By 1974, the band’s seventh album “Muscle of Love” had not matched the top-charting success of its predecessor “Billion Dollar Babies”, and while there had been tension at times within the band over the years, that tension now seemed to be evolving into constant disagreements. For various reasons, the members agreed to take what was expected to be a temporary hiatus, and the original Alice Cooper Band played their final show on the ‘Muscle of Love’ tour on April 8, 1974. "Everyone decided they needed a rest from one another", said manager Shep Gordon at the time. "A lot of pressure had built up, but it's nothing that can't be dealt with. Everybody still gets together and talks."
The fact that the band never reformed following this hiatus has several different explanations depending on who you talked to, though they all seem to align once they have been heard. Neal Smith has said in interviews since that the members wanted to take a year off to slow down and possibly do solo projects, and just never reunited. Alice Cooper himself, Vincent Furnier, claimed there was disagreement over how much money they should sink back into stage shows, which had become costly. Michael Bruce contended over time that Glen Buxton's issues with substance abuse, which at one time led him to pull a switchblade on the band's tour manager, likely hastened the breakup. The group’s breakup was made public in 1975, well after the release of “Welcome to My Nightmare”.
After the group had agreed to a sojourn, Alice had pushed forward to record a solo album. To avoid legal complications over ownership of the group name, Alice Cooper had by then become Vincent Furnier's new legal name. When asked about the prospect of moving forward under the name Alice Cooper as a solo entity rather than as a band, Alice had said "It got very basically down to the fact that we had drawn as much as we could out of each other. After ten years, we got pretty dry together." Manager Shep Gordon added, "What had started in a sense as a pipe-dream became an overwhelming burden."
Cooper intended the music on this new project to be more theatrical than the previous glam rock focused records. Shep Gordon had a clause in his contract that allowed the members of the Alice Cooper Band, should they wish, to do a soundtrack album for a different label other than Warner Brothers who they were contracted to. As a result, Shep Gordon and Alice Cooper went to Atlantic Records, a sister label to Warner Brothers, to begin work on the album.
The pulling together of the pieces for the writing and recording of the album came from shared acquaintances. Alice hired Bob Ezrin, who had produced the previous four Alice Cooper Band album, to collaborate and produce his new album. Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, who had both contributed guitars to the “Billion Dollar Babies” album, were also drafted in. All three of these men had most recently been a part of Lou Reed’s album “Berlin” and had toured on that album alongside Prakash John on bass guitar and Pentti Glan on drums, who were also brought in to play on Alice’s new venture.
With the band in place, and with Ezrin and Wagner both helping to co-write the majority of the tracks with Alice, the stage was set – metaphorically speaking – for the album that would jump start a solo career that, fifty years after the release of this album, is still one of the most famous in music history. And the album that started it was “Welcome to My Nightmare”.
Because of the clause in the contract that stated specifically that members of almost-defunct Alice Cooper Band could do a soundtrack album for another label, it meant that the album had to be written as though it was the soundtrack to a movie or tv programme that was about to be produced. To create this album, Cooper and Ezrin decided that it would have to be a concept album, with a story involved that was a believable plot to create such a programme. The idea that they finally hit upon was about a boy named Steven, and the album would tell the story of his recurring nightmares, what they foreshadowed and how he dealt with them. And this is what they did. The end result did in fact eventuate into a TV called “Alice Cooper: The Nightmares”. In the TV special, Alice Cooper stars as Steven who is trapped in a nightmare he can't wake up from and tries to escape. Vincent Price also appears throughout the special, starring as the "Spirit of the Nightmare". The 66 minute long special included the “Welcome to My Nightmare” album played in full. But while the concept was necessary to have the album come to fruition, there is no need to know the storyline when listening to the album to enjoy it. Indeed, the songs hold their own without any need to question what the story being told is.
It opens with the terrific title track "Welcome to My Nightmare", a great creeping beginning which then explodes into action with wonderful menace from Alice. He runs the gamut of expressions and emotions through this first track, setting up the songs that are to follow. His low voice through the opening minute of the track is wonderful in augmenting the spookiness of the start. I never get tired of listening to this, and the additions of the horns through the song just enhances everything about it. It is a magnificent opening to the album, one that sets the scene for the album and the story that is to follow. "Devil's Food" is a great follow up, talking about the scary creature in Steven’s dream that scares him to the point of tears, which then as sung in the lyrics “I kiss the tears off from your chest, I felt the poison fright that's in your breath, I knew your precious life and I know your death, I squeeze the love out of your soul, All the perfect love that's in your soul, You're just another spirit on parole”. This is then followed by a terrific monologue from the master fright and horror, Vincent Price, all about setting the scene for the next track and monster of the show, “The Black Widow”. This is a perfectly creepy song, enhanced by Alice’s vocal throughout that sets up the scene wonderfully well. The lines as such fun and exacting, with “Our thoughts are hot and crazed, Our brains are webbed in haze, Of mindless senseless daze, The Black Widow, These things he says are true, We're all humanary stew, If we don't pledge allegiance to, The Black Widow”. Creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky, as was once sung as the theme song to a different TV show.
