Beyond the 130 - Alice Cooper Band

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Re: Beyond the 130 - Alice Cooper Band

Postby The Slider » 28 Nov 2021, 20:39

https://eu.azcentral.com/story/entertai ... 764997002/

'It was a perfect creative machine': An oral history of Alice Cooper's 'Killer' at 50
ED MASLEY | Arizona Republic

Alice Cooper and his bandmates had been working toward the mainstream breakthrough they enjoyed with "I'm Eighteen," the hit single that drove the success of their third album "Love It to Death," through some pretty lean years.

As Neal Smith, their drummer, recalls, "The early days in Topanga Canyon, we were freaking starving. We barely had money for beer. And believe me, if it came down to beer or food, then beer would win."

Now they'd finally tasted success — a Top 40 album and single, better gigs, a little more beer money.

"A lot of people have hit albums," Cooper says.

The trick is what you do with that momentum on the follow-through.

"Can you hit it out of the park with that one?" Cooper asks.

The answer — a resounding yes — arrived a little less than nine months later, on Nov. 27, 1971.

"Killer" more than lived up to the promise of their previous release.

An artful eight-song master class in commanding the spotlight, it offset the full-throttle rock 'n' roll swagger of tracks as contagious as "Under My Wheels" with darker, more experimental touches and an epic progressive rock suite designed to prove that they could play their instruments much better than some tin-eared critics had suggested.

If the singles didn't chart as high as "I'm Eighteen," that hardly seemed to matter.

"Killer" peaked at No. 21 in Billboard — a new career high for the singer and the band that shared his name.

In Rolling Stone, Lester Bangs praised the album's "absurd and outrageous collages of idiomatic borrowings combined with a distinctly teen-age sense of the morbid."

Johnny Rotten, who auditioned for the Sex Pistols miming along to a jukebox playing "I'm Eighteen," would go on to herald "Killer" as "the best rock album ever made."

To this day, it's thought of in some circles as their finest hour.

"'Killer,' for some reason, was the critics' favorite," Cooper says.

The road to "Killer" started in the Cortez High School cafetorium in Phoenix, where in 1964, the singer made his first onstage appearance with the Earwigs, singing Beatles parodies alongside future bassist Dennis Dunaway and guitarist Glen Buxton.

Two years later, by which point the Earwigs had become the Spiders and recruited North High's Michael Bruce to play guitar, they charted a regional hit with the primal garage rock of "Don't Blow Your Mind."

They'd moved to California and become the Nazz by 1967, when Smith joined, completing the lineup a year before one final name change set the stage for Alice Cooper to release a debut called "Pretties for You" on Frank Zappa's Straight Records.

This is the story of how they got to "Killer," told by Cooper and the other three surviving members of the Alice Cooper group (Buxton died in 1997), manager Shep Gordon and the man they like to think of as their personal George Martin, producer Bob Ezrin.

Cooper: People listened to "Love it to Death" and they said, "Oh, my gosh, Alice Cooper's got a sound now." "Killer" took the sound to the next step. Like it should. Every band should get better and better and better.

Gordon: We moved from watching the world to being the center of the world. It was all coming so fast. We did two albums that year, plus maybe 150 dates. So it was pretty much a blur. But it was a great blur. The dream was coming true.

Cooper: People loved that we actually colored outside the lines.

Ezrin: There wasn't a whole hell of a lot of time to have a special game plan or to have thought about the implications of "Love it to Death." In fact, "Love it to Death" was really just taking off around the time when we had to start writing.

Cooper: You were doing albums as quickly as you could, because Bowie was doing two a year. So was T. Rex. All the bands you were competing with were doing two albums a year. And you'd better keep up.

Ezrin: We really became Alice Cooper on "Love it to Death." So I'd say the prevailing emotion was one of panic. The band was out playing, supporting the record. And the next day, figuratively speaking, we were expected to come up with a new album.

Cooper: You'd write an album, go in the studio, record it, then go out on the road and promote it. While you're on the road, you're writing songs for the next album.

Ezrin: We had used all the material, all the stuff that had been in the demos they'd been stockpiling. It was invent fast, finish fast and get it out fast. We were on a roll and we wanted to keep the roll going.

Dunaway: "You Drive Me Nervous" had been kicking around a while. We couldn't get the right groove. So we would shelve it. Bob finally said, "I was standing outside the rehearsal room listening, and I know what it is. Neal, straighten the beat out." All of a sudden, it took off.

Bruce: When we finally got the farm in Pontiac, Michigan, we had that horse paddock out back, so we could rehearse 24/7. We took full advantage of that.

Dunaway: "Killer" was written in the same rehearsal room as "Love it to Death." And that was a big difference from our first two albums. When we would come home, man, we'd spend sometimes 10-hour days in there working out songs.

