1257. Alice Cooper / Trash. 1989. 4.5/5

As we approached the end of the 1980’s decade, Alice Cooper had been through the wringer, from the depths of the inordinate drug and alcohol fuelled lows to the going clean and fighting back highs. As has been noted in several episodes throughout the run of this podcast on albums that have been reviewed from his 1980’s period, Alice had recorded albums that he dubbed his ‘blackout’ albums, as he has no memory of actually recording them. There is also a difference in opinion in Alice Cooper fandom of the quality of those albums from early in the decade. From here Alice got clean and sober, with a break of three years before making a return alongside Kane Roberts and Kip Winger to record the hair metal themed hard rock albums “Constrictor” and “Raise Your Fist and Yell”, which also tended to split the fans as to how they felt about the modern sound and feel of the albums.
In 1988 two things happened for Alice. Firstly, he almost died after a safety rope broke during a rehearsal pretending to hang himself, a stunt he often performed during live concerts. Secondly, his record contract with MCA Records expired, and he instead signed with Epic Records, a move that was to prove revitalising.
Having spent two albums centring on themes such as b-grade horror movies and teenage angst, no doubt Cooper decided he needed a reboot, a way to kickstart where his music was heading. 1989 signalled 20 years since the first album released by the Alice Cooper Band, and it was a long bow to draw to keep producing albums like those classic ones of that era. The music scene had changed, and Cooper needed to adapt to the change, and find a way to invigorate his brand, and become the sneering frontman he had always been.
In a move that was to be the biggest he had made since deciding to go out as a solo artist for the “Welcome to My Nightmare” album in 1975, Alice approached songwriter and producer Desmond Child to become his partner for his new album. Child has earned the nickname ‘The Hitmaker’ after a career of writing some of the most popular songs of all time. By 1989, he had been involved in the writing of songs on several Kiss albums, as well as the two biggest Bon Jovi albums and the two albums that revitalised the career of Aerosmith. At the time Alice was quoted as saying: "The rarest of moments is when I find myself turning up the radio in my car, and it almost always seems to have been from hearing a Desmond Child tune. There is this certain crazy insanity mixed in with genius". In bringing Child on board as producer of the album, and co-writer of all of the album, Cooper was banking on his magic rubbing off on him and bringing him to a point where he could once again stand up and take centre stage as the popular entity he had once been. It is fair to say that with “Trash”, this was well and truly achieved.

When this album first appeared, it was probably one that all areas of the Alice Cooper fan base were taken by surprise by. It wasn’t a return to his 70’s roots, it wasn’t the experimental new wave of early in the decade and for the most part was also not like the hair metal of the late part of the decade. What “Trash” ended up offering was a mature sounding album that was the hallmark of what Desmond Child was able to achieve with so many artisits over the years, but in essence built on the success he had achieved in those recent years with Bon Jovi and Aerosmith. And the way to build that success was to write a couple of hit singles, ones that caught the imagination of the listening public and then get expansionist exposure on radio and music video shows, and drag in old and new fans alike as a result.
Queue “Poison”, the opening track to the album, the lead single from the album, and the huge and somewhat controversial video from the album. Yep, a leather clad beauty partially exposing her breasts is one way to create controversy and draw in the viewers. There are a multitude of voices in a supporting role throughout the song, but it is the cool calm menace in Alice’s vocals through the song that capture the moment, that draw you in to the song and in the long run capture you. Alongside this is the second single released from the album, and the track that opens side two of the album, “Bed of Nails”, which again utilises Alice’s menace in his vocals. It is heavier in style and retains the atmosphere of the first single, with another catchy chorus surrounded by backing vocals with Alice firmly in the centre. Kane Roberts, Alice’s partner for the previous two albums, co-writes and plays guitar here, and his presence is a great lift for the song. Both of these singles signals this next era of Alice Cooper, moving from B-grade horror to true glam metal icon, with lyrics and music that draw from the battery of sexually charged lyrics by Motley Crue and Ratt while harnessing the integrity of the ‘boy wants girl’ playfulness of Bon Jovi. Alice and Desmond unashamedly write songs here that are anthems sung to and about the female sex, either wooing them into the bedroom or proclaiming the darker side they possess. Both have had experience in writing songs of this description through their careers, and here they combine it into one big best seller.
There are two distinctive power ballads on the album, and for me, one works and the other doesn’t. The fourth single released from the album was “Only My Heart Talking”, the closing track of side one of the album, and also the only song on the album not co-credited to Desmond Child. Perhaps that is telling. “Only My Heart Talkin’” is Alice begging for one last chance, trying not to lose his love as she tries to walk away, and more me is too sickly sugar sweet to enjoy overly. That could also be Steven Tyler’s guest vocals that perpetrate that. On the other hand, “Hell is Living Without You” is a more true Alice type of power ballad, like his great tracks such as “Only Women Bleed” and “You and Me”. Lyrically it is a similar story to “Only My Heart Talkin’”, but musically it is far more heartfelt and emotionally performed, making you feel the pain the protagonist feels. Play them back-to-back, and you will hear the different nuance between them. This has the polish of Child, along with his Bon Jovi co-conspirators Jon and Richie Sambora that the other power ballad does not. The addition of guest guitarists in Sambora himself and Steve Lukather adds to the track immensely.
Then you have the Alice songs that continue this drive but draw upon more recent ideals as well. “This Maniac’s in Love with You” draws on the fun and menacing side of Alice from the previous two albums, more a statement of Alice’s proclamation of love and the warning of that in the same breath. Then you have the closing track “I’m Your Gun”, the double-entendre laden song that became a hallmark of some of his most popular tracks from the late 1980’s albums. Middle class songs that play the role of advancing the album beyond the big tracks. And the title track “Trash” finds itself in this category as well, a fun filled upbeat song with Jon Bon Jovi joining in along the way.
Filling in the gaps between all these are other top shelf songs. “Spark in the Dark” gets the album moving after the opening track, a typically crafted Desmond Child song with Alice playing his alter ago to perfection throughout. “House of Fire” utilises Cooper’s anthemic style again, with chorused backing vocals helping him along, along with Joe Perry’s excellent solo slot on guitar. And “Why Trust You” is arguably my favourite track on the album. It moves at the best tempo, it has Alice at his moody best, and it sounds light and fun even when lyrically he is spitting venom. Modern Alice at his very best.

To be in the music business for over 55 years – and to be successful over that huge amount of time – you do need to adapt to the changing music climate. Not to ignore your roots, not to completely remake yourself, but to be able to incorporate what is happening around you into the way you are writing and recording. Alice Cooper has been extraordinarily good at this, creating albums that often absorb what is happening in music at the time, but still remaining quintessentially Alice Cooper. That doesn’t mean that old fans or new fans will necessarily like or adore what you do at each step of the way as it happens, or feel that an album holds its legacy as the years retreat. In many ways that is how “Trash” is looked upon. And the comparisons can sometimes be skewed. On its release, there was a backlash from the fans of the original band and of the solo albums he had released in the 1970’s. They felt this album was a sellout, of Alice selling his soul to the Desmond Child conveyor belt of hard rock singles and hit makers. It was felt he had lost his way and forgotten the songs and albums that had ‘made’ him, and that now he was just out for a cash grab at the expense of those fans that had also “made” him.
For people like me, 19 years of age at the time and no doubt one of the prime examples of who this album was aimed at, we couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Those old singles and some of the albums from the 1970’s were great, but so was this. This was Alice Cooper seeing our generation, and coming out with an album that, for the time, perfectly fit what we wanted. The leather, the hair, the top hat and cane, the make-up... Alice Cooper was COOL, something that nerds like me aspired to be (sadly, never to eventuate). Was all of that selling out, or was it adapting to his market as it was at the time? A couple of my parents' friends were Alice Cooper fans, and they all listened to this album. Sure, at the party to celebrate my 21st birthday, where at one stage I was playing “Trash” on the stereo, one of my parents' friends did ask me if we could play some ‘old’ Alice Cooper instead (which I readily acceded to), but they weren’t hostile to the new Alice Cooper.
On top of this, there are many people today who look back to this album, having been a fan in the day, and feel that it has either dated badly, or feel now that it was ‘overrated’. These are the kind of fans that wrote off all hair and glam metal as soon as grunge hit the scene. People’s tastes change over time, and not feeling the same enthusiasm for this album now as you did 35 years ago is something that can be quantified.
For me, I still love this album. Of course, I feel and listen to it differently today than I did 35 years ago. This album was ripe for 19-year-olds, and everyone remembers those days of that age with an air of reminiscence, and the albums released at that time is the soundtrack to your life. For me, this is one of them, along with Skid Row’s debut album, Motley Crue’s “Dr Feelgood” and Whitesnake’s “Slip of the Tongue”. Many would have the same feelings about those albums as well, that they are tied to the age and that they perhaps don’t feel the same way about them now as they did then. I can assure you I feel EXACTLY the same now as I did then.
And for me all of Alice’s work of this era and beyond is fantastic. “Constrictor” and “Raise Your Fist and Yell”. Then “Trash” and “Hey Stoopid”. And then “The Last Temptation” (just recently reviewed here on this podcast) and into “Brutal Planet” and “Dirty Diamonds”. Alice just finds a way to write and record albums that don’t all sound the same, that can absorb what is happening at that time, and yet still remain an Alice Cooper album. It is a wonderful gift.

1255. Alice Cooper / The Last Temptation. 1994. 4/5

Alice Cooper has been on a bit of a tear over almost all of the previous decade. Having first made a triumphant return to music with his hair metal albums “Constrictor” and “Raise Your Fist and Yell”, he had then dominated the charts with his Desmond Child co-creation “Trash” that had charted all over the world and brought Alice back to prominence once again, a podium he had not stood on for over a decade at that point in time. This was followed by the equally wonderful “Hey Stoopid!” that was a torch being held at the very end of the hair and glam metal movement. Through this whole period, Alice not only regained his place as the top of the tree for all round entertainer and performer of songs that people of all ages and genres could love, but proved to himself as much as anyone else that he could rise from the depth that he had crashed to in the early 1980’s and find his way back to the top of the industry.
1991’s “Hey Stoopid” fell right at the start of the world’s eclipse by grunge and alternative rock, and thus was not affected as much by the rise of this tempest. However, by the time it came for Alice to start working on the follow up to that album, he would no doubt have been very aware that he needed to adapt. And if there was one thing that Alice Cooper had been good at over the years, it was to adapt to the changing circumstances that he found himself in. The first decision that was made was that the album would return to one of Alice’s old habits, the concept album. Indeed, it would be the first concept album Alice had recorded since the album “DaDa” at the end of his blackout years in 1983. It was a savvy move, looking to lock in both his long-term fans along with the newer fans he had picked up over the mega successful past couple of albums. He formed a new writing crew, including Dan Wexler and Bob Pfeiffer, who composed most of the first half of the album, which set up the story from the outset and included the first single from the album, “Lost in America”. In the second half of the album, Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw from Damn Yankees co-wrote two songs, as did Soundgarden alumni Chris Cornell. All of these writers had experience in the style of music that had begun to dominate over the first half of the 1990’s decade, and their efforts alongside Alice gave the album the story and style it needed if it was going to make its mark on the music of the time.

As always with concept albums, you can either buy into the story being told and enjoy it for that aspect or put all of that aside and just enjoy the songs for how they each sound individually. And for me, from the first time I got the album, I have enjoyed the story as it is laid out through the album, but enjoy the album purely for the tracks themselves. Everyone will take a different viewpoint.
As for the story itself, Alice himself explained at the time of its release, "The Last Temptation takes place in an average Middle American town where one particular group of young boys, who think they've done and seen everything, stumble across this old vaudeville theater that they've never noticed before in an old part of town. Emerging from the shadows within to greet them is a mysterious figure called The Showman (who bears a remarkable resemblance to the classic Alice Cooper character himself) who runs the theater along with his assistant, the temptress Mercy. None of the kids accept the invitation to enter for a free show apart from Steven (the same Steven from Cooper’s groundbreaking album "Welcome to My Nightmare”). Once inside, Steven's temptation at the hands of The Showman begins in earnest. But will he succumb? It's all based on the question of whether or not Steven gives in to modern-day temptation”.
The crafting of the album and the story required a great deal of planning, and indeed in the long run Alice utilised several different producers for different parts of the album and story, in order to get the kind of sonic atmosphere and theatrical environment that he felt was required to make this album work. This led to Alice using Andy Wallace for the bookended tracks that open and close the show and the album, “Sideshow” and “Cleansed by Fire”. Much like a stage musical, these tracks take on the role of introducing the story, and then finishing off the tale, and Wallace’s style was perfect for this. He was also involved in the two tracks in which Chris Cornell contributed vocals, the beautiful ballad-esque “Stolen Prayer” and the more bombastic “Unholy War”, written solely by Cornell himself. Cornell’s backing vocals in “Stolen Prayer” are perfectly attuned to the track and worth the journey of this album alone. Then there was the contributions of producer Don Fleming who handled the ‘street-tough’ sound required for the tracks that followed the opening of the album, “Nothing’s Free”, “Lost in America” and “Bad Place Alone”, which needed a particular aural vocal style to fill its place within the concept, and it is performed beautifully by Alice here. And then Duana Baron and John Purdell come on board to help with the melodic and rock ballad styled songs “You’re My Temptation”, “Lullaby” and “It’s Me”. This, with three different production teams brought in to produce on story masterpiece, Alice has trodden an unusual path, and one that it is up to the listener to decide if it has worked.
The performance of Alice’s band here is exceptional. Unlike his previous two albums, there are no guest musicians (apart from Chris Cornell’s to vocal contributions) and it is just the core who play on every song. Drummer David Uosikkinen, better known for his work with The Hooters and Derek Sherinian, better known for Dream Theater, are both excellent here, along with Greg Smith on bass and regular contributor Stef Burns on guitar put their best foot forward.

Unusually for me in 1994, the first half of the year of which I had zero money due to being unemployed for a large portion of it, I did purchase this album almost immediately on its release, from Virgin Records in Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, on an afternoon I had walked into the city from where I lived in Leichhardt to deposit my work pay check. And I had excitedly gotten home and put in on my stereo, fully expecting an album as awesome as “Hey Stoopid!” and “Trash” had been. And of course, this album wasn’t that at all. It was designed for the times, it was one that was crafted in a different way from those albums that had been released over the previous eight years, the ones I had grown with and loved. And, no question, it took me by surprise. There was no big hair, huge guest artists, overplayed guitar solos and a cacophony of guest adding their vocals to the back up mix. It was... well... what I eventually came to believe was “Welcome to My Nightmare” for the 1990’s.
So, I did enjoy some of it, and some of it was a stretch. But I didn’t stop listening to it, because every time I put it on, and got to the end, there was something else that had grabbed me. And within a month, it was my go-to album at the time. When I used to drive home to Kiama for the weekend, this was the first album that went in the car’s cassette player. I knew all the words, sang them all loud. It was great. And then it eventually moved back to the CD shelves. And waited.
20 something years later, and here we are. And as I’ve said before, this is one of the main reasons I do this podcast, because it makes me go back and listen to albums that I had otherwise forgotten. And some are still not great. But from the moment I took this one back out of its cover, it grabbed me again. From the opening track, but especially from the moody opening of “Nothing’s Free”, into “Lost in America” and then the fabulous two-toned storyline of “Bad Place Alone”, I was drawn back to the fold. WHY had it taken me so long to indulge in this album again? The simple answer of course is – Alice Cooper has so many albums, and so many of them iconic. So when it comes to deciding on an album when I feel like listening to Alice Cooper... this just somehow dropped off the list. I can assure you that won’t be the case in the future. Because while this ISN’T “Welcome to My Nightmare”, or “Billion Dollar Babies”, or “Trash” or “Dirty Diamonds”, or any of another dozen suggestions I could make, this to me is still a terrific album. It transcends the time it was recorded and released, it fit then, and it still fits now. Perhaps you disagree. That’s perfectly fine. But if that’s the case, I feel you may be mistaken.

