Alice Cooper - The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper (1999) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Foreword Everybody asks me what my favorite Alice Cooper song is. Picking a favorite song is like picking your favorite child. It's impossible. They're all little psycho dramas. Some are nice, funny, even romantic. Some are bizarre nightmares. But all of them were written for you or about you. Some of the songs here I've done a million times. Others, I can barely remember. I honestly don't have a favorite Alice song. Maybe I haven't done it yet. By the way, don't let any psychoanalysts get their hands on this collection or I'll be back in the quiet room. Alice Cooper'99 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Producer's Note Publishing this box set has been a true labor of love to me. It's also a fitting culmination of my lasting interest in Alice Cooper's music, an appreciation that began when I first heard "School's Out" on the radio. That one song was all it took to start me on a fanatical quest to find out everything I could about the man and his music. A few years later I was lucky enough to meet Alice (it's a long story), who informed me that I actually knew more about him than he did! That one meeting led to others, with the end result being that Alice, not wanting my encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm to go to waste, asked me in 1980 to become his personal assistant. Since then, I've been fortunate to travel around the world on his tours, see portions of my Alice Cooper collection put on display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and earn a living by getting to bang out with my hero. Listening to "The Life And Crimes Of Alice Cooper" reminds me of why I became an Alice Cooper fan in the first place. If you're a longtime fan, I hope it reminds you too. And if you're just discovering Alice for the first time, I hope this box set makes you feel the same way I did when I first heard "School's Out" during that summer of '72. But if it does, just don't ask Alice if you can become his personal assistant, all right? That job's already taken. Brian Nelson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alice Cooper (by Johnny Lydon) I know the words to every Alice Cooper song. The fact is, if you can call what I have a 'musical career,' it all started with me miming to "I'm Eighteen" on a jukebox. The punk thing started pretty much nonmusically. Malcolm McLaren asked me if I wanted to be in a band. I thought he must be joking. A group of us were in a pub, and when it closed, they asked me if I could mime or sing to a few songs. I could mime fine, but of course I couldn't sing a note. The only song on the jukebox I could cope with was "I'm Eighteen". So I just gyrated like a belly dancer, and Malcolm thought, 'Yes, he's the one.' I got the job, and I've not looked back. I've referred to the Sex Pistols as 'musical vaudeville' and 'evil burlesque' and, for me, there was definitely Alice influence there. And I'm very proud to say so, because, without that, I don't think I would've had that extra kick when I was young - and you do need that when you're younger, to mold you in the correct direction. "Killer" is the best rock album ever made, which, of course, followed the masterpiece "Love It To Death". These two albums, put together, we just too much for an angst-ridden teenager such as myself to handle. I realized that I never really wanted to make rock music because I thought those records were the best it could be! And that's why I made sure that the Pistols had a different approach. I didn't want to imitate the genre that I thought was so excellent. You can be influenced by people that excel, but you should never copy. "Luney Tune" is one of my all-time favorite songs. Just love it. It's scary as all hell. It's creepy. What I don't love are all the Goth rockers now. They just look so fake compared to the fun that was going on with Alice. They're just going for the gristle; they're third-rate copies without any sense of proportion. There's originality and then there's always ten cheap versions, and it's a shame that it is those versions that people always pay attention to. They don't want to find out the history of how things emerged, and that's too bad, because without any historical perspective, nothing can make any sense. I'm interested in all kinds of music, and in every musical genre I go for what's original. I love originality, and there's nothing like Alice Cooper... before or since, really. Years ago, when I joined the Alice Cooper Fan Club, they sent me a box of chicken feathers! That was it! 'Oh, no, these are feathers off of one of the chickens that Alice must have killed!' How sick and delicious! What more could you ask for? Who needs Dracula when you have Alice Cooper? Dracula was so dead-pan, but "I Love The Dead" is the funniest song ever done. I used to jam in the subway stations with Sid on acoustic guitar and me on the violin singing "I Love The Dead". We would sing that same song over and over, hour after hour. Sid couldn't play guitar and I couldn't play violin, but we had the most fun. People would pay us just to stop! The songs that Alice has done are timeless to me. They provide instant relief. They're not dicteted by trends or fashion. They're above and beyond all that. They've always been kent simple: short, sharp, and sweet with no huge amount of verbiage. Straight to the point. He knows his stuff, and he does it just great. There's always a naughty new edge to it every single time. Every new release is even naughtier, pushing the boundaries. You've got to stretch the elastic of your knickers. The idea of Alice Cooper being an all-male band was pretty stunning stuff that immediately attracted hatred in certain quarters. It was something that sent the world off on a spiral of chaos, and it hasn't recovered since. It's helarious that a guy dressed in a leather corset and all that wacky makeup could sing teenage angst songs and pull it off! And have it mean something! That's the humor of it: playing with images and not letting images control you. Alice also puts on a brilliant freak show. He's the perfect antihero. The sense of theater was always great fun and it worked. It's not meant to make you go home and hang yourself. The macho image of dressing like a transvestite was very interesting and it served a dual purpose. The attitude is there. And the originality and goal and bravery. It's brave to do these things. It's not brave to jump on that Goth/transvestite thing once it's become safe 20 years later. It's very easy for bands to imitate that, but they're getting it wrong. There's nothing dangerous in them. In fact, all they usually do is harangue about all of this druggy nonsense, and that's just not interesting. Anyone can be a drug addict, but there's not a single Alice Cooper song that promotes that mentality. Here it is: There is no self-pity in Alice Cooper. None. It's all about the fact that when it's time for him to get his comeuppance, he takes it. No one else really comes to mind as being so powerful, image-wise. The whole thing is perfect, because all the charecter weaknesses are in there, but self-pity isn't one of them. It's the thing that says, 'Look there's my mistake and now I'll pay for it.' There's nothing about Alice Cooper that should make you think 'old folks'. It's not about that. It's about the fun of life. Mistakes, warts, and all and sharing the ugly side of things with a sense of humor. It occured to me that Alice Cooper is the original rabid dog on a rope. A very frayed rope. It's the