'The party that never ended': An oral history of Alice Cooper's 'Love it to Death'

Smith: Ideas were just coming right and left from Glen and Dennis, Michael, Alice and myself. Being creative was not one of our problems. Ever.

Cooper: We would put it together pretty quickly on a crappy little tape recorder. And Bob would literally hear what the hook was. Pretty soon that song was ready to go.

Smith: It was a challenge for us to try to have an album that was better than "Love it to Death." But we didn't really think about that. We just wanted the musicianship to be fantastic and do something a little bit different.

Dunaway: I would dream about music. And after we rehearsed, we'd go up to the house and end up in Michael Bruce's room with acoustic guitars.

"Under My Wheels" was released in advance on the album. The second single, "Be My Lover" features the iconic line, "She asked why the singer's name was Alice/ I said, 'Listen baby, you really wouldn't understand.'"

Bruce: Dennis and I were crouched under this couch that was turned on its side to have some privacy, trying to write "Under My Wheels." I remember Dennis said he had a song. I said, "Well, play a little for me." He goes (singing), "The telephone is ringin'...."

Dunaway: The guys in the band would say, "I can tell Dennis wrote this song. It has a modulation in it." That was one of my things I tried to force into every friggin' song.

Cooper: The idea back then was you had to have at least two singles. Three minutes. Catchy. Then, you did the album tracks.

Dunaway: "Be My Lover" came in late, which of course is a great song. So it had to be on the album, but it upset the concept of every song being about a killer. Although some might stretch the definition and say, "This was a killer girl that walked into the room."

Ezrin: Once we'd done "Under My Wheels," I sort of knew that I had a good record, that I was covered. When 'Be My Lover' came in, there was no question in my head.

Dunaway: Michael was on a flight, sitting next to an older lady, and she's talking to him about "What do you do?" He says, "Oh, we have a band called Alice Cooper." She says, "Why is the singer's name Alice?" He said, 'You wouldn't understand.'

Cooper: Bob never let us do filler. He said "If we put this on the album, it's got to be as good as what we think the single is." So that was the beginning of us really learning how to write for radio and at the same time not lose Alice Cooper.

Ezrin: "Halo of Flies" was really a kind of pivotal moment for us.

Cooper: A review said, "Well, they're really good at these three-minute, four-minute singles, but that's about all they can do." We kind of looked at that and went, "Oh, you don't think we can do prog?" So we wrote "Halo of Flies." Just to prove that we could.

Dunaway: Alice is being kind to the reviewers. It was more like "These guys are using theatrics as a crutch."

Ezrin: Everybody said they couldn't play. The fact is they were all accomplished players in their own lane. What this album did was it let us expand the width of those lanes.

Cooper: I said, "Let's just stretch it out." Let's do a seven- or eight-minute piece that has 22 changes in it.

Dunaway: We had all these germs of ideas just kicking around, and we decided, "OK, let's just make a medley of the best of all these germs."

Ezrin: It was complicated but it was great. And it was fun to do.

Dunaway: We were all visiting Phoenix and we had a giant chalkboard in this empty warehouse we were using. So we named the parts and wrote them on this chalkboard. If that didn't work, we'd erase it and move the parts around and try it that way.

Ezrin: We rehearsed that thing for days to get all the pieces to fit and when we finally were able to get all the way through it from top to bottom, we looked at each other and gave ourselves a cheer.

A horn part on 'Under My Wheels?!'
Dunaway: With the success of "I'm Eighteen," walking into the same studio for "Killer," we were all feeling our oats across the board. We had gotten a lot of gigs. And we were tight because of that. It was a whole different ballgame.

Cooper: We were kinda rip and tear. Bob was the one that would take that and shape it to the point where as soon as you heard it, you went, "Oh yeah!"

Ezrin: There was some resistance from the band to the idea of putting sweetening on anything. But then once they heard it, they liked it.

ooper: We were still trying to be the Yardbirds. Pure guitar-rock guys.

Ezrin: "Desperado" wouldn't have been "Desperado" without the string parts. And "Under My Wheels," there was something very rock 'n' roll added by having the horns.

Cooper: The very first time we heard him say, "Let's put horns on 'Under My Wheels,'" we all kind of went "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't use horns."

Dunaway: The bare track was so rock 'n' roll. And it had so much energy. I'm like, "It doesn't need horns. In my opinion, you're just putting horns on it because the Doors are doing that."

Ezrin: I'm thrilled and delighted that they would indulge me in that way. I kind of went to school during that album on writing for non-rock instruments, although I had studied so I had some knowledge. I feel like I came of age on "Killer."

Cooper: We didn't want to be a horn band. We didn't want to be a keyboard band. But when we heard the record, we'd have to look at each other and go, "OK, we were wrong."

