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.