"Some Folks" is of a different variety than these opening songs, and actually does a great job of changing the mood and tempo of the album and story, with the old western saloon bar piano and the horns section dominating the song. And then comes what is arguably the piece de resistance of the album, and the song that probably gave Alice the impetus to create his own solo career away from the Alice Cooper Band. "Only Women Bleed" is a powerful and emotional song that deals with the issue of domestic violence and the suffering that women endure in abusive relationships. Despite its sensitive and dark subject matter, it reflects the physical and emotional pain that women experience, while also emphasizing their strength and resilience. The song itself builds in intensity to perfectly emphasise the lyrics Alice is singing at the time, before falling back into the gentle and emotional musical piece when coming to the fore with its empathetic portrayal of a difficult topic. It is one of Cooper's most successful ballads and arguably his greatest ever song. It is still an amazing performance.
And then what kicks off Side 2? Well, just one of Alice Cooper’s most brilliant and popular songs, the youth anthem "Department of Youth". It has been a song that the young and the young at heart have loved since this album was released, and continues to be as influential and popular as ever. And yes, it seems rather superfluous and perhaps ludicrous that whenever this song comes on, I still sing along at the top of my voice, along with Alice's spoken words towards the end of the song as it fades away. Though I assume the mention of Donny Osmond goes over a lot of kids heads in this day and age. Yes, my youth has left me a long time ago, but this song still stays close to my heart. And, I would assume, to all of Alice Cooper’s fans of many many generations. Following this comes “Cold Ethyl”, the next of Steven’s nightmares, and with lines like “One thing, no lie, Ethyl's frigid as an Eskimo Pie, She's cool in bed, And she ought to be...'cause Ethyl's dead” are still great to sing along to. It’s another excellently composed track musically, combining well with the anthemic qualities of the previous song.
The album turns a corner here, firstly with the retreating child like personality Steven feels he has fallen into in “Years Ago”, before the setup leads into the very rock opera slash musical styled “Steven”, which contains all of the angst, fright and confusion within the scale of the song that you would imagine the character would be suffering from in going through this trial by nightmare. Alice and Bob Ezrin have done a magnificent job in crafting this track, and it is one that always plays well when performed on stage. The lines from Steven and the ones he hears, those being “You've only lived a minute of your life, I must be dreaming, please stop screaming, Steven... Is someone calling me? No... Steven... I think I hear a voice--- it's outside the door! Steven! I hear my name!” are performed to perfection, and far better than I have uttered here. “The Awakening” is another quiet interlude that reveals what happens as Steven finally wakes up from his nightmares, and into the concluding track “Escape”, a reasonable track that lacks the intensity and drama of what has come before it, and though a conclusion to the story as such, lacks the punch that the end of the album deserved. It was actually written by another band, the Hollywood Stars, and Alice adapted it to be the concluding song here.
Those who have followed my story through three and a half years of my previous podcast Music from a Lifetime will know my journey with Alice Cooper, both individually and the band. Having discovered and loved him from the mid-80's albums that marked his return to the industry, “Constrictor” and “Raise Your Fist and Yell”, I tried to find his other albums the best way I could to hear everything he had done. This album was the third of his albums I knew, because my mate who eventually became my brother-in-law, Peter, was a big fan of the album and owned it on vinyl and was the one I borrowed it off to tape my own copy onto cassette.
I am still amazed at this album, even listening to it a lot over the last week for this podcast episode. It still has the power that it must have glowed with on its release fifty years ago this week. That opening with the title track, Vincent Price and his interlude in “Devil’s Food”, “The Black Widow” and Alice’s snarling, the just amazing “Only Women Bleed” and “Department of Youth”, Further frightening clauses in “Cold Ethyl” and then that crashing mental anguish of “Steven”. It is just superb.
If I was going to be harsh in judgement, the end of the album doesn't quite maintain the excellence of the first two thirds of the album. Sure, those closing passages of “Years Ago”, “The Awakening” and “Escape” are a part of the story and therefore concept, but they are the songs I would include in those that are there for the album, but don't really hold up individually as well. Songs such as "Years Ago" and "Escape" are those that I especially feel sit in this category. "Steven" holds its own magnificently, with Alice again giving an amazing performance here, backed up by excellently written music that helps Alice convey every emotion felt through the lyrics. "The Awakening" would have been a better way to end the album in my opinion, allowing Steven to awake to blood on his hands and the song and album quietly coming to a close but "Escape" is what was chosen, and it just doesn't feel right, changing the whole tempo of the conclusion. I understand why it is this way, to represent the fact that Steven has escaped his nightmares by waking up and feeling lighter and happier because of it and looking to the future, but it changes the feel of the album for me by doing so. The fact that the song came from another band and that Alice adapted it here is a strange choice. It's not a huge deal from my perspective, but it has always been something that bugs me a little.
So I have had this on a consistent rotation again for the last week. It is still a great album. I bought a second-hand vinyl copy about 12 months ago where the true deeper sounds come out wonderfully, its just that it jumps a bit too often. A good clean will hopefully solve that a little, because it sounds better in that element than from CD or streaming.
This has been one of my favourite Alice Cooper albums since I first discovered the man/band, and it has four or five songs here that rank up alongside his best. While it may not be perfect, and may not be to everyone's taste, it is the kind of album that everyone should listen to at least once in their lifetime, for the interesting story it tells, and for the magnificent vocal performance from Alice himself.
In my ranking of the 29 albums released under both his name and his band’s name, this for me is #3 on that list. There are arguments that it could be higher, and I could understand those arguments. But sometimes we have favourites for a reason.
This album propelled Alice Cooper the solo artist into orbit and all but killed off the old band as a result. But that didn’t lead to peaches and cream from that point on, as market pressures and drugs of different varieties raise their head to make sure that mega stardom and success was not just a walk in the park going forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment