Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

Chillin' is my business, and business is lousy! However, I cannot let the season pass without a little celebration, despite many other irons in the fire. And, since all this blog is good for anymore is lists of stuff I like, what will almost certainly be my last post as an unmarried man shall also serve as our annual Halloween hootenanny.

Last winter, I envisioned this to be an insightful, in-depth salute to America's greatest horror rock icon, something equaling my "Weird Al" homage in depth and scope. Instead, you get this.

Alice Cooper was one of my early obsessions when I first delved into the heavier end of rock, and of course my initial attraction was to his eye-blackened, blood-spattered, snake-brandishing, doll-chopping image. I soon came to understand that although the dude simulates getting killed on stage at every concert, only a fistful of Alice's songs are actually creepy and/or menacing. Alice Cooper the band, recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, started life as an acid-soaked garage prog act, and in their prime were only somewhat harsher than The Rolling Stones or The Doors, both obvious influences (and in the latter's case, compatriots). Alice Cooper the singer, born Vincent Furnier, went solo in the mid-'70s and took the theatricality with him, not only in his concerts but also as a TV personality and, most perversely, a sensitive AM radio balladeer. Alice was one hell of a musical chameleon until he settled on commercial metal in the late '80s, which was around the time I got into him.

I have heard every Alice Cooper album except his brand new one, and I'm sure I'll get around to that one soon. Without question, I prefer his first couple of decades of material to the stuff he's been hawking since "Poison." I ain't gonna trash the guy for trying to stay relevant (at least he cares enough to try), and he still puts on a great live show, at least as of a couple of years ago. Still, the latter-day records I've liked the best are the ones that consciously try to evoke the early years.

Therefore, I'm gonna take you on a tour of the most Halloween-y moments of the first half of Alice Cooper's career. We're gonna skip a few albums, and we're gonna linger on some more than others. I hope you enjoy.

1. "Refrigerator Heaven" (Easy Action, 1968) - Here's an accessible slice of the early Alice Cooper, in all their freaky psychedelic glory. This ditty from their second album is narrated by a man who is having himself cryogenically frozen until they find a cure for his cancer. Not pure Halloween horror, but it's kinda morbid, and it starts with some screams. The song was later referenced in Alice's solo classic "Cold Ethyl"... more on that in a bit.

2. "Black Juju" (Love It to Death, 1971) - Now, these sorts of spooky acidhead shenanigans probably scared the crap out of '70s parents. From what is considered by many to be the first "real" AC album, "Juju" was surely made for live performance. Half meandering hippie jam, half haunted house soundtrack, the voodoo drums and funeral organ drones are the perfect backdrop for Alice's howl.

3. "Ballad of Dwight Fry" (Love it to Death) - The title of this ode to mental breakdown is a tribute to the actor Dwight Frye, who played Renfield in Tod Browning's "Dracula" and Fritz in James Whale's "Frankenstein." In a true display of method acting, movie buff Alice recorded the "I gotta get out of here" section while trapped under a pile of folding chairs. In concert, he usually does it wearing a straitjacket.

4. "Dead Babies" (Killer, 1971) - I think this is the first really notorious Alice Cooper song. The lyrics describe a young child who, left to her own devices by neglectful parents, dies after devouring a bottle of pills. Of course, only stupid parents become agitated when a man who performs with a snake wrapped around his neck accuses them of being irresponsible. Cool facts: this album came out only ten months after its immediate predecessor, and both were recorded in Chicago.

5. "Luney Tune" (School's Out, 1972) - Best known for its overplayed title track and ingenious original packaging, School's Out contains a lot of teenage drama, but not a whole lot of darkness. This portrait of paranoid confusion is the closest it gets. I mean, the protagonist kills himself at the end of the song. Otherwise, fans of "West Side Story" might get a kick out of the album's copious references, which prove that these dudes were born entertainers, macabre or not.

6. "I Love the Dead" (Billion Dollar Babies, 1973) - The last great record by the AC group ends with this curious power ballad which, like "Blue Turk" before it and "Cold Ethyl" after it, details the joys of necrophilia. This is the most blatant (and funniest!) of the bunch, with no way to misinterpret its corpse-banging lyrics. I can report that it's a poor karaoke choice, as I sang it a number of years ago, forgetting that after the two marvelous verses, it's mostly repetition of the title.

7. "The Black Widow" (Welcome to My Nightmare, 1975) - The first Alice Cooper solo album came out the year I was born. It's one of his few albums with any sustained "horror" theme, although that doesn't extend throughout. I did a little editing on this track (which, in its lovely sing-song way, extols the praises of a dictator spider), as the CD is sequenced so the Vincent Price intro is at the end of the previous song.

8. "Years Ago" (Welcome to My Nightmare) - This and the following two tracks are the main attraction of the Nightmare album, a mini-opera introducing the troubled character of Steven, who still pops up in Alice's songs from time to time. In this original incarnation, he is either a damaged child or a developmentally halted adult, or maybe both. The joyless carnival accompaniment makes this one of the album's creepiest segments.

9. "Steven" (Welcome to My Nightmare) - Continuing from "Years Ago," the man-child Steven wrestles with accepting an apparent death. The piano part is reminiscent of Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" (popularized by "The Exorcist"), while the hard rock outburst of the chorus crushes in context, its crunch effectively contrasting the lullaby verses.