1231. Alice Cooper Band / Muscle of Love. 1973. 2.5/5

By the time that this album came around to being released, the Alice Cooper Band was on top of the world, literally. Their previous album, “Billion Dollar Babies”, had gone to number 1 in the US and UK as well as number 4 in Australia, and had been the culmination of a long building string of success. You can hear all about that on the episode that appears in Season 4 of this podcast. It was widely and critically acclaimed, so you would think that the band would have had the world at its feet. Instead, the cracks were beginning to appear in the framework. And to be fair, it was understandable why. “Muscle of Love” was about to become the band’s 7th studio album release in just four years. Add to this the constant touring that the band did to promote those albums, and they would already have been exhausted. Add to this the ‘trappings’ of success, and you had a whole other set of problems attached.
“Muscle of Love” was to become the first Alice Cooper album without Bob Ezrin as producer since the "Easy Action”. At the time, this was explained away as Ezrin having been ill and being unable to do the duties as required by the band at the time, though in later interviews it was reported that a disagreement over the arrangement of the song that became “Woman Machine” on the album was the reason for the split. Apparently, guitarist Michael Bruce stood his ground and refused to change the arrangement as Ezrin wanted, which led to more than words being exchanged and the separation of the two parties that had had so much success together. And it had only been eight months since “Billion Dollar Babies” had been released, a very short space of time in which to tour and then come up with a slew of new songs and then record them and then release the album. Whatever else was going on behind the scenes, and it was obvious that there was, this alone would have made “Muscle of Love” a difficult birth.

It is interesting the couple of directions that this album takes, and the reasons that have come for that to occur. In interviews at the time of the album’s release, Alice is quoted as saying the band was looking to go back and make an album with a more basic rock sound. It was felt that the previous album had had a lot of time in the studio making it sound right, whereas this time around they wanted to be able to just play a song in its entirety, to be more natural in the way the songs were played rather than over produced.
Both Alice and bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway have suggested, and which is confirmed when listening to the album, that there is a loose theme of sexual habits that flows through many of the songs on the album. The title track is the main purveyor of this, as the “Muscle of Love” being sung about is both conceptually attributed to the heart and the male genitalia. “Woman Machine”, of which the basics of the song date back to the beginning of the band, is about a female robot who can do... well... the things that you want. “Never Been Sold Before” speaks of the musings of a prostitute, while the opening track “Big Apple Dreamin’ (Hippo)” is about the Hippopotamus Club in New York, which the band apparently attended frequently in the day. And then there is “Working Up a Sweat” which follows along the same lines as the song that follows it, “Muscle of Love” It is an interesting flow of these songs, ones that no doubt added to the shock value of the band at the time.
Other songs on the album of course have no such desire, and indeed have other content apart from the sexual. “Teenage Lament ‘74” relates the problems faced by every teenage boy who tries to change things about themselves just to be cool or hip or even just to fit in. Still a great song to this day. “Crazy Little Child” goes the other route and talks about teenage crime. And then there is “The Man with the Golden Gun”, a song that was written to be theme song of the James Bond movie of the same name. Apparently it arrived a day late, and the producers had already chosen another song for that theme before they heard the Alice Cooper song. It contains a lot of sound effects that fit in with that James Bond theme, along with supporting vocals from artists such as Ronnie Spector, the Pointer Sisters and Liza Minelli to fill it out. A missed opportunity to follow up the Wings theme song for “Live and Let Die”.
Once again, Glen Buxton is credited as lead guitarist on this album, but did not play on anything that made the cut for the album. Due to his addictions, it was decided he either shouldn’t or couldn’t contribute to the album, and his parts were played by session musicians including Dick Wagner, who would have more to do down the track.

It was only a couple of episodes ago that I spoke of how I went about catching the entire catalogue of Alice Cooper albums, starting with the 1980’s and then back through the popular albums to see what I may have missed along the way. “Muscle of Love” came in that second or third period of finding the band’s albums, once I had digested the big releases of both the band and then the solo act that followed. So it is fair to say that this album already had a great deal to beat by the time I got around to getting it and listening to it. And as a result, it wasn’t one that really captured my imagination at that time. It sits right between two amazing albums, the Alice Cooper Band’s “Billion Dollar Babies”, and Alice Cooper’s first solo outing with “Welcome to my Nightmare”. That’s some tough competition. And while it does still compare favourably with the rest of the original band’s work, and those who grew up with the albums from the 1970’s would still rank it highly, as a kid whose high school years were the 1980’s it is those albums that appeal to me most.
I’ve listened to this on my rotation for the past couple of weeks, and again when I just sit down with this on my stereo in the Metal Cavern and turn it up, it still sounds great and is enjoyable to listen to. The title track is such a brilliantly upbeat song, I often wonder why they couldn’t make the whole album like this song. But that wasn’t to be. It is the one main song that leaps off the vinyl or off the Spotify playlist when you listen to the album, the one excellent shining light. But if you want me to listen the ten best Alice Cooper Band slash solo albums, this doesn’t get a look in.
With a few months of this album’s release, the band split up, and this became the final album of the actual Alice Cooper Band. Vincent Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper, went off and did the “Welcome to my Nightmare” solo album (with the return of Bob Ezrin as producer), and never looked back. Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton and Dennis Dunaway formed the short-lived band Billion Dollar Babies and released one album. “Muscle of Love” closes that one door and opened another, and the story of Alice Cooper continued in the hands of the frontman only.

1176. Alice Cooper / Raise Your Fist and Yell. 1987. 4/5

In recent times, as you have to do with bands and artists that have been around for centuries and release albums every two years like clockwork, I have done a lot of podcast episodes on Alice Cooper albums. There has been “Schools Out”, there has been “Zipper Catches Skin”, and others around the times. It does mean that sometimes it feels as though I am repeating myself, so if that also feels like the case to you, then please accept my apologies. On that very recent episode reviewing “Zipper Catches Skin”, I mentioned the difficult times that Alice had been going through in regards to his creative vision, along with his drug and alcohol addiction that was at that time dominating his life. That episode was right in the middle of that crisis, and the downward spiral his music was taking as a result. An episode from Season 1 of this podcast, for his “Constrictor” album, then explained his comeback. Having fought and beaten his addictions, he teamed up with guitarist composer Kane Roberts, and rediscovered the magic that got him back in the game. Following that album and the successful tour that promoted it, it was time come up with a follow up album, one that could build on the goodwill that that album had been able to inspire, and to once again find that quintessential “Alice Cooper” trademark. The same main trio that had recorded “Constrictor” returned for this new album – Alice himself, Kane Roberts on guitar and co-composer of the album, and young bass guitarist Kip Winger.
This album came out within 12 months of “Constructor”, another reminder of how often bands would release albums back in the 1980’s. Building on the themes that had been prevalent on that album, “Raise Your Fist and Yell” has songs that are based and themed around the slasher film genre that was prevalent in the b-grade movie cinemas at the time. They are upbeat, and again mixed with anthemic cries in the lyrics along with the horror themes of those B-grade movies we all watched during that decade, all drawn together by great guitar riffs and hard hitting drums that probably allowed this album to not be as goofy as its twin preceding album, but continue along that line of Alice moving from his 70’s shlock to the early 80’s new wave to the late 80’s hard rock and hair metal genre with remarkable adaptability.