wild craziness just barely contained on a leash. And we like that. The restraint is what gives it power. Society has such foolish rules that the individualist will always shine as long as there is such a dark thing as society. So, in a weird way, we need it. Chaos only works well inside four very strict brick walls. Alice's work should never be taken on a superficial level. That's the problem: a lot of people have done it in the past. There's a lot of depth here. Some of these songs are going places, but most people don't want to apply their minds to them. And that's where they get it wrong. So, where is Alice Cooper's proper place in this thing called rock'n'roll? Right bang up there, thank you very much. I've never made it a secret how much I admire Alice Cooper. Some people may think it goes straight the grain for me to say that I'm an Alice Cooper fan. The Sex Pistols were the real thing and Alice Cooper wasn't? WRONG! I still listen to Alice Cooper. It's things like Alice Cooper that make the world a better place. Alice Cooper... whatta man. John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, is the lead singer of the Sex Pistols as well as the founder of Public Image Ltd. His autobiograpy is entitled "Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alcohol And Razor Blades, Poison And Needles: The Glorious Wretched Excess Of Alice Cooper, All-American by Jeffrey Morgan Of course, when Alice said that, he knew full well that he was sowing the seeds not only of North America's cultural demise but also of the world's. Laugh if you will, but once you've finished drying your eyes, take a good look at what's going on around you and try telling me that Alice Cooper wasn't there first. DecaSexual gender bending? Hey, any guy can dress like a girl these days, but it took a real man to change his name to Alice and have it accepted the world over as one of the most masculine monikers in the history of popular culture. Sex and violence? Are you kidding? Everyone takes a back seat to Alice when he unleashes the dark and sinister side of his personality, everyone. When's the last time you saw anyone else chopping up babies with an axe? Or defiling a deceased dame in front of an open fridge? However, if that's not stomach-churning enough for you, then consider this, perhaps his sickest outrage: Alice Cooper actually ran for President of the United States against that other paragon of perversion, Richard Nixon. What's really sick, though, is that Alice lost. Face it: there are few trends in modern music that Alice Cooper didn't anticipate; fewer still that weren't incorporated by this innovative showman into one of the most bizarre and entertaining rock attractions of all time. The audacious, precedent-shattering, inspirational, taboo-defiling hoodlum flamboyance of Alice Cooper did more than forever alter the face of rock'n'roll as we now know it. He virtually invented rock as theater, created new fashion trends, sparked a new sexual revolution, established higher standards for teenage decadence, and found time on top of all this to write and record a library of classic rock'n'roll albums. The fact that Alice Cooper is rock 'n' roll's foremost legendary statesman of outrage is far beyond reproach. Any act worth its weight in rock'n'roll, theatrics, makeup, and in-your-face, kick-ass punk attitude owes more than just a passing nod of respect in the direction of this malignantly macabre culprit. And if you need proof, just ask Kiss, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie, the New York Dolls, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, Iggy & The Stooges, Mvtley Cr|e, Lou Reed, Hanoi Rocks, Boy George, Slade, Parliament-Funkadelic, The Tubes, T. Rex, Elton John, The Runaways, Guns N' Roses, Gary Glitter, Aerosmith, the Dead Boys, Adam Ant, Poison, Prince, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Twisted Sister, Devo, Megadeth, the Plasmatics, Madonna, Gwar, Cheap Trick, Zodiac Mindwarp, Alien Sex Fiend, W.A.S.P., The Rolling Stones, The Cramps, Rob Zombie, Ozzy Osbourne, David Lee Roth, or even Elvis (the next time you see him at a White Castle) - to name only a few. And no less a personage than Bob Dylan (who's been known to dip into the mascara himself from time to time) publicly proclaimed in a January 26, 1978, Rolling Stone cover story: "I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter." PART ONE: READY, WILLING, AND UNSTABLE The Alice Cooper story begins on February 4, 1948, in Detroit, Michigan, when Vincent Furnier, displaying the ear-splitting vocal calisthenics that would serve him well in the decades to come, came kicking and screaming into an unsuspecting world. After several years of living in the oppressive shadow of massive automobile factories, the family decided to change their environment by relocating to the desert ambience of Phoenix, Arizona. This fortuitous move meant that Vincent would be fated to enroll at Cortez High School, where his naturally abundant supply of cheap wit landed him the opportunity to write for the school newspaper. "Get Outta My Hair," his wise-guy column, brought him the friendship of two fellow student journalists: soon-to-be lead and bass guitarists Glen Buxton and Dennis Dunaway. As luck would have it, all three were looking for a way to score with the female Cortezians. And, hey, what better way to get to first base than by forming a rock `n' roll band, right? Not quite. Instead, Vince and Dennis decided to join the Cortez track team, of all things, whereupon their marathon running prowess made them instant varsity heroes. This first exposure to fame was sufficient enough to embolden their self-confidence to the point where, along with fellow marathoner John Speer (on drums), Glen, and Glen's pal John Tatum (on lead guitar), they decided to don wigs and enter their lettermen's talent show as a Beatles parody. They even went so far as to hire several of the once-elusive Cortez beauties to scream for them from the foot of the stage during their mock performance. That little display of adulation, however bogus, was all it took to convince the future anarchists that this was the life for them. So what if they didn't know how to play their instruments yet? Since when was musicianship a prerequisite of forming a rock 'n' roll band? They would learn. They were 16. They called themselves the Earwigs. Michael Bruce, meanwhile, was making his own athletic mark as a member of Cortez's football team. An ace axe maniac, who liked nothing better than to run rampant over the frets as well as the turf, Michael was frustrated with his role as rhythm guitarist for a rival band called Our Gang. What he was looking for was music that better suited his more aggressive personality. He found it when he joined the 'Wigs, who were now calling themselves the Spiders. With Michael replacing John Tatum, The Spiders began their evolution into a Stones/Yardbirds garage band, who were adept enough to actually record two singles--one of which, "Don't Blow Your Mind," was a big enough hit in Phoenix to establish the band as a minor attraction in the Southwest. Fresh from this success, with high school now nothing but a memory (albeit a lasting one that would come back to haunt AM radio for months in 1972), The Spiders changed their name once again, this time to The Nazz (inspired by the Jeff Beck/Yardbirds classic "The Nazz Are Blue"), and began making treks to Hollywood to perform. Like all up-and-coming bands, The Nazz suffered and starved for a long time. Their attempts to establish themselves on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles were offset