon an unsuspecting public
over the years, arguably none has had as wide-ranging an impact in tight-laced
conservative circles as his well-publicized unholy alliance with the symbol
of All That Is Good--that white-bucked denizen of decency, the Anti-Alice himself,
Mister Pat Boone.
When Pat earned his merit badge in hipness by recording his own good-natured
version of "No More Mr. Nice Guy," some wondered if he actually realized
just how potent a force for social disruption Alice Cooper truly was. Needless
to say, the humorless religious right was quick to repeatedly bring this fact
to Pat's attention, publicly rebuking him at every opportunity. Pat wore their
disgust as a badge of honor. To his credit, he told them to get a sense of humor
and didn't back down in the face of their relentless indignant fury.
Meanwhile, 30 years after first performing in those small Phoenix nightclubs
and bars, the man responsible for Pat's personal purgatory continued his ongoing
march to the millennium and beyond. As the ruinous Ringmaster of Alice Cooper's
Rock 'n' Roll Carnival, he embarked upon a new world tour that took him across
the U.S., through Europe, and into Australia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was with great sadness that fans the world over learned of the untimely death
of Alice Cooper Group founding member and lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died
October 18, 1997, at a hospital in Clarion, Iowa, as a result of complications
from pneumonia.
"I grew up with Glen and started the group with him. He was one of my best
friends," says Alice, recalling his crony in crime. "I think I laughed
more with him than with anyone else. He was an underrated and influential guitarist--a
genuine rock 'n' roll rebel. Wherever he is now, I'm sure that there's a guitar,
a cigarette, and a switchblade nearby."
On a happier note, it's heartening to know that Glen had the opportunity--on various occasions--to spend time with all of his Alice Cooper bandmates before he passed away. For regardless of any sporadic differences which may have arisen along the way as a result of the group's breaking up, the guys remained friends over the years and still kept in touch.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Insolent, impertinent, and impudent, the lineup of Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway,
Michael Bruce, Neal Smith, and Alice Cooper--also known as the Alice Cooper
Group--was that rarest of entities: an aggregation of five uniquely distinctive
personalities, who together not only sounded great but also looked great as
a rock 'n' roll band.
There can be no denying that this is nothing less than the gripping story of
one of rock 'n' roll's most exciting heroes. The chronicle of Alice Cooper's
vastly influential career is as sensationally spellbinding as the very life
it depicts.
His accomplishments herald Alice Cooper as a true original in an era where originality
is disdained. The triumphs and tribulations heard on Alice Cooper's albums continue
to thrill millions all over the world to this day, with his name and image remaining
an inextricable part of our language and culture, as familiar as they are enduring.
Indeed, no better example of Alice Cooper's timelessness can be found than in
the fact that he still sings "I'm Eighteen" with all the passionate
fervor and belief that he first brought to the song. For as long as there is
a part of us that will always remain 18, we will all have far more in common
with Alice Cooper than we might realize--or dare to publicly admit.
After all, you're still here, and so is Alice. Rocking out like all get out.
And ain't that what it's all about?
Remember The Coop, huh?
Jeffrey Morgan is a freelance journalist and rock critic who specializes in all aspects of historical and contemporary popular culture. From 1975 to 1990 he was the Canadian Contributing Editor of Creem magazine. He resides in Toronto, where he is currently writing his first novel. Contact address: jmorgan@interlog.com