Alice’s albums often have an anthem to kick them off, to get the listener into the right mood immediately. Think “School’s Out” or “Teenage Frankenstein”. Nothing changes here with the brilliant “Freedom”, which invokes the album title within its lyrics. Its challenge to the rock censorship movement at the time is obvious throughout. There is a great quote from Alice at the time, which I’ll read here in full. “I think somebody had to say something back to these people. They start out with the premise that kids in America are too stupid to know what they’re listening to, and that’s really wrong. They say bands are trying to manipulate teenage minds — but kids know they’ve been manipulated all their lives by lots of things, including teachers, the media, their own parents and especially television. So we just have fun with it. Alice Cooper does not preach violence or devil worship, but he DOES make fun of just about everything.” True words. There is more of this on “Give the Radio Back”, another battle cry from the kids to their authoritative overlords. Alice goes straight to the heart of the matter as he sees it for the kids, just like he did in 1972 and 1982. Add to this queue “Step on You” and you have the songs, both lyrically and musically, that have been staples of Alice Cooper’s reign for that almost 20 year period when this was released. Alice and Kane still get it from their main audience’s view, and they are anthemic. They complete side one with “Not that Kind of Love”, a theme that was pursued more on the next Alice Cooper album.
Around these songs are the tracks that are like those B grade horror films I mentioned earlier. Robert Englund (perhaps better known as Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street) makes a guest appearance on “Lock Me Up” to help sell its title. “Prince of Darkness” leaves little doubt as to the subject matter, though it apparently appeared very briefly in the John Carpenter movie of the same name on someone’s Walkman. Seems that this was a movie that passed me by without seeing it. The album then concludes with the continuing schlock horror theme with “Time to Kill”, “Chop, Chop, Chop”, “Gail” and “Roses on White Lace”, all which deliver perfectly with the lyrical visuality and great riffing from both Roberts and Winger, delivering the joy of the material in perfect unison throughout. Alice best explains it again when he was quoted as saying “This is the highest energy music I’ve ever done. I think it’s because I’m experiencing that kind of energy physically. I’m in a hundred times better shape than I ever was — that has to do with wanting to tour and be competitive. Mentally, of course, I’m sicker than I’ve ever been…”

This album initially came my way courtesy of my heavy music dealer from high school, who seemed to be able to give me just what I needed without even knowing. And, given how much I had loved “Constrictor” (you can relive that episode from Season 1 to discover that) I never doubted that I would also love this album. In fact, if my memory still retains most of its ability, I had this recorded on one side of a C90 cassette, and Motley Crue’s “Theatre of Pain” on the other side. However, such was my love of this album, and my general ambivalence with “Theatre of Pain”, that I destroyed this tape eventually in the cassette player of my white Toyota Corolla from playing it all the way through, and then hurriedly rewinding it to listen to it again. This hastened my purchasing of it on CD, which I did from Redback Records in Wollongong on a day out.
So yes, I have always loved this album since I first heard it. The teen anthems all worked on me given I was still in my late teens when it was released and for a couple of years afterwards. It was a feeling of slight disappointment when I first saw Alice Cooper live on the Trash tour that they didn’t play anything off this album. Indeed, apart from “Roses on White Lace” on the most recent Alice tour – another one I was fortunate enough to see, along with taking my whole family – no songs have been on the live setlist from this album since that time. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of cracking songs here, all of which would work beautifully in the live environment. All of the songs are short and sharp, and the album doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s also a shame that this was the final album that had Kane Roberts and Kip Winger playing on, but beyond this time Alice began in a similar direction but with a huge leap in personnel involved. He co-wrote and played on “Bed of Nails” on the “Trash” album but that was where his involvement with Alice concluded – until just a few short weeks ago when he re-joined the live band to replace Nita Strauss. Roberts has stated publicly he would love to do another album with Alice. Having bathed in the glory of this album over the past few weeks, we can only hope that comes to fruition. His contribution to leading Alice Cooper’s resurgence through the mid-1980's should never be overlooked.
Most fans of Alice Cooper, when asked for their favourite albums, rarely list this or its predecessor in their best five Alice Cooper albums. The early classics, or the chart toppers that followed this album are generally where the popular vote goes. For me this is easily one of the best five Alice Cooper albums ever released. I would have difficulty in ranking them in order in that top five – if pushed it would come down to either “Hey Stoopid” or “Constrictor” - but this is one of the best. And if you don’t agree, then you haven’t listened to this album enough. So pull it off the racks now, and get it spinning!

1125. Alice Cooper / Detroit Stories. 2021. 3.5/5

It was probably time for 73 year old Detroit native Alice Cooper, formerly Vincent Furnier, to start slowing down a little when it came to writing and recording new albums. He had been amazingly productive when it came to this over the years, with new albums coming out sometimes before you had even had a chance to fully digest the previous one. However, slow down he has, and since 2010 Alice has brought out just three new studio releases, 2011’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare, 2017’s Paranormal, and now this year’s Detroit Stories. It marks Alice’s 21st studio album as a solo artist and add to those the seven albums that he did with The Alice Cooper Band before he went out on his own, that is a lot of material to write and record over 50+ year career – and that’s not to mention the live albums or the material done with other acts either!
The album is written about Alice’s origins, and especially the origins of the hard rock music scene of Detroit when he was growing up, and when he came back with The Alice Cooper Band. Here, Alice and his co-writers tried to incorporate those memories of the Detroit music scene into the songs and into every part of the album as a whole. Not only incorporate those sounds into this album, but he also used musicians of that similar ilk, and indeed used songs from Detroit bands of that era, performing his own cover versions of those songs to further intone his Detroit Stories. Alice was making a real attempt to return to the roots of rock and roll, mixing a lot of blues, jazz and soul along with the hard rock and humour that Alice has always been renowned for.
There is a cast of thousands helping out to perform on this album, and in a lot of ways it is an old time Detroit reunion given the people involved. Producer and co-writer Bob Ezrin is back, the man who helmed the desk for most of those Alice Cooper band albums in the early 70’s as well Alice’s first solo pieces, and his recent albums as well. His influence is noteworthy here again. In amongst the tracks that he and Alice co-wrote with other people, there are four cover songs here from other bands tied up in the history of Detroit hard rock. The opening track is a cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll”, though the lyrics that paint a picture of New York are morphed here to reflect Detroit instead. The cover of Outrageous Cherry’s “Our Love Will Change the World” has a more Alice-defined rock sound than the original. The cover of MC5’s “Sister Anne” is very much played in an Alice Cooper way, so much so you could believe it really was one of his songs, and the album concludes with a cover of Bob Segar’s “East Side Story”. All have been included to flavour the history that Alice has tried to purvey with this album, to look back at the music that in some ways made him the artist he is today.

Once again there is the return of the surviving members of the original Alice Cooper Band to not only help out in the writing of several tracks, but indeed to perform on two of them. Drummer Neal Smith co-wrote “Social Debris”, and bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway co-wrote “Drunk and in Love” and “I Hate You”, and both of these two and guitarist Michael Bruce joined Alice to record “Social Debris” and “I Hate You”. It has been a nice part of the last three albums to have that history recognised and have these guys come together to still be a part of something special. Others who are prominent in the recording of the album include MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, Grand Funk Railroad’s singer and guitarist Mark Farner, and legendary guitarist Joe Bonamassa.

Alice Cooper often has a theme or indeed a story behind every album he records, and that works really well here again. By looking back and trying to make a record that not only pays tribute to the music that shaped his career fifty years ago, he has also tried to keep it relevant to the music lovers of today without losing its own uniqueness that has Alice Cooper stamped all over it. How he has managed to do this, as well as utilise all of the musicians he has gathered together here, in the middle of a pandemic, is quite amazing. And yes, once again the songs that Alice seems to do best, those ones where he pokes fun at things without changing stride and yet still being able to keep it in a serious mode is amazing.

The great thing about Alice is that every album he releases, you can put on and listen to it from start to finish without any qualms, because it is Alice Cooper. Sometimes it is for the music and the musicians, and sometimes it is just for the stories Alice is telling through his lyrics. Above all, how can you not just enjoy listening to Alice sing? It is almost comforting putting on his albums, just to listen to his dulcet tones coming through the speakers.
What Alice is a genius at is being able to adapt his music not only to the genre rock is following at the time, but still being able to make it so that it doesn’t lose its ‘Alice Cooper’ feeling. What do I mean by that? Well, simply that an Alice Cooper album is always an Alice Cooper album, but they are still different in adapting to the style of the time. Listen to Killer or Welcome to My Nightmare or Constrictor or Trash or Dirty Diamonds or Brutal Planet or this album. Every single one of them is different in musical style based on the era it was written and recorded, and yet each album is still essentially Alice Cooper. He has been a chameleon and a genius in order to be able to do this for 50+ years. Anyone who enjoys Alice Cooper’s music will be able to put on any one of those albums and enjoy it for what it is, because their essence never changes even if the style of music does.