by the reality of having to return back home to Phoenix from time to time in order to pay bills and ease severe ego deflation. Despite their new surroundings and the somewhat encouraging fact that they were landing the occasional gig as the opening act for the likes of booze buddy Jim Morrison and The Doors, as well as The Yardbirds themselves (for whose audience they played nothing but Yardbirds covers), The Nazz had not yet even reached glorified bar-band status. Eventually, however, Hollywood became their new home. By this time, due to creative differences, John Speer was replaced by Phoenix Camelback High alumnus Neal Smith. With Neal as their new drummer, the stage was now set for the unleashing of a phenomenally twisted and grandiosely incendiary rock 'n' roll assault on decency itself--a sharp, satiric bite from the dark side of life, the likes of which middle-class America had never seen before. Still, there was one vital piece of the puzzle missing. When news from Philly arrived that a young whiz kid by the name of Todd Rundgren had the temerity to name his new band the Nazz, necessitating still yet another name change, that last piece finally fell into place. For little did Arizona's Nazz know that this time their new name would soon become universally synonymous with outrage, delinquency, and immorality on an international scale. It was 1968, and it was about time. Just as there are a million stories in the Naked City, so are there at least as many theories as to how Vincent Furnier transmogrified into the legendary entity doomed to be revered and reviled the world over as Alice Cooper. First and foremost of these is the story of what happened late one night while the group was visiting Dick Phillips (aka Dick Christian), their manager at the time. Phillips, a colorful character in his own right, had been urging the group to break out of their run-of-the-mill mold. That evening, just for laughs, his mother pulled out a Ouija board to do a reading. As soon as it began, however, the letter indicator began wildly skipping across the board, spelling out the name A-L-I-C-E C-O-O-P-E-R. From that little incident, the boys concocted a tale that would only serve to enhance the Alice Cooper legend in the years to come: that Vince was the reincarnation of a young woman of the very same name--a woman who had been burned alive at the stake hundreds of years ago for being a witch! Then again, Alice has been known to change his stories from time to time... Sometimes he claims to have chosen the name because it had "a Baby-Jane/ Lizzy-Borden-sweet-and-innocent-with-a-hatchet-behind-the-back kind of rhythm to it." At other times, he maintains: "Alice Cooper is such an all-American name. I loved the idea that when we first started, people used to think that Alice Cooper was a blonde folk singer. The name started simply as a spit in the face of society. With a name like Alice Cooper, we could really make 'em suffer." Regardless of which story you choose to believe, of far more importance is the fact that the word suffer doesn't even begin to describe the damaging, senses-shattering assault that these guys inflicted on the mores of common decency. The Alice Cooper manifesto was an unrelenting, rampant commitment to the wholesale slaughter of every civilized tenet known to society. They created a designed-to-shock dynasty of decadence by pushing the limits of both rock 'n' roll and theatricality. The Alice Cooper Group's relentless pursuit of a higher level of satirical sonic brutality took outrage to its inevitable extreme. Keep in mind that, back in 1969, the only excuse a couple of rednecks needed to blow away Captain America and Billy at the end of Easy Rider was the fact that they both looked like a couple of hippies. Given how that was the climate across much of middle America at the time, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how well the spectacle of five tough lookin' cross-dressin' guys (one of 'em named Alice) with hair down to their waists, wearing mascara and jewelry--and grinding out a sonic exuberance of noise to boot--was likely to have gone down a full year earlier. And just how they didn't end up with their brains shotgunned across some steaming macadam in one of the Southern towns they were so fond of invading is anyone's guess. Which isn't to say that the reaction in Los Angeles was any more open-minded. By now, the group was performing an alarming Dadaist din that gained them the reputation of, in Alice's words, "the most hated group in Los Angeles." No less a connoisseur of chaos than Frank Zappa deemed the group's auditory abrasiveness to be so sufficiently twisted that it deserved a spot on his new record label, Straight, alongside such esteemed labelmates as The GTO's and Wild Man Fischer. How corrosive was the Alice Cooper Group? Just ask any of the Los Angeles audience who were inside the Cheetah Club the night Alice Cooper took the stage as the first act to perform as part of a memorial concert in honor of haunted monologist Lenny Bruce. All it took was a couple of songs before the throng, almost as one, stood up and headed for the door in disgust. When the feathers had settled from the group's onstage pillow fight, there were only four people left. Alongside two of The GTO's and Zappa was an aspiring entrepreneur who was more than impressed by what he saw. Shep Gordon realized that any group capable of evoking so negative a reaction that it could clear a room of 2000 people in the space of a few songs was not only a force to be reckoned with but also a group destined for truly great things. Consequently, along with Joe Greenberg (his partner at the time), Shep introduced himself to the group and offered to become their manager. When he promised them that he wouldn't give up hustling on their behalf until they were all millionaires, the fact that he knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about how to manage a rock group didn't matter. He knew enough. Just as the Coopers bucked tradition by being unconventional musicians, so was Shep an equally unconventional manager. Together they forever altered the dynamics of the traditional manager/artist relationship by reinventing the rules of how to generate outrage and create spectacle. Simply put, they were blissfully ignorant of the customary constraints the music business had placed in their way. You are the only censor. If you don't like what I say, you have a choice. You can turn me off. That was the message heard at the beginning of the final track on Easy Action, the group's second recording for Straight. It was a sage piece of advice that the majority of record buyers across North America had already taken Alice Cooper up on. They stayed away from it--as well as their debut Straight release, Pretties For You--in droves. Part of the reason was because both albums were too freakishly experimental and just plain weird to wade through. Some numbers, such as "Living," "Reflected," "Levity Ball," and "Return Of The Spiders," exhibited more than adequate proof of the group's songwriting potential. Others, however, had far too many key and tempo changes, which were beyond the audience's tolerance at the time. Under the watchful eye of Zappa, the group, relying on its own ornate, twisted, and highly unconventional arrangements, self-produced their first album. And while it's true that Neil Young producer David Briggs managed to marginally improve the sound of their second album, there nevertheless was something else that was being lost in the translation from studio to stereo: the purity of the group's vision. Shep began looking for the