Chart entered : 15 July 1972
Chart peak : 1
Number of hits : 19 ( for the first 5 hits "Alice Cooper" was the name of the entire group )
To mark my transition from Infants to Juniors came this summer classic.
Rather unusually the band emerged from a school cross-country team in Phoenix Arizona in 1964. Sixteen year old Vincent Furnier wanted to participate in a local talent contest and gathered some team-mates to pose along to Beatles records with instruments they couldn't play as The Earwigs. Surprisingly they won ( which says a lot for the quality of the other acts ) and decided to learn how to play and become a real band. They changed their name to The Spiders and the original line up was Vince on vocals, Glen Buxton on guitar, John Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass and John Speer on drums. They played in front of a giant web Buxton had constructed from a clothes line.
By 1965 they were ready to record a single "Why Don't You Love Me" for a local label. It's very rare and I've never heard it. The following year Tatum was replaced by Michael Bruce before their second and final single as The Spiders "Don't Blow Your Mind" written by Dennis and Vince. The band were very Anglophile in their tastes and the single's an amalgam of Beatles, Stones and Who influences with Dunaway's fat bass prominent. It was again only released on a local label.
The following year the band started making regular trips to LA to play which proved too much for Speer. He was replaced by Neal Smith. The band changed their name to Nazz and in 1967 released "Wonder Who's Loving Her Now" which was written by all five members while Speer was still in the group. The band now sound a bit like Syd-era Floyd without the keyboards and with added West Coast harmonies on the chorus. It's a credible attempt at psychedelic rock.
Threats of legal action from Todd Rundgren's The Nazz forced another name change ."Alice Cooper" is supposed to have come from a Ouija board session. The band had now relocated to LA and Furnier started dressing outlandishly on stage wearing shredded women's clothing and smeared eye-make up inspired by Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane ? This soon led to his own identification as "Alice" though it remained the band name until 1975.
In 1969 they were spotted by music manager Shep Gordon who thought their increasingly bizarre stage antics would appeal to Frank Zappa. He was right and they signed a deal with Zappa's Straight label. Their first release in May 1969 was the single "Reflected", a hard-edged psychedelic rock effort somewhere between Pink Floyd and The Troggs. It would later be re-written as "Elected" and give them their second UK hit.
The parent album "Pretties For You" released in June 1969 was a very minor hit in the US probably through the Zappa connection and you get the feeling from the sound effects, unusual time signatures and difficult passages that they were trying to impress him rather than the public. Pink Floyd were a huge influence and "Levity Ball" shamelessly rips off Astronomy Domine. It received a critical mauling and the band themselves dropped the songs from their set as soon as they were able.
In September came the famous "Chicken Incident" at the Toronto Rock And Roll Revival Concert where Vince threw a live chicken into the audience who proceeded to rip it to shreds. The resulting publicity encouraged the band to ramp up the shock elements in their stage act
Their second album "Easy Action" released in June 1970 fared little better than its predecessor. The band had a poor relationship with producer David Briggs and received little assistance from him. The pyschedelic influences were toned down somewhat but this only had the effect of making the music more prosaic . The sole single "Shoe Salesman" is untypically Beatle-y but sounds aimless and undercooked,
The band re-located to Detroit where their act found a more receptive audience than the hippies of California but knew that they were in the last chance saloon with their third album "Love It To Death" as their contract with Straight would end with its release. The band chose an unknown Canadian engineer Bob Ezrin to produce it and it would be the making of both of them.
The next single was " Eighteen" released in November 1970. This lean , taut, hard rocking statement of teenage confusion snarled out by Vince - "Don't always know what I'm talking about" - changed everything for them. They'd stumbled on an audience; not many teens would now be seduced by the peace and love ideals of the hippies after Manson ( whose trial was ongoing at the time of the single's release ) and the band were both young enough to refract their doubt and dissatisfaction and able to shock their parents with the grotesque nature of the live act. Because of the timing and their love of theatrics the band are usually lumped in with their glam rock contemporaries but really they were proto-punks and John Lydon's choice of "Eighteen " as the song to sing at his Pistols audition was no coincidence. The single reached 21 in the charts.
The album "Love It To Death" , released in February 1971 by Warner Brothers who had purchased their contract, saw most of the psychedelic edges trimmed off or at least corralled into one track, Dennis's nine minute "Black Juju" with Ezrin contributing the spooky organ. The music isn't startlingly original with echoes of Steppenwolf, Free and Black Sabbath but it's well deployed in the service of songs contributed by all members of the band. It reached number 35 in the US charts. The second single "Caught In A Dream" with its liberal borrowing from Born To Be Wild scraped to number 94.
The band went out on tour with a show now containing mock fights , fake torture and an electric chair execution. They played Europe for the first time and their success prompted Warner Brothers to offer them a shiny new contract. As soon as they returned they were back in the studio with Ezrin recording "Killer" . The first single in September 1971 was "Under My Wheels". The lyrics don't make much sense - it's clear that the girl is in control so how is she under his wheels ? - but it's an effective pop rock song which reached 59 in the charts. "Be My Lover" a self-referential account of an encounter in a bar is cut from the same cloth and reached 49. The album largely sticks to the winning formula but the lengthy "Halo of Flies" with its Bond-inspired lyrics throws some prog shapes. "Killer " has been cited by Mr Lydon as one of his favourite LPs and to judge from the verses to the controversial "Dead Babies" - about a child who dies from parental neglect - a certain Mr Smith from Crawley was listening closely as well. It reached 21.
By this time their reputation for outrage on stage was preceding them . Even so Shep Gordon was taking a big risk in booking the Empire Pool, Wembley for their only UK tour date on 30.6.72 given they'd had no hit single in the UK as yet. Only half the tickets had been sold when former Beatles PR man took charge and arranged for a truck bearing a huge poster of Alice, naked but for a snake obscuring his tackle, to break down in Piccadilly Circus at rush hour. This was followed up by a carefully staged supposed orgy at Chessington Zoo for more headlines. The show of course sold out and it was obvious their next single would be a big hit.
Here's Popular : Alice C
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