Alice Cooper (Band)

Whilst procrastinating writing the Blake Shelton and Steeleye Span Discographies (seriously, I get about 2 sentences in and remember my musical vocabulary is so limited for the country and folk genres), I thought I might start one for the original Alice Cooper band, as I'm seeing them in mid-November (2017).

Now, I started off with an Alice Cooper greatest hits, then moved on to getting some of his 90s and 2000s albums (as well as Welcome To My Nightmare (1975), a classic concept album - and necessary to understand the 2011 follow up Welcome 2 My Nightmare). Then in mid-2016 I thought I'd give the albums from the original band a chance. I mean, they're the ones who did School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies and Elected. They must be pretty straight up rocky.

How wrong I was...

Alice Cooper was/is:

Vince Furnier/Alice Cooper - Vocals

Glen Buxton - Lead Guitar

Michael Bruce - Rhythm Guitar & keys

Dennis Dunaway - Bass

Neal Smith - Drums

Pretties For You (1969)

What. The Hell. Is this album. 

Dissonant sounds, weird effects, few actual 'songs'. This is mostly just noise. An attempt at making 'art' perhaps? But no, that's too much praise. Avant-garde, baroque, psychedelic; these are the only appropriate adjectives. Oh, and possibly: nonsense.

Fields of Regret is sort of a song. It's kind of the most listenable thing on the album. There's a riff, some solos, a discernible melody and lyrics. But it's all very noisey.

Reflected is also nearly a song. It even turns in to one on Billion Dollar Babies, as the completely rewritten 'Elected'. 

Apple Bush sounds almost normal, and is a nice respite from the rest of the album. 

Maybe another 2 or 3 tracks are bearable, but the other 6/7 offerings on this overlong 13-track album are just offensive to the ear.

Honestly, it's like they all listened to Revolution 9 off the White Album and went 'let's try and beat that'.

Ignore this album, start with the next one.

Easy Action (1970)

The first song off Easy Action is better than anything on Pretties. Mr and Misdemeanour is just good wordplay for a start, but it has a solid riff and keyboard part. Sure, it gets a bit shouty and crazed at the end, but it shows the evolution of the band's sound. 

In fact, there's quite a bit of a screamy, noisy overhang on a lot of tracks. Still No Air and Lay Down And Die, Goodbye are both very much successors to the difficult-to-listen-to feel of Pretties. But there's enough here to suggest a more listenable future.

Shoe Salesman is a completely out of place folky acoustic song. Laughing At Me is similarly folky, but with electronics. 

The rest of the songs sit uncomfortably between experimental and a (hard-)rock place. Refrigerator Heaven is relatively straight forward, and the title would return as a lyric for Alice's first solo album (Cold Ethyl on Welcome To My Nightmare). The long-ish (6.54) Below Your Means has slightly more progressive ambitions than the utter madness of Pretties, but has one of those outros which just drags and drags.

Return Of The Spider is a speedy rocker, but also runs on about a minute too long. 

Beautiful Flyaway is a bit of a hidden gem for me. A catchy melody and piano riff with build ups at the end of each verse which pay off. 

Very much a transitional album, this. 

Killer (1971)

Finally, we might have some songs you've heard of!

Under My Wheels and Desperado (allegedly about Jim Morrison) come from Killer. Both are classic rock staples and are still regularly played by Alice live. 

Be My Lover also turns up on compilations sometimes - an oddly simple song about a girl.

Then we get Halo Of Flies. In interviews and liner notes, the band has said that this was an attempt to show the world that 'We can do King Crimson-type stuff too!'. They'd spent much of the previous 2 albums in psychedelic experimental land, but could they mould and form that creativity in to a decent (8+ minute) prog-song?
Damn straight they could. I really like Halo Of Flies. But it's a bit of a bitter/sweet like. You know - a kind of 'if they could do this, why didn't continue?' or 'if they could do this, why were the previous 2 albums so crap?'. 
Either way, great song.

