Pretties For You (3/10)
Easy Action (4/10)
Love it to Death (8/10)
Killer (9/10)
School’s Out (7/10)
Billion Dollar Babies (10/10)
Muscle of Love (6/10)
Welcome to My Nightmare (8/10)
Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (5/10)
Lace and Whiskey (4/10)
From the Inside (7/10)
Flush the Fashion (4/10)
Special Forces (2/10)
Zipper Catches Skin (5/10)
DaDa (6/10)
Constrictor (4/10)
Raise Your Fist and Yell (7/10)
Trash (4/10)
Hey Stoopid (6/10)
The Last Temptation (7/10)
Brutal Planet (8/10)
Dragontown (7/10)
The Eyes of Alice Cooper (6/10)
Dirty Diamonds (7/10)
Along Came a Spider (8/10)
Alice Cooper is about to release his 25th album in 40 years (“Along Came a Spider”)...
When I first discovered the music of the Alice Cooper Group in July 1972, they looked like this...
And I looked like this...
Thirty six years later, Alice Cooper looks like this....
...and I look like this...
But no matter...
Over the past week, I’ve been listening through his back catalogue, starting with the Frank Zappa produced “Pretties For You” from 1969 with its equally weird follow up, “Easy Action”...
Then, on into the glory years when the original Alice Cooper Group was the biggest draw on the planet with “Love it to Death”, “Killer”, “School’s Out”, “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Muscle of Love”...
In 1975, he released what was to be his first solo album while the group took a break - the TV Movie soundtrack “Welcome to My Nightmare”...
As time went on, it became apparent the group was finished and Alice took on the name, performing tours with more and more theatricals and the backing musicians pushed further and further into the background...
“Alice Cooper Goes to Hell” was a poorer version of the very successful nightmare album and, by the time “Lace and Whiskey” surfaced in 1977 and he toured with dancing chickens wielding machine guns (which produced one of the least representative live albums by any major act ever, the dreadful “Alice Cooper Show” - my major Christmas present that year) he was an alcoholic drunken mess about to crash and burn in the wake of punk rock – even I had already started viewing the Sex Pistols as the new Alice Cooper Group...
After a period in rehab, he re-emerged with a comeback of sorts in the form of the autobiographical “From the Inside” – a vast improvement on his previous two outings...
Then it all went wrong again as he slipped back into alcoholism and fought the new wave with a trilogy of albums (“Flush the Fashion”, “Special Forces” and “Zipper Catches Skin”) which barely hinted at the brilliance of which he’d shown himself to be capable in the past. The highlights from these are few and far between...
On his 1983 swansong for Warner Brothers, “DaDa”, he was reunited with his most successful (post the real band) writers and collaborators Dick Wagner and Bob Ezrin and the results showed quite a bit of promise – although apparently Warners weren’t expecting them to actually record and release an album, they thought they’d just take the money as fulfilment of the contract and leave...
Cooper was now at his lowest ebb – no record deal and too ill to tour due to his alcoholism...
It took three years to get to the point where he was ready to return and, while the album ”Constrictor” with it’s OTT heavy metal guitar and drum-machine based material was still nowhere near what fans knew he was capable of, at least he was back...
The real killer blow by Alice though was his return to the stage, producing a show which gave the public everything they’d ever heard about the Coop – the snakes, the killings, the gallows, the beheading and, of course, the brilliant tunes...
He consolidated his successful return with the excellent Big Hair Shock Rock Heavy Metal of “Raise Your Fist and Yell”, then reached his commercial zenith with the worldwide success of “Poison” from his best selling album “Trash” and its star-studded follow up, “Hey Stoopid”....
However, by the time his last major label release, the excellent “The Last Temptation” hit the shops, he was already away from Sony - who'd engineered his worldwide comeback through the success of "Poison" and "Trash"....
But by now he was fully re-established as a household name and, for six years, he toured every year, selling out venues all over the world... But what we really wanted, was new material...
Finally, in 2000/01, he re-emerged with his heaviest work ever on the quick-fire brace of “Brutal Planet” and “Dragontown” and the accompanying shows...
He surprised everyone again by then taking a back to basics garage-band approach for his next two albums and accompanying tours with 2003’s “The Eyes of Alice Cooper” and “Dirty Diamonds” in 2005....
And so, it’s been what in the 70’s would have been an eternity (three years) till this new album...
“Along Came a Spider” is a glorious combination of all of his best periods – the story telling of “Welcome to My Nightmare” and “From the Inside”, the killer pop tunes of the original band and the heavy (yet strangely commercial) sound of “Trash” crossed with “Brutal Planet”...
So, what I’m really trying to say is, go out and buy his new album...
...and make a couple of old men happy...
No comments:
Post a Comment