ALICE COOPER DISCOGRAPHY
& Career Overview
(Important work in color)
1969: Pretties for You. 1970: Easy Action. 1971: Love it to Death. 1972: Killer * School's Out. 1973: Billion $ Babies * Muscle of Love. 1974: Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits. 1975: Welcome to My Nightmare. 1976: Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. 1977: Lace and Whiskey * The Alice Cooper Show. 1978: From the Inside. 1980: Flush the Fashion. 1981: Special Forces. 1982: Zipper Catches Skin. 1983: Dada. 1986: Constrictor. 1987: Raise Your Fist and Yell. 1989: Trash. 1991: Hey Stoopid. 1994 : The Last Temptation. 1996: A Fistful of Alice (LIVE). ?: Brutal Planet. 2001: Mascara and Monsters (Best of CD) * Billion Dollar Babies Reissue (Original songs plus live disc) * Dragontown. 2004: Eyes of Alice Cooper.
The first two Alice Cooper albums - Pretties for You and Easy Action - were struggling attempts to execute an unusual musical and performance style. The intentions were vague, and the band set themselves up as a motley crew with a seedy band image who couldn't quite deliver a clear pop agenda. The results were strained and some of the critical attacks that followed seem fair enough considering the shallow results (Lester Bangs in a review of Pretties for You in Rolling Stone July, 1979, would call them "dispensable," citing a lack of "authentic passion or conviction"). "Laughing at Me," from the latter album, has a few short lines:
If it's laughing you need
Then it's laughing indeed
And it's laughing at me
Yes it's laughing at me
So I started to end
The beginning to end
Then I ended the end
Yes, I ended the end
And it's laughing
It's laughing at me.
The song typified a lack of focus for
the original Alice Cooper band at this early stage. Knowing what
we know now, hindsight uncovers a few suggestions of better,
later Cooper outings. "Mr. & Misdemeanor" zeroes in
on that vivid Cooperian mesh of ho-hum events and violent
undercurrents with a mixture of pastoral poetry and crime:
"Mister and
Misdemeanor
Middle of the roaders
Set beside the ocean
Landscapes alive agoshin'
Who put all of this in motion
Lucky Luciano
Kenneth Pasarelli
You take the modern mosquito
To every big city
I sit beside Misdemeanor
Here's new pretties for you.
Nasty Misdemeanor
Kickin' in the windows
Parked beside the ocean
Landscapes alive agoshin'
Who put all of this is motion.
There is rough poetry in Cooper's lyrics and a crafty knack for story-telling characterization. From "Shoe Salesmen" (again, from Easy Action):
"I know a shoe
salesman
He's an acquaintance of mine
One day he showed me some
Marks in a line on his arm
I did not know what to say
'Do you think those
freckles will stay?'
This is not generic songwriting. Cooper, the man, has a gifted sensibility. He dwells beneath the damp rotted blanket and exposes the grimy underside of life. Elsewhere on Easy Action - on "Lay Down & Die, Goodbye" - Alice Cooper (the band) can't quite pull-off what would on the next album become a loony tunes playing style full of busy guitar and bass riffs running around in counter-currents, and a conceptual rhythmic thrust towards cinematic, show tune, and comic book fun and games.
One indication of Cooper's unwelcome originality at the time can be found in some asides from Easy Action - a digression on "Beautiful Flyaway" which chides Tom Smothers (and I suppose the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) for a neo-prudish censoring of the band. A hippie stultification had set in at least marginally by the end of the seventies, and outrageousness made Alice Cooper seem like wanna-be posers. Somewhat surprisingly, the next three Cooper releases have remained classics. Love it to Death, Killer and School's Out are as colorful and witty as many of the best pop albums from the era. Under-written vagaries and amateurish band theatrics vanished. Cooper's heart of pulp would explode into Technicolor canvases of crime and punishment. The tendency to push gothic boundaries and sexual extremes aligned the band with the film makers and novelists of the day - Martin Scorcese, David Cronenberg, Robert Altman, Philip Roth, Joseph Heller. The tendency of art to always exist in part at the very extreme of what is commonly acceptable was mirrored in Cooper's whorey starlets, mad killers, sacrilegious mutterings, doll-screwing necrophilia and self-destructive hysteria - most of it with an vivid lower middle-class thrust.