The final 4 songs on the album aren't particularly noteworthy. You Drive Me Nervous is fine. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah is completely forgettable. The title track, Killer, is a bit experimental but loses the plot about 2 minutes before it ends (and goes mental for the last 20 seconds).

And the final song to talk about: Dead Babies. What a title. The lyrics convey an anti-child abuse message, but only Alice Cooper would think that the main chorus line of shouting 'Dead Babies!' was a good idea. I actually quite like this song, the melody is easy to sing along to and the riff is dark and moody. Not one to play loud when not alone though...

Love It To Death (1971)

And so, following 3 strange and unsuccessful albums, Bob Ezrin took over as producer and - in effect - forced the band to learn how to play better and write 'better' songs. Where better means more straightforwardly hard rock.

I'm Eighteen is the main single from the album, and became an anthem for anyone around that age. The lyrics describe the anguish of being between a child/teenager and an adult, with no clue how to act. Although it's a decent enough song, it does feel relatively boring and simple compared to their previous catalogue...

Caught In A Dream, Long Way To Go and Is It My Body round out the 'simple rock songs' of the album. All have decent riffs, and are easy to listen to (which in itself is a huge improvement over previous albums!).

Hallowed Be My Name also comes in under this category, but I feel deserves singling out for its fun wordplay in the title, gritty rhythm, and generally blasphemous content.

Second Coming also has some odd (anti?)religious sentiments, but I'm not such a big fan of it musically.

In the middle of the album is the 9-minute length Black Juju. As Halo of Flies was a response to King Crimson, Black Juju is allegedly an attempt at 'doing a Pink Floyd song'. It's quite an experimental track, feeling more like a better written and produced outtake from one of the previous 2 albums. It's not bad, per se, but because it's mostly the same riff for the duration it does feel its length.

The Ballad Of Dwight Fry is another 'long song' at 6.33, but it's a much better one (and it has easy chords, so I can play it very slowly on guitar...). It has several sections and a really powerful chorus. The lyrics depict an inmate at a mental asylum. It's just great.

The album ends with a peculiar cover of Rolf Harris track Sun Arise... It could have been done as a sunny juxtaposition against the dark themes of the album. But that doesn't make sense post his conviction, and more pertinent is that it's just not worth listening to in general.

Overall, this is the first properly accessible Alice Cooper album. Other than Black Juju, it's pretty simple hard rock. 

School's Out (1972)

Here it is everyone! That song you know! The song that made Alice Cooper a worldwide, household star: School's Out. The anthem to every June/July period as schools and universities break up for the holidays. And what a song. 

Such a recognisable riff, with simple lyrics about finishing school and wanting to blow it up. With that classic line: 'We got no class, we got no principles, and we got no innocence... we can't even think of a word that rhymes!'. I would have gone with 'sense' myself...

The absolutely staggering, unbelievable thing about this album (to me, anyway), is that the title track is the only straight-up rock song on it. Despite Love It To Death's more mainstream direction, on School's Out the band seems to have funnelled all of its radio-friendly songwriting in to one amazing song, so that they could be left alone to carry on doing the weird experimental stuff elsewhere.

Luney Tune is another great bit of wordplay, and I really like the riff (and dat bass). It's almost a rock song, but something about the guitar sounds and ending breakdown make it slightly not-normal. Public Animal #9 also strays close to being a rock song, and probably gets closer than Luney Tune, but it's not what I'd describe as 'mainstream'... and certainly not in the same league as School's Out.

Gutter Cats vs. The Jets is a kind of theatrical piece with a hard-to-find double meaning... I think on the face of it it's meant to be about finding a beautiful girl in the gutter... But given the pseudo-concept over the album (and the following song called Street Fight), I think it's also meant to depict a fight between one school's sports team and another... Hmm. Maybe the girl is meant to be from the other team a la Romeo & Juliet? I don't know.

Later on we have Blue Turk, a kind of vaudeville-esque jazzy number. Echoes of the more swinging Tom Waits songs. 
My Stars is a weird song. I like the quick drum fill parts, and the general crescendo of the piano riff. But I'm quite sure it all fits together in to something listenable.