Is this a great album? I wouldn’t say so, but terming any album “great” in the current day always feels a bit wrong. If you like Alice Cooper in every era, then you will enjoy this album. I don’t know how long you will listen to it before you move on to something else, or how often you will pull it off the shelf to listen to in preference to any of the other 27 Alice Cooper albums in the future, but for what it is, in the year we are living, it has all the usual Alice Cooper goodness about it.

1091. Alice Cooper / A Paranormal Evening with Alice Cooper at the Olympia Paris [Live]. 2018. 5/5

While Alice Cooper’s output of albums has been remarkably consistent given the length of his career as an artist, over the course of this time there have been less live albums released by his band than you may have expected. Given his legendary status as a live artist this may be construed as unusual, but the scarcity of them actually improves their output. Indeed, when this release was announced I found myself looking forward to it immensely to not only hear what he and his current band sound like live but what flavours we were likely to get from it.

Choosing any set list for any tour is a tough ask, trying to find the balance between the old and the new, the popular and the obscure, the songs you can’t possibly leave out and the ones that the fans really want to hear. There is nothing easy about it, and the longer an artist has been around the more difficult it is. Alice Cooper has 27 studio albums worth of material to choose from and only a finite time on stage in which to play, and given the amazing hits that have been produced over the years it must be a crazy decision to decide what to shoehorn in to that allowed time.
I have always loved A Fistful of Alice because it not only managed to put together a great set list comprising both the great hits from both the past and that present time, but it gave the whole show a modern sound without being detrimental to the source material. It is a great live album. The gratifying thing is that A Paranormal Evening with Alice Cooper at the Olympia Paris is exactly the same. It is a brilliant mix of all pieces of the Alice Cooper story, and every song sounds brilliant in its own way. The band and entourage sounds brilliant, a terrific ensemble of musicians and singers who do justice to every track.
From the very start this clicks into gear with a great selection of songs. Opening with the underrated “Brutal Planet”, you are then hit with three of Alice’s all time classics, the hard rocking trio of “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, the brilliant “Under My Wheels” and the timeless “Department of Youth”. It’s a nice touch having these legendary track opening the set, as well as having “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out” closing out the album in style. The way in which Alice mixes the lyrics from the other schoolkid rebellious song of that era, Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”, into the melody lines of “School’s Out” is a particularly effective way of closing out the show. Within the middle of the set we are also favoured with high energy versions of “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Cold Ethyl” and constant companion “Only Women Bleed”. All of these legendary tracks still hold their own after all of these years, and the versions played here are superb. Most fans know these songs off by heart and are crowd favourites from that era.
However, what makes this such a great live album is that there are plenty of surprises here from the first third of Alice’s career apart from those classic tracks, and each of them comes off superbly. “Pain” from Flush the Fashion, “Ballad of Dwight Fry” from Love It to Death , “Halo of Flies” from Killer and the duo of “Killer” the same album and “I Love the Dead” from Billion Dollar Babies are excellent reminders of the strength of much of the material from the 1970’s that doesn’t always get a look in when the best of Alice Cooper gets thrown around.
On the flipside the modern day material gets a fair showing. Along with the aforementioned “Brutal Planet” there are also excellent versions of “Woman of Mass Distraction” from Dirty Diamonds and “Paranoiac Personality” from his most recent release Paranormal. And as always the two big tracks from his modern day revival come in, with “Poison” and “Feed My Frankenstein”. However, for me the best track on this whole double album is the appearance of “The World Needs Guts” from the Constrictor album. I loved this album as a teenager, and hearing this song given the live treatment is a joy. It is a raucous version too which makes it even better. Thanks Alice just for this!

Do you need a new Alice Cooper live album? The answer is a resolute absolutely! At 70 years of age he shows no signs of slowing down, and this album reminds you of how huge his legacy is and how he has managed to continue to be relevant through so many decades of change in music. There is something here for everyone, for the old fans who have been around for the whole journey, and the young fans who have only cottoned on to the legend in recent times. This is a worthwhile addition to the catalogue.

Rating: “Hey you! Fighting for your life where you’ve never fought before!” 5/5

1023. Alice Cooper / Paranormal. 2017. 3/5

The time between albums may be beginning to stretch outwardly, but there’s little doubt that it still gives you a warm feeling when you hear Alice Cooper is bringing out some new material. And that’s not because you may think it is going to be amazingly groundbreaking or magnificently catchy, but because with Alice you now know what you are getting, and that is fun songs with enough of a kick to keep you entertained throughout. And once again that is what Alice has provided for us with Paranormal.

In recent years – what feels like forever – Alice and his co-writers have concentrated on concepts for his albums, where each song contributes to the story being told, and sometime that can be a bit restrictive. Here on Paranormal they have steered clear of this and just gone out and written songs, of varying genres it must be said, but effectively. How much you enjoy the switch between styles of music in the songs here is probably going to determine exactly how you feel about the album.
“Paranormal” combines the reflective and the faster paced, and I have found is a grower, in that it gets better each time you listen to it. Once you know the nuance of the song it is much more enjoyable. This is followed by “Dead Flies” that seems to reach right back into the past, with the stomping drums and Alice’s chanting vocals bringing back memories of past great moments. “Fireball” has a similar theme where the backbeat drives the song while Alice sings over the top. “Paranoiac Personality” is okay, but to me it’s a bit repetitive and doesn’t really break out of its mould at any time. From here we fall back in to some other realm of music, as though we had moved back in time, with a very ‘rock n’ roll’ feel to the songs. “Fallen in Love’ is the first of this genre, and is followed by “Dynamite Road” which has a very southern sound about it, highlighted by the drum beat throughout. It’s a beauty, but is another one that takes some time to let it grow on you.
The second half of the album doesn’t quite measure up to the first half. “Private Public Breakdown” plods along without any great energy or motivation, perhaps in essence like the title of the song. “Holy Water” is at least more upbeat in style but just seems to lack that real Alice Cooper twist to make it more likeable. “Rats” is okay, but again probably not up to the enjoyable level of earlier songs. “The Sound of A” is far too much in the genre of a Pink Floyd song, and given my reticence of that band it makes it a difficult song to get through. Oh well.
There is some fun on the second disc, where the first two songs are written and composed and played by the remains of the original Alice Cooper band. Both “Genuine American Girl” and “You and All Your Friends” are interesting for the fact that they sound like they are from the era immediately following the group’s break up. For nostalgia they serve their purpose.
The real kicker is the six live songs that are tacked on to the end of the release. Why so? Because for perhaps the first time on the whole album, you feel rejuvenated, you feel up and you feel excited about the music. Because these are the great tracks, the ones from different eras that are the best that Alice can produce. And even after all these years, these are the songs I love to sing – “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, “Under My Wheels”, “Billion Dollar Babies”, “Feed My Frankenstein”, “Only Women Bleed” and “School’s Out”.

Are there truly any bad Alice Cooper albums? Well, I guess the answer is yes, but certainly since the mid-1980’s I think that while the quality overall may be different from album to album, overall all of them are eminently listenable. This may well never become a classic album and it will never be as highly regarded as those albums from other eras of his career, but it comes down to how much do you like to sit down and listen to an Alice Cooper album. I enjoy it, quite a bit, and thus can find enough here to like and listen to.

Rating:  “And your phone knows more about you than your daddy or your mother”.   3/5

889. Alice Cooper / School's Out. 1972. 2.5/5

It's a given fact that you cannot judge an Alice Cooper album by the singles that are released from it. Oh, you'll know those songs, and you will love those songs. But you cannot judge the album they come off by those singles, because in most instances they will be of a completely different style from the rest of the album. One of the best instances of this is the album School's Out, an album that is mostly ignored in the discography of Alice Cooper because the only song anyone knows or has probably heard from it, is the single of the same name. And this couldn't be further away from the style of the rest of the album if it tried.