On this trio of albums, the future First Amendment defender sinks his teeth into flights of kooky fantasy parodies ("Halo of Flies" with it's morally confused and extremely paranoid James Bondish figure; the hero of "The Ballad of Dwight Fry" and his madness and almost equally repulsive desire to be normal); and soul dead realism ("Dead Babies," "Eighteen" and "Public Animal # 9"). The band has become a glorious pastiche of cliche-twisting, song-styling inventiveness. Songs concepts are so dense they become as sharp as a picture in a 3-D Viewfinder. There is a joyous relish in the way Cooper sings his lyrics, and the early craftsmanship would eventually become solid tune-smithery. Many critics seemed to get confused by the theatrics, so it's important to point out Cooper's control and ultimate mastery. Disgust, conflict, mild compassion and rare retribution co-exist in Cooper's song dramas. Call it the allure of disease. The faint heart of life ticking in the most desperate situations. The not-so-innocent and the thankfully dead. There may not be a pop writer who handles this better than Cooper. Sometimes lost in the canny emotion is a deft hand. "Long Way to Go" is almost a turgid morality speech:
"What's keeping
us apart isn't selfishness
What's holding us together isn't love
Listen to the man who's been
Touched all his life
Yes he's the one they call the fool
Where is the savior of
the sidewalk life
And the road that takes us to the crusades
I've seen the shadows
Moving in my sleep
Leading the blind poet to his grave
This is a rather dry Cooper subtext, but the thrust remains in the most extreme songs. Take a look at "Dead Babies:" this is ostensibly repugnant subject matter. The target is clearly the adults in the tale, but what gives "Dead Babies" some heartfelt emotion is the chiding, gleeful "Goodbye little Betty" choruses that make the emotion more durable, complex and sneakily resonant than say, Pat Benetar's "Hell is For Children," which is devoid of real drama; and of course doesn't give song time to the emotions of both sides - the victim and the victimizer.
Also present on these three albums is the more pungent style of rock and roll that, in later years, would reignite Cooper's inspiration. "Is it My Body," "Caught in a Dream," "I'm Eighteen," "Under My Wheels," "You Drive Me Nervous," "Killer," "School's Out," "Public Animal # 9" and "Billion Dollar Babies" are rock and roll classics imbued with humor, empathy and creepy emotion.
By the time Muscle of Love rolled around, the original outfit was crashing hard. Bob Greene's book Billion Dollar Babies is a great recounting of the chaotic Muscle of Love tour and makes the coming break-up seem inevitable. The album itself is a bore, the style moving towards a more traditional settled rock sound.
The trio of albums in 1975-1977 that set up Alice's post band career - Welcome to My Nightmare, Goes to Hell and Lace and Whiskey - find the singer/songwriter settling into a studio atmosphere with mixed results. Although the albums aren't very good, there are some interesting Cooper stylistic traits that show up consistently and which will eventually add depth to his work. Some of these songs work as "qualifiers" - sort of messages sent to let you in on the fact that this is just a movie, not the real deal. The title track to Nightmare casts Cooper's image as obviously theatrical: "Welcome to my nightmare/I think you're going to like it; We sweat and laugh and scream here, 'cause life is just a dream here." Even more to the point is the hit single "Only Women Bleed" which sets female plight against male violence and Cooper's ability to dodge accusations of misogyny is there for anybody who wants to take a close look. Alice Cooper's balance is missed by many of the sloppy, hair-trigger music reviewers who really don't want to take his song craft seriously. (Unfortunately, "Only Women Bleed" is way too long as performed on the album, and the bridge is an ugly strain - though the text remains righteous).
