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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.
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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.
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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?
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