Everyone knows "School's Out". I may have started school a few years after this album was released, but one of my endearing memories of primary school was the consistent scene on the last day of school term, when the school bus was decorated with toilet paper flowing out the windows and the chorus of voices all singing "No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers, dirty looks" all the way to my drop off stop. Everyone who has been to school knows this song. It is a classic, it is a schoolkids anthem. Its popularity is what possibly detract from the remainder of the album.
Both "Luney Tune" and "Gutter Cat vs the Jets" are the kind of up tempo acid rock songs that fans of Alice Cooper can get into. Sure, the second half of "Gutter Cat vs the Jets" is a little too much West Side Story for anyone's liking, but overall both songs are catchy and likeable. "Street Fight" is an extension of the West Side Story theme following on from that song.
For most of the rest of the album however, there is a definite slide into stage musical theme (albeit a messed up Alice Cooper version of such a theme) about the songs. "Blue Turk", "My Stars" and "Public Animal #9" as songs are all tolerable the more you are familiar with them, but I know that it took more than a few listens for me to appreciate their uniqueness. "Alma Mater" and the unusual "Grande Finale" continue the path which we have found ourselves on, and as with the other songs on the album it feels as though they have been composed in an altered state, such is the mix in musical style and emphasis within the recording of the album.
It was pretty much twenty years after its release before I actually heard the entire album, mostly due to my age on its release and the plethora of other albums of other bands I was delving into before finally catching up with this. I fell into the same trap that I have tried to help others avoid here, by thinking that the entire album was going to be short, sharp repartee songs much like the title track, rather than a lengthy, drawn out drama played out over the course of the album. So while I have come to appreciate these songs in time, and accept their place within the album and the discography of the band, that still doesn't make any easier to love on a scale that I do other Cooper albums.

In the long run, School's Out follows a familiar path with other Alice Cooper albums that have a running theme throughout, or are concept albums in their entirety. You can take the story aspect and enjoy it for what it is and be satisfied with the direction the music takes you. In most circumstances with Alice's music, I find this to be a hindrance, and I certainly find that to be the case here. As clever as it may be to have this album with the storyline attached and the musical pieces written to suit, the fact that it appears unable to stand up to the famed title track means it will forever be trapped between a rock and a hard place.

Rating: "Just a little insane a couple of shots I can't feel no pain". 2.5/5

766. Alice Cooper / Welcome to My Nightmare. 1975. 4.5/5

The Alice Cooper band had had a great and growing success through the first half of the 1970’s decade, releasing seven studio albums in total over a period of just four years. The huge international success in particular of albums such as “Killer”, “School’s Out” and “Billion Dollar Babies”, as well as the shock horror value of the band's antics on stage during live shows, had given the Alice Cooper Band a reputation that might have sent conservative folks into a tizzy but had drawn in fans of a younger generation in droves.
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.

721. Alice Cooper / Zipper Catches Skin. 1982. 2/5

Alice Cooper fans have a similar aversion to his albums from the first half of the 1980’s as Alice Cooper himself has. And that isn’t to say that they necessarily don’t like them. It’s just that they, on the whole, don’t remember them! And this is consistently the case for Alice himself. He has openly stated that for the three album releases of 1981’s “Special Forces”, 1983’s “DaDa” and this album, 1982’s “Zipper Catches Skin”, he has categorised them as the ‘blackout’ albums, in that he has no recollection of writing or recording them, due to substance abuse, both alcoholic and in particular crack cocaine. That’s a pretty amazing head space to be in, which of course he eventually found a way to quit. And it is fair to say that these albums in particular are in a different sphere from what he had produced through the 1970’s. They were ground breaking, where he climbed on board with the persona he had drafted, and the music that came from this was amazing, and he continued to find top 40 singles in amongst it. So while it has been widely documented about Alice's substance abuse during these years, it also brought about a less than exciting musical output, or at the very least coincided with it. It's a distance away since the glory days of “Killer” and “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Welcome to My Nightmare” and it shows.
In my opinion, where the album probably hits a hurdle is that it sounds as though it is trying to find its way into the new wave genre that was becoming popular in pop music at the time. You can hear it in the music itself, and even in the lyrical aspect of some of the songs here. It’s all very different from what had been produced up until “Lace & Whisky” for instance, with the turning tide beginning to come from the Bernie Taupin penned “From the Inside” album. The Alice schtick is still there, but in trying to stick with the times and manoeuvre through to the popularity of that genre of music, it meant offering up some different songs. This, along with the aforementioned aversion that many people seem to attach to this period of Alice’s career, means that this album along with the others of this vintage are often pawned off without actually diving in to see what they contain.

So, there's a transition going on here, but it is only in its earliest formation. It would be easy to dismiss this album after one or two listens, because there is little real depth to the songs, certainly not like some of Alice’s great early albums. If you can do more than that, and put it on for four or five merry-go-rounds, you'll find that it isn't quite as bad as it initially comes across. "Zorro's Ascent" is not an all-too-bad opening track, certainly not as great as earlier albums but enjoyable enough once you get to know the song itself. "Make That Money (Scrooge's Song)" is also a good song with Alice lampooning the rich. “No Baloney Homosapiens” is Alice’s parable to any aliens out there looking down on us, asking them to accept us and not kill us. There are some songs here where Alice sounds great, because he sounds upbeat and much like his normal self, songs such as "Adaptable (Anything for You)", "Tag, You're It" and "I'm Alive (That Was the Day My Dead Pet Returned to Save My Life)" all show enough of the developing Alice Cooper parody lyrics to keep your interest. Probably, that's the best of it.
The rest is probably what I would label as ‘average’. "I Am the Future" was not written by Alice or any of his current band lineup, and was actually written for the soundtrack of the movie “Class of 1984” - does anyone else remember that movie? With Roddy McDowell and Michael J Fox as a pudgy teenager, and how great it was at the time... and how dreadfully dated it is now? Well, that’s just like this song. A piece of fluff soundtrack song, and no one on it sounds even remotely interested (especially not Alice), and it sounds overtly dated now. But even for the day, this just doesn’t fit the album the way the rest of the songs are written. It sticks out like a sore thumb. "I Better Be Good" does have energy, but it seems to go too far into the parody/comedy angle, and isn't quite cartoonish enough to raise a smile, but then you have “I Like Girls” which perhaps goes too far in the opposite direction and becomes too cartoonish for its own good. At least with “I’m Alive”, the album finishes on a high note.

Anyone with a career as long as Alice Cooper and his band are going to have a couple of duds along the way. For whatever reasons that may exist, whether it be substance abuse or poor writing or no direction, or a combination of all these things thrown into a melting pot, this is only an average album. It isn’t the worst that Alice ever released, and the best way to describe it overall is with that simple phrase - “this isn't terrible, it just isn't very good either”.
To be honest, it is quintessentially Alice Cooper, but perhaps of a later era. The lyrics generally have that humorous Alice twist to them that he perfected later in the 1980’s, and there is plenty in the music itself to catch the attention... but that’s just it. It doesn’t really catch your attention, unless you really listen to this over and over and accept it for what it is rather than what you wish it could be. What it is missing I believe it a really stand out guitar, such as later albums “Constrictor” and “Raise Your Fist and Yell” had. Re-record this with Kane Roberts on guitar, get someone to really hit those drums and get the bass guitar into the mix, and maybe you would really have something!
It took me a very long time to get around to listening to the albums from the late 1970’s to the mid 1980’s, for a couple of reasons. I was happy with the Alice Cooper material I had, and with so much music around me I just didn’t feel the need to seek it out. None of my extended friend group had any of those albums, so the ability to listen to them easily was not available. So, it wasn’t until the days of downloading and file sharing that I finally heard all of these albums, including this one. And it is fair to say that I wasn’t overly enamoured by it, as you can probably get from this episode. They all got their listens and then I moved on. This last three weeks is certainly the most time I’ve put into “Zipper Catches Skin”, and the result has been that I feel there is more merit in this album than I would have rated prior to this listening session began. Alice himself has actually floated the idea of re-recording the three ‘blackout’ albums and give them a more modern feel in updating them. As I mentioned, I can see merit in that. No matter what though, sometimes no matter how you dress it up, a turkey is still a turkey.

