I heard an old Alice Cooper song on the radio today, I Love the Dead (may be title, might just be the hook) and it reminded me how frustrated I used to be with him. He had a smoking hot band with a terrific funky groove to it but because of all the necrophilia and chaos and whatnot it just wasn’t any use for “mood music”. Can’t really get sexy to his lyrics, but the music, hokey smokes, made me feel all warm and squishy.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Alice, and wish I’d gotten to see a live show when he used to do the big productions. It’s just the dichotomy of “man this would be a great bedroom song if he wasn’t talking about dead people right now”.
I think classic Alice (defined as the period from Love It to Death [1971] through Billion Dollar Babies [1973]) had some great lyrics. Just had “Killer” come up on my iPod the other day: “You’re a notch and I’m a legend/You’re at peace and I must hide.” Cool. “I Love the Dead” and “Dead Babies” were both end-of-album shockers, designed to reinforce the Grand Guignol aspect of the Alice Cooper image, and both fit the bill a little too well. (I think the way both songs end sonically–a sickening orgasmic shudder and a terrifying death noise, respectively–is worse than the actual lyrics!)
Alice still puts on a fantastic live show. We see him just about every year. It’s not quite as big a production as it was in the '70s, but he still has a lot of cool stuff–the guillotine and other props are still used.
Oh c’mon… you mean you can’t make sexy time with Only Women Bleed? As one of the board’s resident Alice fanatics, I can promise you there’s some really killer (heh) stuff in his classic lyrics that’ll do the trick, especially if you go one album past Biffy’s timeline to Muscle of Love. Not quite Barry White, but certainly enough to get lots of his female fans all hot ‘n’ bothered.
Also, as batsto suggests, even if you missed him back in the day, his concerts now are da bomb. Certainly this tour would do the trick; there’s supposed to be more than one death in his future. Can’t wait!!
I was a huge fan, I was about 14 when he was at his peak. *Love It To Death *through *Billion Dollar Babies *was the “golden age” of Alice in my opinion too. BDB tour was one of the first concerts I went to.
I’m a little disappointed when I hear him interviewed now, not really very Alice-y.
*“If I live to be 97, she’ll still be waitin’ in refrigerator heaven” *
Come around midnight
We’ll be crawlin’on the floor
Burnin’with the fever
And yellin’out for more
But don’t you write it in your diary, baby
Don’t blab it on the phone
Cuz if your mom and dad find out
They’ll skin me to the bone
The only songs by him that I know are things have been in regular rotation since the mid-90’s so that’s, what, 5 or 6 songs, but I do like listening to him getting interviewed, he has a story for EVERYTHING. OTOH, I can’t stand Nights With Alice. I mean, I like the music he picks out, but I can’t stand listening to him talk.
Man, I must’ve seen him the year he totally sucked live. Seemed like a 45 minute show, cheap theatrics. Vinny Vincent opened IIRC, so early to mid 80s and obviously well past the form I’d heard so much about.
I concur. After Babies, the real Alice Cooper moved to Scorpios Island, and had some blatant imposter make records under his name.
Wasn’t the song you quoted “Desperado” howsomever? It was one of the best that he made, and most of his songs during the golden years were world class.
When “Alice Cooper goes to Hell” came out, I think in 1975, a friend of mine said “Hasn’t he been doing that for his last three albums?”
the answer, of course, was yes, but the witticism was funny.
I always picture him in golf pants now. The only time I saw him live was a couple years ago at some outdoor music festival with minimal production, short set - 30 min? It wasn’t wonderful but cripes, the guy’s pretty old now and so am I. I wish I had made more of an effort to see him one or two decades ago. The albums hold up though.
Vincent Price? Nah, he went RC and we–I mean THEY-- LOVES they (us) the supernatural crap. It’s why normal Protestants have trouble going back to the Mother Church. Supernatural stops being their thing early on, though I still sneak a Hail Mary when an ambulance passes.
Oh, you mean Vincent Furnier? He’s what I, in an earlier incarnation. would term a Holy Roller. Okay, to be fair, that [del]dismissal[/del] description still holds for unenlightened souls.
Okay, I’d say something about how easy liberal/conservative religious discrimination can be, but I’d like to point to the lyrics of the early Black Sabbath which, despite the band name, are, theologically, fairly conservative and Non-Conformist in nature. Vince was a cartoon, and the only people he drew to The Dark Side were morons, and Hell could have them.
*One thing I miss is Cold Ethel and her skeleton kiss
One thing, no lie, Ethel’s frigid as an eskimo pie
We met last night making love by the refrigerator light
She’s cool in bed, well she ought to be 'cuz Ethel’s dead
Ethel, Ethel, let me squueze you in my arms
Ethl, Ethel, come and freeze me with your charms*
He used to have a sense of humor back in the day. Too bad his brain got eaten by all that born again crap.
and so am I. I wish I had made more of an effort to see him one or two decades ago. The albums hold up though.