Alma Mater is a great melancholy song about leaving school for good. Thems were the good old days. 

Followed by the instrumental Grand Finale, which is fine but not particularly necessary.

Just a note on the album as a whole to finish off; there's definitely an air of 'concept album' around School's Out. Lots of the songs deal with school, leaving school, fights between schools. I stop short of calling it a full concept album, though, because songs like Luney Tune and My Stars don't quite fit in to the theme for me... But maybe they do and I can't see it. 

Overall, a weird, proggy, psychedelic album, with one of the biggest classic rock songs of all time shoved at the beginning to fool everyone in to buying it.

Billion Dollar Babies (1973)

The title of this album is a reference to the fact that School's Out projected Alice Cooper from a niche experimental, shock-rock band, to one of the biggest rock bands in the world. They were now Billion Dollar Babies (well, maybe million).

For some reason, BDB opens with a cover of a Judy Collins song: Hello Hooray. The original is quite quick with a really confusing melody line (literally listening to it for the first time while writing this... it's very strange). Alice Cooper slow it right down, add an air of theatrics and sinister undertones, and end up with a perfect song to open concerts with (as Alice still does).  

Raped And Freezin' (only the band who wrote Dead Babies could get away with that title in 1973) is a really catchy song about a young man who hitchhikes his way on to an older woman's lorry, who then tries, and ultimately succeeds, to have sex with him against his will. The lyrics are actually quite funny, and together with its catchiness the song was clearly meant to be a hard juxtaposition. Hey, I like it.

Elected! The re-lyric-ed and re-music-ed Reflected from Pretties For You. Elected is a great satire on politics: 'Everybody had problems, and frankly... I don't care!', and is also super catchy. 
The title track, I'm actually not a big fan of. Seemingly about being in love with a sex-doll (of course it is), I'm just not really in to the music of it.

Unfinished Sweet is a bit of a more experimental-ish song (6.18 minutes) about not wanting to see the dentist... It's fine.

No More Mr. Nice Guy and Generation Landslide are two of the highlights for me. The first is just a straight-forward rock song about a good man turned bad. The second is more complex lyrically, dealing with the different values and politics between parents and children in the 60s and 70s. I love it in particular for a harmonica solo which I can play reasonably convincingly. 

And back in to the experimental realm with Sick Things. Slow, moody, barely any instruments other than very deep bass and drums (and some orchestral parts). These lyrics are about Alice Cooper fans, whom he still refers to as his 'sick things'.

Before the big finale of I Love The Dead we have the completely-out-of-place Mary Ann. A ballad over a piano, with a possible twist that the girl in the song is a transvestite. Very risqué in 1973.

I Love The Dead is about necrophilia. And I think now Alice Cooper were realising that they had a niche, lyrically, and they were doubling down all through this album (Necrophilia would return on Alice's first solo album, Welcome To My Nightmare, on Cold Ethyl). Musically, I'm not big of I Love The Dead, it's a bit too 'musical' and outstays its welcome. 

On the whole, BDB is one of the most well-rounded Alice Cooper albums. The lyrics shock, the music rocks. Job done. 

Muscle Of Love (1973)

The last full album with the original Alice Cooper band together is an odd collection of songs, given the generally experimental and psychedelic nature of the band up until now. Sure, they'd produced the odd straight-forward radio hit (I'm Eighteen, School's Out, No More Mr Nice Guy), but all of the albums had a bit of the theatrical about them. Muscle of Love is a much less complex beast.

To be honest the opener, Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo), isn't fantastic. It doesn't stand out to me at all. Whereas the second song, Never Been Sold Before, is much better and probably should have been placed as track 1. It's written as a girl's response to a her boyfriend suggesting she should prostitute herself to pay their bills: 'I'm really sick of streets, chicks and dicks, and I'm really sick of you!'. 