720. Alice Cooper / Along Came a Spider. 2008. 3/5

Given his amazing ability to constantly produce albums with regularity, and the enormous amount stashed in his back catalogue, and the influence he has had throughout his career, it is not only difficult not to get carried away with another Alice Cooper album, but also difficult not to judge too swiftly or harshly as a result.
Perhaps it is old age. Perhaps it is that I don't/can't spend days/weeks listening to the same album over and over again as I did in my youth. Perhaps my tastes have changed lightly. perhaps (surely not) Alice just doesn't quite do albums as well as he used to. Or, as is possible, not every Alice Cooper album is an out and out classic. And this is true anyway, as there are some albums in his vast array of releases that never dd anything for me.

Along Came a Spider is another of Alice's concept album pieces, which is all and fine, though by being so it ties the whole album to that storyline, which can make it difficult as the listener if you don't find it enthralling. In the long run, you need to be able to find two or three songs in the mix that really grab you, because that will drag you into and through the rest of the album. And while I can put this on in the background and let it play away without a second though, if I really sit down and listen to it, I can't find much that really excites me. The opening stanza of "Vengeance Is Mine", "Wake the Dead" and "Catch Me If You Can" is probably my favourite part of the album, but most of the rest I can take or leave. "Salvation" is a case in point. The finale of the album and story, yet contains a barrage of choruses that just nag at you rather than encourage you to sing along, because it turns out that it is more annoying than anthemic.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad album. It just isn't a great album. Dirty Diamonds was a much better album all round. That was classic Alice. This is okay, but not on the top shelf.

675. Alice Cooper / Pretties For You. 1969. 2.5/5

The road leading up to the Alice Cooper Band coming together, and then releasing their debut album, is one of many varied paths and distinct differences in the way each member got there. Vincent Furnier, who would eventually come to take on the moniker of Alice Cooper as his own, guitarist Glen Buxton and bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway, came together in high school as a part of the cross-country running team, forming an act for an end of session show. Dressed to resemble the Beatles, and performing parodies of their songs, they won the contest, and this convinced them to start a band for real. The problem was, Buxton was the only one who really knew how to play, so they bought instruments from the local pawn shop and he proceeded to teach them. This first group, the Spiders, played around for two years, at which time they graduated from high school, having also recorded their first single “Why Don’t You Love Me”. The band’s other guitarist was then replaced by Michael Bruce who had been a football player for a rival high school, and a second single, “Don’t Blow Your Mind” was released in 1966. While making regular trips to other cities to play gigs, the band changed their name to Nazz, recruited Neal Smith as their new drummer, relocated to Los Angeles, and released a third single.
By 1968, they discovered that the name Nazz was being used by Todd Rundgren, and along with believing that they needed a gimmick to increase the power and marketability of their music, they decided they needed another change. An urban legend suggested that the name the band came up with to change to, Alice Cooper, had come via a seance with a Ouija board. Furnier many years later in an interview suggested this was false. Instead, he said, "What if we sounded like we were somebody's aunt?" It was kind of like the all-American, sweet little old lady name. And I wasn't Alice Cooper. I was just the singer in the band Alice Cooper, like Manfred Mann. Pretty soon everybody called me Alice, they just assumed that the singer's name was Alice. So, at that point, I legally changed my name to Alice Cooper. It was a total outrage at the time. Now it's a household name".
After a gig in 1968 where most of the audience had left after hearing the band play just ten minutes, they were approached by music manager Shep Gordon, who felt they could turn that promotion into a positive. The band auditioned for Frank Zappa, turning up at 7am rather than the 7pm Zappa had actually organised. This actually impressed him enough to sign the band to a three album deal. And thus became the start of the Alice Cooper Band, and their debut studio album, “Pretties for You”

This is where it all began for the Alice Cooper Band, and it is mostly unrecognisable from the material that made them famous, and from what the namesake lead singer went onto in his solo career. It is an interesting step back in time to listen to, hearing the kind of music that was prominent when the Alice Cooper Band started back in 1968, to the material that has been published through the various decades that followed.
This is a very psychedelic album, much as was the style in the late 1960's. Most of the album is very much influenced by the differing styles of the age. In places, and on some tracks, the music is almost Beatles-esque from that era, especially from the sound they were putting out with “Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band”, the experimenting that was going on in both music and sideline habits, but it is also reminiscent of that era's Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa and other 'flower power' artists. On almost every level, it is a real effort to get through this album in a normal setting. Unless you are a big fan of the style and genre of music that this is composed in, then It just isn't the kind of album you will put on for enjoyment value to listen to. Now, perhaps if you dropped a couple of tabs of acid beforehand, you just may get a great deal more out of it! In general, with this kind of psychedelic mish-mash, it would have to be the norm.
When listening to the album, there is some information that you need to know upfront before you diss it or dismiss it. In an interview in latter years, the band's manager at the time Shep Gordon has stated that the album actually contains mostly what was recorded in one long rehearsal session. Zappa had left his brother in charge of recording, was then told later that afternoon that the album was done, and Zappa himself never listened to the end product. The only track on the album not a part of that session was a live recording of the song “Levity Ball”. Gordon suggests the band had no full songs written, and that what is put down on this album is what was done on the spot in many instances. With that knowledge in mind, it does make what you hear when you listen to the album can be taken with a different perspective. There is so much going on in all of the songs, and it doesn't always feel as though there is any rhyme or reason to what is being played. In some songs, such as "Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio" it feels like they are just doing a Spinal Tap free form jazz experimentation. It sounds just like a rehearsal room jam session which they ended up liking and putting on the album. Drums, guitars, bass, even the harmonica, all seem to be coming in and out as the musician pleases. That's not to say it's bad, but you really need to be in the right frame of mind to listen to it. And with the information in that interview, you can know relate exactly to that.

Much of the experience of the Alice Cooper Band, especially in these early days, was the stage show, and the antics that occurred during live performances. As a result this first studio album doesn't really convey to the listener what they would have been missing visually, and in this respect it would be easy to just write this off and dismiss it. But to do so would be hasty. Given an ability and desire to sit back and listen to the album a few times, you can find plenty to appreciate here. Once you are acquainted with the methodology of the structure of the album, it becomes easier to relate to, easier to accept the meshing of instruments in a random kind of noise, easier to come to terms with the fact that Alice sounds a little spookily like John Lennon in places (“10 Minutes Before the Worm” in particular), and easier to find where all of this develops from this starting point into what soon became a band that took hard rock by storm, with songs like "BB on Mars" and "Reflected" especially sounding this way. "Reflected" was eventually reworked and became recorded as "Elected' a few years later, so the roots of what the band became are certainly present here.
I discovered Alice Cooper in the mid-1980's, and eventually went back to the original albums of the Alice Cooper Band, all of which are far different from the modern version of the solo artist. And this album was more so than the others. It’s another planet, another universe. Nothing about this album really corresponds with anything you would know after this. But I persisted with it initially, because I love Alice and I admire the original band. And it is still weird. Even this past week or so reliving it for this podcast episode, it has been a battle. I still get snatches that I enjoy, and I can appreciate it for what it is in the time it is from. But I just am never going to reach for it when I have the urge to listen to an album fro this band. There are so many many better albums than this one.
For those who are familiar with Alice Cooper's later work, listening to this for the first time would be like hopping into a different dimension. And though you may never come to really like this album, it is certainly worth listening to it if for no other reason than to see what progression was made through the years by this most enduring artist. It’s a trip, in many senses of the word.