right producer--someone who would be enthusiastic enough about the group to allow their ideas room to breathe, but tough enough to be able to nurture their strong points. It was at this critical juncture in the group's fledgling career that three key events occurred in rapid succession--events that would lead to the group becoming a worldwide phenomenon of legendary proportions. The first of these events was the decision to relocate the group to Alice's own hometown of Detroit. At this time, the Alice Cooper stage show (as preserved forever in a brief appearance in the 1970 film Diary Of A Mad Housewife) was one of free-form anarchy that, in the beginning, was just too intense an experience for most concert-goers to endure. As Alice would later explain: "We literally had nothing to lose. We couldn't afford anything, so a lot of our props would be things we'd steal from hotels, like fire extinguishers and bed sheets. In fact, we'd use anything we could get our hands on." Inevitably, with each new performance, word began to spread across the Midwest that the Alice Cooper Show was not your average evening in an auditorium. Nowhere, though, were they taken to heart more than in the Motor City. For years Michigan had spawned a formidable array of its own legendary local talent: most powerful bands such as The Stooges, The Amboy Dukes, MC5, and Grand Funk Railroad. What better place, then, for Alice and his gang of noise boys to settle down in than the real Cooperstown--Alice's actual birthplace. "The reason our music changed when we got to Detroit was because the audiences there were literally raising fists at us instead of making peace signs," recalls Alice. "That's the difference right there. I've said it before, and it's absolutely true: we were the group that drove a stake through the heart of the love generation." The second event concerned the group's notorious Varsity Stadium appearance at the 1969 Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival when, during their set, a live chicken was thrown on the stage by an audience member. As he patiently explains each and every time the subject comes up--and as evidenced in the documentary footage featured in the Alice Cooper career retrospective video/DVD, Prime Cuts-The Alice Cooper Story--Alice, believing that chickens could fly, swooped up the hapless bird in mid-waddle and gracefully arced it into the air, fully expecting it to take flight. Alice was mistaken. The chicken landed somewhere within the first ten rows, whereupon it was promptly torn to pieces by rabid fans. Alice's protestations notwithstanding ("Believe the humor, not the rumor"), once the press got hold of the story, they ran with it. The next morning you couldn't pick up a newspaper without seeing the sordid story of how a sick, depraved male rock star with a woman's name bit a chicken's head off onstage and drank its blood. As a result, the ASPCA began monitoring the group's performances to safeguard against possible future fowl atrocities. The truth of the matter, however, is that the inadvertent chicken sacrifice was never repeated again. That is, until Ozzy Osbourne "borrowed" the idea years later when he allegedly bit the head off a live dove. In any event, it was the kind of myth-making publicity that legends are made of. Thus began an unprecedented spate of press items that would continue unabated for several years. It may have been the first time, but it certainly wouldn't by any means be the last time in his career that Alice Cooper would become notorious for something that he didn't actually do. Of course, not everyone was gullible enough to believe such a story. One person who did fall for it, though, was Who guitarist Pete Townshend. Shocked about what had supposedly happened, a misinformed Townshend literally went on record to denounce the group by writing, "There are bands killing chickens" in The Who's "Put The Money Down." Over a decade later he once again returned to the subject in a June 24, 1982, Rolling Stone cover story entitled "Stone Cold Sober." In it, Townshend claimed: "I remember being horrified seeing Alice Cooper beheading live chickens onstage. And it didn't really redeem him that I had smashed guitars, you know? Somewhere, there was a line. I don't know whether it was because it was live, or because it was real blood. But the fact that he later went on to make some great records didn't redeem him, either. He's sick, tragic, pathetic--and will always be that way. I'll say hello to him on the street, but I'll never tip my hat to him." Beliefs such as these are indicative of the kind of extreme reactions that the Alice Cooper Group brought out in people. Many other rock bands, rock journalists, and, yes, even rock fans hated the group because of how they looked, what they sounded like, and what they stood for. Although bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were to pose a serious threat to the idle complacency of the rock 'n' roll hierarchy in the years to come, there was a big difference between the negative reaction garnered by those bands and the savage abuse that the Coopers received. By the time the punk movement arrived, the world was no stranger to the bizarre, having already lived through the shock theater of the glitter/glam era. The Alice Cooper Group, however, in kicking open that particular door, had to take the brunt of their peers' narrow-mindedness. Under these circumstances, it isn't hard, then, to imagine the reaction that ordinary parents all across the land had to this ... this ... monster that was fast gaining the rapt attention of their impressionable young children. The third and most vital event involved an appointment that Shep Gordon had made while the group was in town. Toronto's Nimbus 9 was world-renowned as the recording studio where The Guess Who cranked out hit after hit. In a desperate attempt to get someone to help the group attain a more palatable sound that would appeal to a wider audience, Shep hoped to secure the services of Nimbus 9's in-house producer, Jack Richardson. Like it did everywhere else Shep went, the group's reputation had preceded him: Richardson wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the Alice Cooper Group in any way, shape, or form. Shep, however, wouldn't take no for an answer. In a last-ditch attempt to get Gordon off his back, Richardson asked his production assistant to go to New York and see the group perform live, knowing full well that the resultant negative review would finally get rid of the manager, once and for all. What Richardson hadn't counted on, however, was that not only would his assistant be totally captivated by the group's stage act, but he'd also want the assignment of producing them himself. His name was Bob Ezrin. Their days at Cortez and Camelback may have been over, but the bell was just about to ring for the most important class the Alice Cooper Group would ever attend. For months the group went to summer school--first on a rented farm in Pontiac, Michigan, and then in a studio in Chicago. Under Ezrin's tutelage, they were re-educated in the Three R's: rehearsing, writing, and recording. Concerning the role Ezrin played in the group's restructuring, Alice says, "He helped create Alice Cooper. He took us apart and put us back together again, even though he didn't know exactly what he was doing." He knew enough. At the end of the semester they emerged with two things they'd never had before: a stage show so tight you could bounce a dime off it and a master plan for world domination. They called it Love It To Death. PART TWO: NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS Love It To Death was the foundation for an astonishing and unparalleled ascent that, within two years, would culminate in the crowning of Alice Cooper as the undisputed #1 heavyweight champion rock 'n' roll act in the world. The very first song, "Caught In A Dream," perfectly encapsulates many of the themes that audiences have come to expect from Alice Cooper: the punk attitude ("I'm caught in a dream, so what?"), the greed ("I need everything the world owes me. I tell it to myself and I agree"), the confusion ("Thought that I was living but you can't really tell. What I thought was Heaven turned out to be Hell"), and the insanity ("When you see me with a smile on my face, then you'll know I'm a mental case"). Other familiar Cooper topics also rear their heads: religion ("Hallowed Be My Name," "Second Coming"), resurrection ("Black Juju," "Sun Arise"), and the ever-shifting battleground of relationships ("Is It My Body," "Long Way To Go"). There was something else, as well. Teenage years are never the easiest of times, which is why "I'm Eighteen" was such a revelation. Never before had anyone ever talked to teens on their own level about the awkward pain and loneliness of growing up and mutating into something altogether ... different. But Alice did. And this time, when Alice talked, the youth of the world listened. And what they heard was that Alice understood. And the reason he understood was because he was just as messed up as they were! He was one of them. It was that bonding between artist and audience that helped "I'm Eighteen" climb to #21 on the pop singles chart. At the time, Steve Demorest wrote in his Alice Cooper biography: "Vincent Furnier's anthem had been The Who's `My Generation.' But for a whole new generation, that anthem would be `I'm Eighteen.'" Echoing that sentiment years later, Detroit journalist Gary Graff explains: "With `I'm Eighteen,' Cooper created a `Smells Like Teen Spirit' for the posthippie generation." The Village Voice proclaimed: "`I'm Eighteen' changed Alice Cooper from the group that destroyed chickens to the group that destroyed stadiums." And the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has enshrined the anthem as one of the 50 most important songs in the history of rock'n'roll. But if "I'm Eighteen" was the tender morsel that first drew people into the Alice Cooper web, it was "Ballad Of Dwight Fry" that paralyzed them into staying longer than they had planned. "Ballad" is named after character actor Dwight Frye (the actual spelling of his name) who, in 1931, appeared as a lunatic in both Universal Pictures' Dracula and Frankenstein. A six-and-a-half-minute harrowing descent into one man's madness, "Dwight Fry" is a torment made all the more chilling by Alice's superb vocal stylizations and adept skill at concocting various personas. Bob Ezrin explains: "I always considered Alice to be as much an actor as a singer. With many of his songs, he was playing a role; sometimes multiple roles within one song or multiple facets of a single role. And one of the best ways for us to portray that was through the use of a different subscore. Just as you would shoot scenes in a movie by using different lighting or lenses, on the records we would use different microphones, different vocals sounds, and different styles of delivery. We'd also surround Alice with different-sounding tracks. Switching from vocal to vocal or sound to sound signified that there was something going on with this character." In the group's new stage show, Alice portrayed the ultimate insane asylum inmate--a raving mad lunatic who sang "Dwight Fry" from the confines of a straitjacket, only to break out of his restraints during the song's climax and strangle the nurse assigned to look after him. For all the bloodletting prevalent in the group's performances, however, it must be remembered that at the center of the action was a morality play: Alice was always executed at the end of each show. At first, during the Love It To Death tour, he went to the chair and was electrocuted. Then, as his transgressions escalated from bad to worse, so did the punishments: on the Killer tour he was hung nightly from the gallows; by the time of the Billion Dollar Babies tour, he was being strapped into a life-size working guillotine and beheaded. Of course, Alice had to die as a way of absolving the audience from the sin of vicariously reveling in his crimes. No one, however, ever said that, having been killed, he had to stay dead. Keep in mind that resurrection is an important element of the Cooper oeuvre. Accordingly, Alice always rose from the dead just in time for the encore. With their new success, it was decided that Warner Bros. Records, who up until then had been merely distributing the group's albums, would now become their sole label. With the considerable support of Warner Bros. Now behind them, Ezrin and the group returned to Chicago to record the group's next album. From lady killers ("Be My Lover") to baby killers ("Dead Babies"), the Cooper's fourth album was an extremely conceptual one. A veritable soundtrack for the calculated outrage and disruptive, corruptive congestions of their stage show, Killer focused on the alienated outcasts of the world, either through premeditation for gain ("Desperado") or as a result of society's neglect ("Killer"). From the bludgeoning metasonics of "Under My Wheels" and "You Drive Me Nervous" to the extended disciplined meanderings of "Halo Of Flies," Killer had something for everyone. With increased sales, the Coopers could now invest more time and money into making their stage production bigger and better. Their goal: to give their audience the most creative show they could imagine. They succeeded. Alice's wardrobe evolved from thrift shop trash 'n' drag rags to attire more befitting a hard-working master agitator. Torn tights, thigh-high boots, and leather bondage vests were now the new issue. The most important change, however, was in the evolution of Alice's eye makeup from mincing to menacing. The fem-demented spider-eye design was gone. In its place were now two dark, malevolent orbs of death, which--along with a newly carved on clown frown - would instantly become known as Alice's trademark visage. Accordingly, his new persona was as chief atrocity exhibitor of a new brand of dementia: Evil as a commodity. And speaking of commodities, there was one additional accessory that the group required. "No one in the group did drugs," Alice explains, describing the onset of the group's hyperextended lost weekend. "We drank beer." Actually, they didn't just drink beer. They drank a lot of beer. So much, in fact, that by 1972 the group was spending over $32,000 a year on suds alone. "It had a weird kind of all-American sickness to it," Alice says of the time. And because the group's unofficial motto was "Nothing in Moderation," the Alice Cooper juggernaut began fueling itself with an additional high-octane blend of Budweiser and Seagram's V.O. For lesser mortals, the first reaction to an addiction is to deny. For Alice, it was to publicize. Eventually, it seemed like you couldn't open up an issue of Creem, Hit Parader, or Circus without seeing a photo of Alice with his leather-gloved hand wrapped around a Bud. Indeed, by 1973, when Creem's readers voted Alice "Punk of the Year," the magazine ran a cover story on the group featuring "The Alice Cooper Alcohol Cookbook," for which each group member submitted his own favorite booze-laden recipes. These monumental lapses in good taste didn't get past the media watchdogs. As early as July 1971, Albert Goldman in Life magazine was