Working Up A Sweat is a fun fast-paced rocker with harmonica, what's not to love? Teenage Lament '74 is probably the highlight; following up on the teenage angst of School's Out, it's about not finding happiness trying to fit in with the latest trends and fads. 
Woman Machine rounds off the straight-up rockers, meant as a cynical exploration of what men would do if they had access to robots to fulfil the stereotypical female roles. 

Man With A Golden Gun was written as a Bond theme for the film of the same name (Lulu won, which apparently Christopher Lee was unhappy about). Honestly, it sounds like a Bond theme. It's got trumpets and a riff which sounds like a spin off of the standard Bond theme. Shame it wasn't chosen.
The title track I've never been able to get on with. Something about the music just doesn't hit me right, I can't really explain it. Lyrically it's about discovering masturbation, but it's no Walk This Way. 

The final two songs to mention are the outliers, musically. Hard Hearted Alice is possibly the only ballad the original Alice Cooper group ever recorded. A slow, emotional vocal over mostly synthy keys for the first 2 minutes, but the guitars don't rock it up much. Lyrically, your guess is as good as mine. Sounds to be about going crazy in isolation, but it might not be.
Finally: Crazy Little Child. A swinging, jazzy song, like Blue Turk from School's Out. It's interesting, but a bit weird. 

In all, Muscle of Love is good, but it's not great. It's all a bit safe. Not quite the extravagant, vaudeville-inspired Alice Cooper that they'd built up. 
After this album the Alice Cooper band split up, with Vince taking the name for himself and going solo. It wasn't an acrimonious split though.
The rest have sporadically been in bands and played around, though Glen Buxton died in 1997. 

Welcome 2 My Nightmare (2011)
Paranormal (2017)

                                             

I wondered whether to include these, but thought why not?

So rumours spread around both in 2010 and 2015-16 that the original Alice Cooper band were getting back together to record an album. In actual fact, they did get back together but only to record a few tracks for Alice's solo albums. 

3 songs from Welcome 2 My Nightmare (the sequel to Alice's first solo album from 1975) are from the original band. A Runaway Train is a fantastically fast-paced song, which basically details the album's protagonist's descent in to a hellish nightmare on a train with 13 other despicable characters.  

I'll Bite Your Face Off, the album's single, is the second song. It's pretty simple and tame by Alice standards, even if it is about a liaison-gone-wrong when the female character bites the protagonist's face off. 

The third song is When Hell Comes Home. A slow, dark, heavy song that feels oddly out of place on this otherwise fun album. It's about an adult looking back on his childhood, where he had an alcoholic and abusive father whom he ultimately kills to save his mother. 

Looking at Paranormal's tracks is a tad more difficult. Although only the 2 'bonus tracks' are advertised as being the original band, if you read who played on each song then track 3 has Dennis on bass, and track 9 has the full original band playing - although they didn't write it. So I think I'll include 9 but not 3.

Track 9 is called Rats, and it's very short at 2.39. It's fast, energetic, and seems to be a dig at the American public who eat up anything they're given by the media or wherever they get their news. Topical!

Being totally honest, I don't really like either of the two bonus tracks... Genuine American Girl is a bit doo-wap and kitschy, though the lyrics are funny - it's about how being a 'genuine' American girl is to be as fake as possible. 

You And All Your Friends is quite rocky, and probably the better of the two bonus tracks. Another hard to decipher lyrics, but I'd interpret it as being about burning down the town, because what's the point any more? Ish. 

What was the point in me adding these two albums? I'm not sure. To show and evidence that the Alice Cooper group are still friends, are still writing, and can definitely still play! Which is good, because I'm seeing their reunion tour in 3/4 weeks...

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I did not expect Alice Cooper (the band) to sound like they did, based on my experience of both Alice Cooper (the person) and the band's 'greatest hits'. I feel like in the world of 'classic rock', they're a bit of an oddity. They're not rooted in blues, like most of the 70s bands. They're not even explicitly prog most of the time. They're just a bit... weird. They're theatrical, they're shocking, they're rebellious. 

And they basically invented elaborate rock concerts and 'shock rock', so you've got to give them their dues. Even if a lot of the time they're not the easiest band to listen to.