acoustic avenger's guide to alice cooper:
ok, so the adverts come on, and there's this daft-looking goth-panto dame-like bloke eating a fry-up on the settee with ronnie corbett watching skytv. you may even recognise the name from dad's vinyl collection gathering dust in the spare-room.
shlock-rocker alice cooper may not look like the cutting-edge of pop-culture, and he sure as heckfire hasn't been for a long time, but it was not always thus. boys and girls, come with me, i have a story to tell.
it's 1969 ok? alice cooper are a band as well as a bloke. woodstock was about to happen, but in reality,these gringos had more in common with altamont, and i don't mean the well-organised part.
frank zappa signed them to his bizarre label, home to capt.beefheart, tim buckley, wildman fischer, the mothers of invention and the gto's amongst others.
the band relocated to the west coast from arizona, and kicked things off with pretties for you, the first album, which might be politely described as earnest musical experiment, psychedelic baby-steps.
the best thing about it was that it led directly to a second lp, 1970's easy action, and here the cooper kids begin to find their feet. no blues-licks on this record, bub.
herein lay a collision of the who, safe as milk-beefheart, yardbirds, garage-rock, brit-psych, syd barrett's pink floyd, head-era monkees and quaint sci-fi electronica. a west coast act whose psychedelic tendencies were decidedly east coast in tone, the ac's were influenced more by tv than lsd. as a live act, they were all of the above plus foundation-course performance art, confrontational theatre, camped-up sex & violence. (well, go to art-school in cowboy country and that's what happens). often cited as a neglected nugget, this album contains sure signs of things to come, including a reference to hit musical westside story, of which more later.
further relocation followed-the band to the east coast, their recording contract to warner bros. enter one bob ezrin, producer for hire. with ezrin on board, months of writing and re-writing ensue, and by early 1971, lp 3 was ready to roll.
'love it to death' is, to quote julian cope, the finest detroit rock'n'roll lp of all time not made by a detroit band. album highlights include teen-anthem for the post-woodstock world i'm eighteen (john lydon/rotten's audition-piece for the sex pistols) and caught in a dream; black juju (the doors, if only they'd come from michigan), the epic, theatrical-noire ballad of dwight frye and album closer sun arise by, erm…rolf harris. (yes, that rolf harris).
the best however, was yet to be written.
on a roll and eager to capitalise on their more focused ezrin-inspired direction, lp number four was written and released later that same year.
killer was/is the mutt's nether-regions. if you plan to seek out any of the records i'm talking about dear reader, make it this one. you will thank me for it.
opening with the storming under my wheels, be my lover slows the pace a little, coming on like a never heard-of stone's toon featuring sterling morrison on guitar.
next up, the awesome halo of flies: eight minutes and twenty-one seconds of inspired primal-cod spyflick-proto-guitar-prog (in a good way, you understand…) all underpinned by great (and restrained) use of a moog synth.
a musical dedication to the recently deceased (and friend of the band) jim morrison, desperado follows, then it's all back to the garage for you drive me nervous and yeah yeah yeah.
album closers dead
babies and the title track are segued, and give the record it's
loosely conceptual feel, (i emphasise the word loosely),
something the ac's were good at; giving their albums unifying
themes and textures rather than having a concept in big, bold
capitals, as was to become the rock music ethos over the next few
years.
if killer was their real point of arrival, 1972's school's out
blasted alice and the gang into mega-stardom. this is a more
polished affair, with a broader musical scope. the unifying theme
this time is teen-angst, gang-wars, streetfights, switchblades,
westside story, all-americana, the whole rites of passage
package.
westside story is featured in a sufficiently big way in guttercats vs the jets, that leonard bernstein and steven sondheim appear amid the band-credits. unlike earlier records, this one sounds like it was written to be played in it's entirety, whilst still managing to avoid that whole concept-album trap. personally, i love this record as much as killer.
after school's out though, it was all downhill.
the follow-up billion dollar babies had it's moments sure, but sounded like it'd been written on the road. too much filler, and with songs like i love the dead, the first signs of the now familiar 'band beginning to parody themselves' downward spiral.
the group split in '74, alice went solo, and with a stint in rehab giving him the raw material for the 'welcome to my nightmare' lp, broadway, solo-stardom and ronnie corbett beckoned.