10. "The Awakening" (Welcome to My Nightmare) - The trilogy closes with this brief coda, wherein Steven wakes up to a missing wife and bloody hands. My take on the whole Nightmare/Steven saga is that he has a split personality and, while he believed he was dreaming, actually killed his real-life wife. To me, this morbid little saga is so memorable because of the ambiguity.

11. "Go to Hell" (Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, 1976) - Here's another one that's not explicitly Halloween-y, but does show off the man's wicked side. The lyrics are sung from the perspective of Alice Cooper haters, who list off the stuff he does that they don't like and thereby condemn him to eternal torment. My perfunctory research has revealed that the gift theoretically mailed to Aunt Jane is a "leper," not a "leopard," sadly ruining my longtime mental image.

12. "Inmates (We're All Crazy)" (From the Inside, 1978) - Inspired by a stint in an asylum to treat his then-raging alcoholism, From the Inside probably isn't most Alice Cooper fans' favorite album, but it's mine, kicking off a string of much-hated, poorly selling recordings that I personally treasure. It's the pinnacle of his late '70s diversity, a weird mix of funky disco-era rock, ultra-depressing AM radio ballads and treacly Broadway bombast. A now-famous adaptation was released by Marvel Comics, but it's a shame the music isn't better remembered.

13. "Nuclear Infected" (Flush the Fashion, 1980) - Although it swings with a '50s rock vibe, from the Reagan-era nuclear theme to the dated keyboards, this number from the dawn of Alice's controversial new wave period is totally '80s. Flush is one of the albums least loved by casual Alice fans, but for the rest of us, it's tons of fun to hear him in another setting.
14. "Skeletons in the Closet" (Special Forces, 1981) - More strangeness from the skinny tie era, Forces carried a heavy military theme, as Alice was supposedly quite fond of guns at the time. At any rate, this is a rare atmospheric track on what is otherwise the toughest, meanest solo set Alice released prior to his metal days. Its cheesy novelty feeling ("Hey, you're Alice Cooper, the horror guy, you should sing about skeletons!") only adds to its charm.

15. "Tag, You're It" (Zipper Catches Skin, 1982) - The much-derided Zipper is the first of two albums Alice says he doesn't remember recording, and that's a shame. It's perhaps his strangest and silliest record, with jaunty songs about Zorro, Scrooge, man-eating aliens and life-saving undead pets. The bizarre second-person lyrical approach is like someone pitching a ripoff of Carpenter's "Halloween" (complete with knitting needle) to an actress, and was the American b-side of the great single "I Am the Future," the theme song for the teen-punk trash classic "Class of 1984."

16. "Former Lee Warmer" (DaDa, 1983) - Here's one of my favorite AC songs, a gothic, piano-driven ode to a zombie(?) brother that's among the most evocative tunes in his catalog. Despite the helpful hand of producer Bob Ezrin and some sterling melodies, DaDa is almost choked by its murky and dreary atmosphere, perhaps a reflection of the singer's mind at the time (he was just about to kick the bottle for good). It's still a cool and unique record, Alice's last before rebounding as a pop metal boogeyman.

17. "See Me in the Mirror" ("Monster Dog," 1984) - In a recent issue of Fangoria, Alice spoke about his only starring feature film role, stating that he deliberately chose to do a Z-grade Euro monster movie because it was the kind of thing he liked to rent. Director Claudio Fragasso ("Troll 2," "Zombi 4: After Death") cast him as a rock star/werewolf and dubbed all his dialogue because the Italians never shot with synch sound. You only hear his real voice during two songs, including this haunting ditty, which are presented as music videos in the film and were never commercially released until the box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper in 1999.

18. "Teenage Frankenstein" (Constrictor, 1986) - And here, after years of idiot critics calling his music heavy metal, Alice actually made a metal record. Granted, it's candy-coated pop metal with ridiculous lyrics, but it put him back in the spotlight. I heard this song when I was 11 years old on a cool Chicago station that played heavy metal but was nearly impossible to tune in at my suburban house, and I said, "If that's what Alice Cooper sounds like, I like him." I got my mom to buy me Constrictor at Venture shortly afterward, and was surprised to find on it a song that seemed to be about the then-recent Rodney Dangerfield vehicle "Back to School."

19. "Gail" (Raise Your Fist and Yell, 1987) - Alice continued down the pop metal road with the considerably darker Fist, the second side of which is pure bloody horror lyrically, correcting the major mistake of Constrictor (commercial radio aspirations, which would unfortunately dominate his next few records). This is one of my favorites, bringing back the "Steven" vibe with some truly morbid lyrics.

20. "Roses on White Lace" (Raise Your Fist and Yell) - This neo-thrasher is by far the heaviest song Alice has ever put on a record, even considering his late-'90s aggro days. The lyrics are uncharacteristically graphic, a fitting capper to an album-side-length streak of catchy, crunchy Grand Guignol songs about evil, anger and messy murder. Believe it or not, the bassist on this sickie was Kip fucking Winger. And if you are some young snot-nosed deathcore tween who thinks this is not heavy enough, there's always the Arsis cover.

HALL OF FAME, BITCHES! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!