489. Alice Cooper / Hey Stoopid. 1991. 5/5

Trying to follow up the mega-success that was Trash would have been no mean feat for one of the great icons of music. To help out, he pulled together an array of friends to help write and perform on the new album, and the end result was Hey Stoopid.
Like Trash this has a great mix of Alice Cooper rockers and ballads, and while it is probably rubbished by hard core Cooper fans as it is not a ‘traditional’ album of his style, it was perfect for the time. Having moved with the times (again) he and his buddies have produced an almost flawless combination of songs.

There is something for everyone here. Lyrically every song has its message, even the ‘love ballads’ have that Alice Cooper message infused into their words. As with all of Alice’s work in this direction, there is still enough rock in these songs to stop them falling into the same category as most soft rock ballads that many hair metal bands of the day fell into. Songs such as “Love’s a Loaded Gun”, “Burning Our Bed” and “Might As Well Be On Mars” are still great rock songs. “Might As Well Be On Mars” in particular showcases the best that not only Alice, but his band, has to offer, and is one of my favourites on the album – yes, that’s right, a ‘ballad’ is one of my faves.
Of course, there are the faster, heavier tracks here too. The title track for one, “Feed My Frankenstein”, “Hurricane Years” and “Little By Little” are up there with the best of this generation’s Alice Cooper works.

Not only does he have a great group of musicians around him as a part of his band, the guests on the album reads like a who’s-who of music at the time – Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Mick Mars, Slash, Nikki Sixx.

Though the ‘traditionalists’ may disagree, I think this is one of Alice Cooper’s finest moments. It is certainly one of my favourite of his albums, if not my absolute favourite. I guess seeing as I spent one night pumping about $45 dollars into a video jukebox, just so my mate and I could watch the video to “Hey Stoopid” about one hundred times in a row back when it was released (missing the movie we had specially gone out to see in the process), I’d have to like it a little bit…

Rating: A great album from one of the finest artists in his time. 5/5.

414. Alice Cooper / From The Inside. 1978. 3/5

Alice Cooper’s rise through the 1970’s following his legal change of name and separation from the band of the same name had been immense. “Welcome to My Nightmare” had been followed by “Alice Cooper Goes to Hell” and “Lace and Whiskey” as successful albums. That mainstream success, however, had come from two ballads that had come from those albums, “I’ll Never Cry” from “Alice Cooper Goes to Hell”, and “You & Me” from “Lace and Whiskey”. Both of these songs went across the grain from what Alice Cooper had produced on his stage shows, and while they portrayed a different side to the artist, it was still the shock horror that drew fans to his concerts.
During the US tour that followed to promote the “Lace and Whiskey” album, it became clear that Alice was becoming consumed in his alcoholism, and that something needed to be done in order to rectify the situation. At its peak, it is rumoured that Alice would drink two cases of beer and a bottle of whiskey every day, something that was not sustainable to healthy living. Once the tour was completed, Alice himself decided something had to be done, and he had himself hospitalised at a sanatorium for treatment. This was not a rehab centre, it was an actual hospital where people with severe mental illness were treated, which gives you an indication of how serious Alice felt about his problem. It was during this time that his record label released the live album “The Alice Cooper Show” to keep the fans happy during his time out of action.
Once he had sobered up and was released from his place of improvement, Alice decided to use his experience in the hospital as the inspiration for his next album. Creating characters from people he had observed during his time in the sanitarium, Alice began to piece together a story based on his time away which would become the concept for his next album, titled “From the Inside”, an album that was to be the beginning of the next phase of Alice’s career.

When it came to creating and writing his new album, Alice tracked down a friend who had experience in writing and creating wonderful and inspiring songs and albums. That person was Bernie Taupin, best known as the lyricist for Elton John. Alic said in an article for Ultimate Classic Rock in November 2018:
“Bernie was my best friend before I went into the hospital, so when I came out I said, ‘Bernie, I’ve got a wealth of material. We have to sit down and write this. It was sort of like dueling with each other. And we’d always try to leave the other guy with one unrhymable last word, you know? So Bernie and I would sit there and I’d tell him about characters like Jackknife Johnny, a Vietnam vet and I’d say, ‘Ok, here’s the story – he married a girl, he came home, everybody rejected him and then on top of it they rejected him because he brought home a Vietnamese girl,’ and so it just started right there. And pretty soon we’d written a whole album like that.”
Alice Cooper is one of the masters of writing albums with entire concepts locked into the songs. His track record in this respective is almost unparalleled. And while some people love the story aspect of his music, others find it a hinderance. What they want is great songs, ones they can sing out loud and move around to. That probably isn’t the end game here on “From the Inside”. Because yes, Alice does deal with the characters he has come to know, and while he doesn’t preach or push a message on this album, the whole concept is one that is one that is taken seriously – indeed, more seriously than you would expect from an Alice Cooper album. While there is an element of tongue in cheek here on some of the material, a lot of it is brought to the album as a much more serious concept. And look, perhaps it is only me, but there is a lot of Elton John in the song “Wish I Were Born in Beverly Hills”. I mean you can almost hear Elton singing it. And the obvious connection between he and Bernie Taupin may well be the only reason I hear it, but it is there all the same.
So the quiet introspection of songs such as “The Quiet Room” and the ballad “How You Gonna See Me Now” are from this part of Alice Cooper that had found its way into his music, the ballad that was then released as a single in order to gain radio airplay. Then there are the songs that are basically on the characters in this play that Alice and Bernie have created, such as “Nurse Rozetta” and “Millie and Billie” and “Jackknife Johnny”, that really flesh out the story that is based on Alice’s real life experiences.
So, about the music. OK, it's not as cutting edge as some of his previous work. In some ways it is some of his more mainstream stuff. There are elements of funk being interwoven into some tracks, the synth and keys adding in another dimension as well. For the first time, there are a lot of guest musicians coming in and being a part of the recording, instrumentally as well as being a part of the songwriting process. And the album feels a lot less lighter than his usual hard rock shock rock genre. Whether that was the feel he was looking for, or was the natural influence of co-writer Taupin, who can tell. Overall though, the songs don't have quite the hard feel of his best work from the 1970's. The songs skip along well, and their stories are still interesting, and the music still finds a way to essentially be Alice.

Alice Cooper has released an incredible number of albums, so many so that it would be impractical if you loved every single one of them. And there are also several different eras of Alice’s music, which all makes for an interesting time if you ever try to listen to all of his albums in chronological order.
Having discovered Alice Cooper through both his original albums and his late 1980’s albums at around the same time, I always felt I had had a well rounded classroom of his music, so when it came to the time that I began tracking down the albums of his that I didn’t know, which essentially was the albums after “Welcome to My Nightmare” and before “Constrictor”, I felt I was in a good headspace to appreciate them for what they were. Well... that did prove to be a challenge...
“From the Inside” was no different to the other albums of that era from 1976 through to 1983. When I first got the album and listened to it... it just felt like there was something missing. Something that these other Alice albums had that this (and these) didn’t. And in the long run it was simply that the attitude in the music probably wasn’t there like I had expected or wanted it to be. And let’s face it, it had some tough albums to live up to. “Welcome to My Nightmare”, “Billion Dollar Babies” and the like. So my initial reactions were non-plussed. I certainly didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t sure I loved it either. The range in the genre map of the songs for me was a bit too varied, and I just wasn’t endeared to the whole album. This album had two points in time where I gave it a fair hearing, before it found its way back onto the shelves.
Come to the present day, and having dived in once again for this podcast episode, I don’t think much has changed. When I have had it on at work or in the car, the odd song catches my attention, and then the album returns to a type of monotony. On the other hand, when I went home and sat in the Metal Cavern, and played it on my stereo and just let it and the story wash over me, I found it far more enjoyable. Not to the point of those great Alice Cooper album, but I enjoyed the layout of the album much more when I was really listening to it from start to finish, and not just tuning in for individual songs. And there are many Alie albums that I must say I find exactly the same – not renown for individual tracks, but if you take the time to have the album envelop you without distraction, the true feeling of the album comes to the party. For me, it isn’t one of his greats, but it isn’t without its charms either, and it certainly isn’t the worst album you’ll hear today.