pillorying Alice as a "frightening embarrassment" who also just so happened to be a "shrewd operator." While the Coopers were making headlines as social misfits and world outcasts, they were also doing something else that, at the time, went quite unheralded. As a touring act, they were single-handedly expanding and raising the standard of rock concert productions. In addition to their innovative introduction of props, makeup, and costuming, their very concept of staging - which involved the use of tiers, platforms, and runways - went far beyond the usual bare-stage standard that everyone in the concert business was accustomed to. The innovative techniques of their original lighting director, Charlie Carnal, who designed and operated the lighting set-ups, contributed visual emphasis to the Alice Cooper stage show. Given the group's unbridled strum und drag style, it's hard to imagine what rock 'n' roll would look like today had the Alice Cooper Group not been there first to pave the way to theatrics. Go back and take another look at that long list of performers who owe a debt to Alice Cooper. Study it carefully, for they all had their greatest successes after the advent of Alice. David Bowie may have worn a dress on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World in 1971, but Alice had already flirted with transvestism in 1969. Marc Bolan admirably defined Gangster Glam on Bolan's Zip Gun in 1975, but Alice had already been there and gone by 1973. Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood may have refined the punk rock look in 1977, but guess who invented it by wearing S&M gear as well as the slashed 'n' shredded safety pin look as early as 1972? The freshly dug-up Gothic gloom 'n' doom look of Siouxsie And The Banshees? Alice. The grease-paint personas of Kiss? Alice. The bloodletting of Gwar? Alice. Marilyn? Alice. Everyone else? Alice, Alice, Alice. Pink Floyd's Roger Waters put it this way: "No one in this band can play a guitar like Eric Clapton or a stage like Alice Cooper." Nobody ever before looked like him, sounded like him, or acted like him. And nobody could shred the speaker of an AM transistor radio like Alice Cooper. He was a first-class hit disturber - and his greatest class disruption exploded onto the airwaves in the summer of 1972 with all the subtle impact of ten fingernails shrieking across a classroom chalkboard. Ever the television addict, Alice was sitting around watching a Dead End Kids movie one night. The Kids were the gang who were to become filmdom's favorite juvenile delinquents, The Bowery Boys. When gang leader Mugs, using his own unique brand of diction, told his pal Sach to wise up, Alice heard the words that would result in the internationally biggest-selling single in the history of Warner Bros. "Hey Sach," said Mugs, whacking him in the head with his hat. "School's out!" A teen paean to indelicate delinquency and academic insurrection, School's Out was an album that contained more hoods than a used car lot. From the brass-knuckled back alley brawls of "Luney Tune," "Street Fight," and "Public Animal #9" to the wistful lawless mobocracy of "Alma Mater" and "Grande Finale," there was something for every reprobate and miscreant - including a real cool ersatz jazz make-out piece ("Blue Turk"), as well as one of the greatest apocalyptic songs ever recorded ("My Stars"). And then there's the title track itself, "School's Out," the #1 single that Entertainment Weekly deemed one of the Top 10 Greatest Summer Songs ever, right behind The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City" and The Beach Boys' "California Girls." Not bad company for a song that contains some of the rawest, snarkiest, punkiest, and wittiest rock lyrics ever written - including the brilliant: "Well we got no class! And we got no principles! And we got no innocence! We can't even think of a word that rhymes!" BITCH BITCH BITCH read the muscle shirt Alice wore for the School's Out class photo, and bitch bitch bitch is exactly what everyone was doing about Alice. If there was something wrong with the world, chances are that the Alice Cooper Group was being blamed for it. When you're a fast moving target, however, you can afford to give your enemies lots of ammunition. And that's just what happened when the Alice Cooper Show invaded millions of North American homes via television on ABC's very first In Concert program. So disturbing, in fact, was Alice's performance that a station manager in Cincinnati actually yanked the show off the air and replaced it with an episode of Clint Eastwood's Rawhide. Interestingly enough, the identity of the offended station manager was a man who would later go on to become head honcho of The Walt Disney Company - none other than Michael Eisner. In the midst of all this sensationalism, the School's Out tour flew across the pond to England. Alice's way of saying hello to the U.K.? By accidentally-on-purpose stalling a flatbed truck smack in the middle of Piccadilly Circus during rush hour. A truck that just happened to bear a double-sided billboard featuring Richard Avedon's photo of Alice wearing nothing but his boa constrictor. Back home, there was the flap concerning the pink panties that were wrapped around the first pressing of School's Out. That's right, every copy of School's Out contained a pair of women's panties with 12 inches stuffed inside it. It wasn't the first time that Alice would raise temperatures because of his innovative album packaging, nor would it be the last. First, there had been the exposed panties in the cover painting on Pretties For You, a problem easily corrected by the application of a large yellow sticker--not just on the shrink-wrap, mind you, but on the actual cover itself. This was followed by the come-hither con of Easy Action, whereupon what appeared to be five topless babes with long hair on the front cover turned out to be five ornery male freaks on the back. Next, there was the small matter of Alice's finger slyly poking out from between his legs on the cover of Love It To Death, prompting the immediate airbrushing out of said offending rigid digit. Then came Killer's controversial detachable full-color 1972 calendar depicting a beaten and bloodied Alice hanging, quite dead, at the end of a noose. By the time of School's Out, fans were treated to a Grammy.-nominated album cover that folded out into an actual school desk, complete with fake metal legs, vandalized hinged lid, and a depiction of interior contents such as a slingshot, a switchblade, marbles, a copy of MAD magazine opened to a comic strip about Liberace, credits written in the style of a true or false quiz, and a photo of the group as a hard-drinking gang of high school toughs taped to the inside lid. There was even a slab of chewing gum stuck to the bottom. As for those panties: no doubt it was the first time that many a male fan managed to literally get his hands on a pair, but it almost wasn't to be, for the materials the panties were made of were flammable. In a rush, fire-proof panties were hurriedly manufactured so that they could be shipped across state lines (prompting headlines once again). As it happens, 1972 was also an election year--and what better sacred cow for Alice to slash to ribbons in the middle of Main Street, U.S.A., than that much-vaunted symbol of democratic pomposity, the American electoral system? "I hate politics, it's boring," Alice proclaimed. Following their leader, his fans responded by casting their votes for "Elected." Ironically, one of its strongest showings, given the song's rampant Americanism, was in England where it blitzed straight to #1. On the subject of the U.K., much has been written about how the Sex Pistols were at the vanguard of extolling nihilism as a way of life with their official slogan, "We Don't Care." Alice, however, accurately reflected the ruling apathy of the times when, half a decade earlier in "Elected," he issued this Declaration of Indifference: "I know we have problems. We have problems in the North, South, East, and West. New York City. St. Louis. Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago. Everybody has problems. And personally, I don't care." "Elected" was also one of the first rock videos in history to portray a rock band acting out a narrative situation, as opposed to having them merely playing their instruments. In it, Michael, Neal, Dennis, and Glen flank Alice as he campaigns for President, presses the flesh with the man on the street, and bathes himself in money delivered by his chimpanzee campaign manager. As Alice often explains: "We always made fun of three things, and that's sex, death, and money." So far, they had the first two bases covered in spades. Now it was time to steal third and head home. Rock journalist Ben Edmonds said it best when he wrote, "Money talks, and 1972 was the year that Alice Cooper found their voices." The video for "Elected" foreshadowed what was about to come, but the title of their next album screamed it out loud and clear with a typically defiant and brazen shamelessness. Billion Dollar Babies was the #1 album, which confirmed that the Alice Cooper Group was the biggest and most spectacular rock 'n' roll band in the world. This time around, the album packaging (which garnered a second Grammy nomination for album graphic design) was in the shape of a giant snakeskin wallet, complete with a one billion dollar bill and detachable signed photos of the group. In addition to "Elected," the album also contained the hit singles "Hello Hooray," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and the PsychoErotic title track. "The whole idea behind the album," said Alice, "is to exploit the idea that everyone has sick perversions. But they've got to be American perversions; we're very nationalistic, you know." Although Alice was pumping up the economy by blowing his wad all over the place, money wasn't the only thing on his mind this time around. Reverse sexual harassment was another taboo subject that Alice tackled as the victim who was left "Raped And Freezin'." He also proved that he could still genderbend with the best of them (the uneasily hilarious ballad "Mary Ann"), stick his finger deep into the pulse of the prepunk zeitgeist (the precognitive "Generation Landslide"), delve into pulseless nocturnal defiling (that NecroExplorative double dosage of disgust, "Sick Things" and "I Love The Dead"), and then top it all off with "Unfinished Sweet," a song about that scariest of all experiences: a trip to the dentist. Alice also set yet another lasting trend when he teamed up with Donovan to record "Billion Dollar Babies," the world's first duet between two rock'n'roll superstars. Nobody knew better than the Coopers that you've gotta spend money to make money, so they poured in excess of 1.2 million smackers into their brand-new brain-boggling stage show. It was cash well spent: the Billion Dollar Babies tour reaped a cool 4.6 million bucks--1.4 million more than the Stones' Tour Of The Americas pulled in the previous year. All in all, the group raked in an astounding 17 million dollars that year: big numbers for 1973. And although he was still every rock rag's favorite cover felon (having already appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone twice), now everyone else - from Time to Cosmopolitan and 16 to Penthouse - was vying for Alice's attention. Twenty years before Mick and Keith were given their chance to grace it, Forbes magazine, the bible of capitalism, put Alice on their cover for a story about the big business of rock 'n' roll entitled "A New Breed of Tycoon." "I'm the most American rock act!" Alice bragged with justification. "I have American ideals: I love money!" Indeed, just as he had predicted in "Elected," tycoon Alice was taking the country by storm. Those who were fortunate enough to attend a show on the Billion Dollar Babies tour were exposed to an extraordinary display of astonishing inventiveness, shock, and outrage. The success of the stage show was due in part to Joe Gannon, the Coopers' stage designer. Expanding upon creative input from the Coopers and Shep, Joe was responsible for turning the Alice Cooper vision into a tangible, three-dimensional nightmare reality of magic and wonderment. Their set designs resulted in the most elaborate stage and light presentation of any rock show ever, setting the standard in terms of sheer massive size. The new and improved Cooper hellbox of unearthly delights contained a guillotine, swords, whips, mannequins, hatchets, baby dolls, blood, fist fights, leopard skin platform boots, balloons, giant teeth and dental drills, free posters, free money, smoke machines, bubble machines, snakes, and ladders . . . everything, in fact, but the proverbial kitchen sink. During the Christmas leg of their tour, columnist Bob Greene joined the group dressed up as Santa Claus, only to get beaten up onstage by the Coopers each night as a reward for his trouble. In his book about the experience, Billion Dollar Baby, Greene wrote: "The reason Alice Cooper is currently the biggest of all rock 'n' roll bands stems from the Cooper stage show. A combination of leering sexuality and blood-drenched simulated violence that has prompted in-print reactions labeling the group as sick, perverted, obscene, and `Nazi-like.'" Indeed, British member of Parliament Leo Abse requested that the government ban the group from performing in England, claiming that Alice was "peddling the culture of the concentration camp." Said Abse: "Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are quite another." But as Brown, Esbensen, and Geis state in the textbook Criminology: Explaining Crime And Its Context, their 1991 treatise on the subject: "Crime and deviance continually test societal constraints, thus forcing an ongoing evaluation of group norms. This confronting of the legal limits introduced the possibility for social change. Think, for example, of the changes in society brought about by such `criminals' and `deviants' as Socrates, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Alice Cooper." Strangely enough, it was at this point that, despite coming off the greatest success of their career, cracks were beginning to form in the group. For one thing, there was the matter of Glen Buxton's continuing health problems. To further complicate matters, some of the group members felt that the theatrical aspect of the act should be toned down, if not dropped altogether. Alice, though, feeling that this would be a big mistake, disagreed. His reasoning was simple: if these were the very elements that had brought them to the top, why abandon them now? The album that came out of this unplanned uneasiness was Muscle Of Love. Ostensibly about sex in the big city, at first glance it seemed to have all the cohesive unity of their previous albums. The packaging - a grease-stained cardboard box complete with Institute Of Nude Wrestling book cover - was as innovative as ever, and there was no denying that many of the album's songs - "Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo)," "Never Been Sold Before," "Working Up A Sweat," and the title track - were all worthy additions to the Cooper canon. Still, something was missing. Supplementing their