Dunaway: When we were in Chicago, recording the album, Rick Derringer called and said, "Hey, I'm in town." We said, "C'mon down, man. And bring your guitar." He walked in while we were getting ready to track Glen's guitar break on "Under My Wheels."

Smith: Bob, I guess, talked to Glen, because Glen would normally play the guitar solo, which he did live. But he was cool with it.

Dunaway: Rick was our buddy, you know? And when our friends were in the studio, we were respectful that they were there. We didn't want them to just come down and watch us work, you know?

Enriching the palette with 'Desperado'
Ezrin: "Desperado" opened up a whole new world for me in terms of my conception of what Alice Cooper was and could be. This was different. This was deep, really looking inside oneself and also playing a little bit with the dark side of the personality.

Smith: Theatrically, I love it. Instrumentally, I love it. I know some people like 100% pure rock 'n' roll, but with Bob's background and ability to add a little bit of sweetening and orchestration to take a song to another dimension, with our theatrical goals that we had? It fit perfectly.

Ezrin: "Desperado," for me, enriched the palette for the future. It felt real. And that felt dangerous.

Cooper: On those kind of theatrical, creepy Alice Cooper things, Bob would sit down on piano and write those really haunting parts that turned it into something really odd. We would never have thought about putting a cello or an oboe in a song. And yet, it all seemed to fit.

Smith: Songs like "Killer" and "Desperado," "Halo of Flies," that was a whole new big theatrical and musical direction for us.

Dunaway: We always thought in theatrical concepts. "Dead Babies" was a vehicle for the Alice character. "Killer" was a vehicle for the Alice character.

Smith: When we came up with the Alice Cooper name, that was a clean slate. We could make that painting with every brushstroke. Album after album, song after song, it just kept coming more in focus.

Gordon: The road was going really well. People were coming to the shows, enjoying them. Reviews were great. We were also getting what we wanted, which was getting banned in a lot of cities. Banning always meant great success for Alice.

Bruce: I remember we started getting grief over the song "Dead Babies." We would tell people the name of the song. They'd go "Dead Babies!?" So we'd say, "Oh, it's really about child abuse and neglectful parents."

Dunaway: Part of my argument for, "Hey, we've gotta do this song 'Dead Babies'" is that we can chop up baby dolls and it'll be a great theatrical thing, which it was. It was one of the highlights of the show.

Smith: There has to be a reason for the execution. That's just old-school movie-making. You don't just kill someone or rob a bank and walk away and that's the end of the movie. You paid a price for being a bad boy or girl.

That time the gallows didn't work
The Warner Bros. prop department built two scaled-down versions of the gallows they used in movies for the "Killer" tour, replacing the electric chair they had been using.

Smith: "Desperado" sort of opened the doors for us to try something new. And being from Arizona and the Wild Wild West, we loved Westerns as much as horror movies. So we came up with the idea of the gallows for the tour. It was the next step on our merry way.

Bruce: I remember at one of the shows, Glen pulled the trap doors on the gallows and Alice didn't fall.

Smith: It was a 'Spinal Tap' moment if there ever was one. Alice was trying to jump up and down to break the damn thing so he'd fall through. But believe me, what did Alice weigh — 120 pounds? He wasn't about to do it. But 99.9% of the time, it worked perfectly and it was a great show.

'That whole album was pure Alice'
Bruce: At first we were picturing something really complicated for the cover, like a kid throwing newspapers out of a truck and it says 'Killer convicted' on the cover. Then when we went to New York and did the photoshoot, we took Kachina, Neal's snake.

Smith: Out of the hundreds of pictures that were taken, and there were a lot of very cool ones, there was one shot where she had her tongue out. When her tongue comes out, it's like lightning. It's a split second. I said, "That's the album cover right there." It was absolutely perfect.

Cooper: That whole album was pure Alice. It captured what kind of a rock band we wanted to be.

Smith: Everybody has their own personalities, strong personalities. But it was always a true democracy. Nothing would be done unless everybody agreed. So it was a perfect creative machine.

Bruce: The thing that impresses me is it's still pretty wonderful. The sound really holds up well over 50 years.

Cooper: Johnny Rotten said "Killer" was the greatest rock album ever made. We were sitting there going, "Yeah, it's a great record. It's gonna get better." But for people to classify that as the best rock album they had ever heard, it's nice to hear that.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.
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Re: Beyond the 130 - Alice Cooper Band

Postby Charlie O. » 29 Nov 2021, 05:12

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Re: Beyond the 130 - Alice Cooper Band

Postby Neige » 29 Nov 2021, 07:04

Yeah, cheers John, that was a great read.
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Re: Beyond the 130 - Alice Cooper Band

Postby The Slider » 29 Nov 2021, 07:44

Nicely
:)
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