Goes to Hell reads more like a libretto than a strong set of song lyrics. Cooper was obviously working on a new story-line to fit comfortably alongside his classic songs within his lucrative stage show. The whole album is a qualifier of sorts. Cooper's parleying of not-to-good against evil has a sophisticated sense of real fear, sin and lost hope. There a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of how the devil makes kids dance: "We're all slaves when we hear that sound; We're hypnotized by savage lust; We got strings tied to our soul." As a rock opera, it boasts a pretty precise storyline. "I Never Cry," a ballad about misplaced bravado works better than "Only Women Bleed" and would become part of a growing number of sensitive Cooper ballads that showcase careful characterization in believable tales of turbulent emotion. Some of the songs from this era were just waiting for better execution - "Go to Hell," "Guilty," "Wake Me Gently," "Department of Youth" and "Welcome to My Nightmare" would be performed better on later live versions. A few other songs from this era reach classic status. Bob Ezrin is still the producer and keyboard player; the Alice Cooper band has become the guitar duo Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner with various supporting musicians. A version of this ensemble would knock of a great live The Alice Cooper Show which has lasting firepower. Another perk that consistently plays in his favor: Cooper is too idiosyncratic a performer to totally break from his past, and to a certain extent he is self-protected from the disastrous changes in style/thrust that other performers walk into stupidly. His roots are too overwhelmingly defined to shake (which he may have regretted at times) - but this has been a career-saving blessing. At this point in his career Cooper possibly doesn't realize this, and he is off in Hollywood trying to become a movie star, playing golf with an ex-president, and his music may have become a sideline of sorts. How being a good actor could possibly compare to being a good songwriter, somebody else will have to explain. But unfaithfulness is the way many artists lose their muse, and the music from this period didn't bode well.
Alice Cooper enters a fallow period here at first continuing with the Bob Ezrin produced Steve Hunter/Dick Wagner guitar axis in front of Allan Schwartzberg (drums) and Tony Levin (bass). At the end of the seventies this degenerates somewhat into a host of session players devolving finally into a "new wave" album (Flush the Fashion) which pandered to the current pop marketplace eith songs like "Clones," "Nuclear Infected" and "Model Citizen." Given Cooper's easy action with song lyrics and arrangments - the cover tunes are a shock and disappointment. Ezrin soon disappears - but no lose or gain is noted. Not really a slide is noticed so much as is a mediocre playing field. An attempt in made on 1983's Dada to reignite a spark with Dick Wagner and Bob Ezrin back on board. The tender is damp though and no fire is started. From 1976 to 1983 Cooper was showing the same tendency towards decline that so many other artists show. Some classics rolled into the Cooper canon: "Always Chasing Rainbows," "I Never Cry," "Pain," "Dance Yourself to Death," "Fresh Blood" and "Pass the Gun Around" are contenders. Not enough to make you notice and Dada ends Cooper's recording career for a few years.
In 1986, Cooper returns with Kane Roberts (guitar), Kip Winger and David Kisselbach (bass), David Rosenberg (drums) and Paul Delph (keyboards). The album is Constrictor. And it sucks. There is a big hair rock and roll turn here, with shredding guitars and relentless obnoxiousness, even for Cooper. Cooper is dwarfed by the stylistic emptiness. The band is a perfect example of what Alice Cooper shouldn't have to stoop to, and at this point it would all make perfect sense if it wasn't for what happens next.
*******************************
Call this the Second Act or Part Two or The Sequel; Cooper's Redemption, the Return or the Muse, or How Can We Miss You if You Won't Go Away, etc. Again it's Kane Roberts and Kip Winger (who we just said sucked), with Ken Mary (drums) and Paul Horowitz (bass). It's 1987 and Cooper puts it all together. Raise Your Fist and Yell contains 10 solid songs, most revolving around the use and abuse of power. The band pushes Cooper into a more focused hard rock box. The sharp edges, passionate guitars, crunching rhythms and riffs replace lax attempts at theatre and the merely "scary" gothic effects of songs past. Cooper figures out exactly what it is he's been trying to say. There is a move from "Boo" to "Yikes, what's this." America's underbelly is rancid. The true crime is lurid, unflinching. The supercharged people caught up in the action are all too real. Even the Devil finally becomes more than a shadowy participant who looks at Cooper's terrain and "Studies the world with hungry eyes." The devil's metaphorical presence is felt everywhere. "Step on You" is a great example of how Cooper's art works. The listener's catharsis is pitched in two different directions: it could be that of a voyeur listening to an evil person as he gleefully stomps on his adversaries, or perhaps there is voyeuristic participation in a more reasonable person's use of power to destroy enemies. Cooper's art is strong enough to suck you into such harshly conflicted emotions and makes you want to participate in the wild escapades. The catharsis can be uplifting. There are positive result is in observing lives more screwed up than your own. And there is the sheer sport of transcendent participation. Cooper's circus sideshow is for ages. "Time to Kill" depicts a convict's brooding desire to be released and continue destroying - revenge is the only mental power he can manage, the only thing that keeps him going, and it rocks. "Not that Kind of Love" is the power over another sexually, to abuse and leave stranded with no remorse. "Freedom" and "Radio Back" show the power of rebellion for good, and the power of rebellion fueled by misguided intentions. (Step into Cooper's world and the crap rains down on you, but the rollercoaster rides just lasts 3 minutes, 30 seconds and you wake up clean, hopefully. Cooper shifts back into serial killer mode for "Chop, Chop, Chop" and "Gail." But what's different here is that Cooper brings existential philosophy to the killer thing, giving us a view from multiple angles: "The bugs serve time in her skeletal jail: I wonder how the bugs remember Gail. What a lovely young girl everybody would say. A dog dug up a bone and wagged its tail: I wonder how the dog remembers Gail. The bugs serve time in her skeletal jail: I wonder how I'll remember Gail."
Raise Your Fist and Yell is a minor classic, and the effect is sustained with Trash, which soon followed. Desmond Child does a great job co-writing and producing. Alice Cooper consolidates his new found articulation of style around a hell-bent neo-rock assault with a still more powerful sonic boom. That Trash is a guest-artist extravaganza featuring Bon Jovi, Steve Tyler, and others, only reinforces the idea of Cooper as a master of form considering how good the record is. There's poetry of emotion all over the place, in "let's build a house of fire, not one of wood and stone;" in "your lips, venomous poison running through my veins;" in "anybody's dream can fall apart, anybody's mask can break;" in "try to walk away when I see the time I wasted, starving at a feast and all this wine I've never tasted, on my lips your memory has been stained;" in "I've got a muscle I can flex, it'll fog your little specs, till you think your going blind." Cooper's deft literacy never gets in the way of the rock and roll. This album explodes. A veneer of excessiveness is where Cooper finds moral ferver. This is territory where singer-songwriters, folkies, retro-rockers, blues artists, uplifting working class rockers, spiritual rockers, never go. Copper's work from 1987 to 2004 is consistently compelling.
After Trash, Cooper never looked back. Things click, he's got the knack, though band members tend to morph, they stick around long enough to participate in classic songs and classic live shows. "The Last Temptation," with a storyline co-conceived by Neil Gaiman, has a carnival sideshow atmosphere and a pretty successful story about falling and redemption and shows that even Cooper's longer efforts are now under control. Although we still havn't heard Brutal Planet, both Dragontown and Eyes of Alice Cooper are masterworks. Not only are they thoughtful and deep ruminations on sex, drugs, rock and roll and much, much more, but Cooper seems to be working at a level only a very few artists can boast of. Often written off as an over-the-top showman, Cooper is an inspired and inspiring observer of the human condition. His moral fervor is pitched hotter than most. Placid he is not. This rock and roll fire burns with the stench of real pain, suffering, stink and, occasionally, remorse.
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