stage show with selected songs from Muscle Of Love, the group embarked upon a brief East Coast Billion Dollar Babies Holiday Tour, as well as a South American jaunt that smashed world records for attendance. By 1973 various manifestations of glitter, glam, and flash rock were in full swing. The exotic musical wilderness, which Alice had so successfully trailblazed, had now become a beaten path down which many others were following to fame and fortune. And although few would've blamed him for feeling ripped off by the scores of imitators appearing in his wake, Alice himself was unmoved. His unique brand of shock rock was always intended to be not merely a means unto itself but also an open door through which other bands could expand their horizons. During this period, the Cooper camp successfully marked time by releasing their Greatest Hits album. Fittingly, its cover portrayed the public enemies as James Cagney-styled gangsters billed as the "hit men of rock." Prophetically, the album would also prove to be the Alice Cooper Group's last stand as well. Michael and Neal decided to begin recording their own prospective solo projects, which, in turn, prompted Alice to begin working on one of his. Contrary to popular belief, though, they were never fired by Alice. Instead, like many other popular bands before them, Alice, Michael, Glen, Neal, and Dennis simply went their own separate ways. It was at this point in his career that Alice decided to pull his most infamous scare tactic yet by declaring in interviews, "Alice is just a character I play. Offstage, I'm just a normal guy!" This set the scene for the King of Shock Rock's most horrifying role. It wasn't played out, however, before tens of thousands in a sports arena. Rather, it was enacted before a television audience of millions when Alice Cooper showed up on a couple of episodes of The Hollywood Squares game show. This was Alice at his most subversive, and, in an ironic way, it made him as twisted as ever. Most fans, though, didn't get the joke. Indeed, many still regard this period as the low point of Alice's career. The punch line to these appearances, of course, was the fact that, by now, there truly was no escaping Alice. No matter where you went, there he was. Parents who screamed at their kids to turn down his records now couldn't avoid the rock star themselves - not even in the supposedly safe sanctuary of their favorite TV show. After all, what could possibly be worse for straitlaced contestants with a hate-on for the long-haired freak than to have them end up being forever in Alice's debt because he was the one who had provided them with the grand prize-winning answer? Meanwhile, determined to raise his game to the next level, Vincent Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and embarked on a solo career. If Mr. & Mrs. America had found his TV stint unsettling, it's a sure bet that nothing could prepare them for what Alice had planned next. Nothing in their wildest dreams... Incorporating film, dance, theater, and rock'n'roll, Welcome To My Nightmare was the pioneering theatrical extravaganza that Alice had always dreamed of staging. In terms of content and production values, the tour transcended anything Alice had ever achieved before and far surpassed anything anyone else had ever attempted. It was rock's biggest spectacle yet, and it solidified Alice Cooper's status not only as one of the biggest rock and entertainment stars in the world but also as that rarest of personalities: someone who has become a household name. Alice's new persona was Steven, an evolvement of his Dwight Fry character, who was trying to come to grips with not only his guilt but also his rapidly eroding sanity. Nightmare was a morality play that touched on all of the classic Cooper themes. It also provided Alice with enough latitude to utilize all manner of special effects and costume changes. He was tormented by giant web-climbing black widow spiders, fought a duel to the death with a giant Cyclops, and encored with "School's Out" after exploding from a giant toy box. The most stunning visual effect came towards the end of the show during a filmed dream sequence that was projected onto a large screen onstage. The on-screen Alice, being chased by demons through a cemetery, escapes by literally running out of the movie, through the screen, onto the stage, and then back into the screen again. Alice used his illusion to astound audiences with great success every night. By 1973 various manifestations of glitter, glam, and flash rock were in full swing. The exotic musical wilderness, which Alice had so successfully trailblazed, had now become a beaten path down which many others were following to fame and fortune. And although few would've blamed him for feeling ripped off by the scores of imitators appearing in his wake, Alice himself was unmoved. His unique brand of shock rock was always intended to be not merely a means unto itself but also an open door through which other bands could expand their horizons. During this period, the Cooper camp successfully marked time by releasing their Greatest Hits album. Fittingly, its cover portrayed the public enemies as James Cagney-styled gangsters billed as the "hit men of rock." Prophetically, the album would also prove to be the Alice Cooper Group's last stand as well. Michael and Neal decided to begin recording their own prospective solo projects, which, in turn, prompted Alice to begin working on one of his. Contrary to popular belief, though, they were never fired by Alice. Instead, like many other popular bands before them, Alice, Michael, Glen, Neal, and Dennis simply went their own separate ways. It was at this point in his career that Alice decided to pull his most infamous scare tactic yet by declaring in interviews, "Alice is just a character I play. Offstage, I'm just a normal guy!" This set the scene for the King of Shock Rock's most horrifying role. It wasn't played out, however, before tens of thousands in a sports arena. Rather, it was enacted before a television audience of millions when Alice Cooper showed up on a couple of episodes of The Hollywood Squares game show. This was Alice at his most subversive, and, in an ironic way, it made him as twisted as ever. Most fans, though, didn't get the joke. Indeed, many still regard this period as the low point of Alice's career. The punch line to these appearances, of course, was the fact that, by now, there truly was no escaping Alice. No matter where you went, there he was. Parents who screamed at their kids to turn down his records now couldn't avoid the rock star themselves--not even in the supposedly safe sanctuary of their favorite TV show. After all, what could possibly be worse for straitlaced contestants with a hate-on for the long-haired freak than to have them end up being forever in Alice's debt because he was the one who had provided them with the grand prize-winning answer? Meanwhile, determined to raise his game to the next level, Vincent Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and embarked on a solo career. If Mr. & Mrs. America had found his TV stint unsettling, it's a sure bet that nothing could prepare them for what Alice had planned next. Nothing in their wildest dreams... Incorporating film, dance, theater, and rock 'n' roll, Welcome To My Nightmare was the pioneering theatrical extravaganza that Alice had always dreamed of staging. In terms of content and production values, the tour transcended anything Alice had ever achieved before and far surpassed anything anyone else had ever attempted. It was rock's biggest spectacle yet, and it solidified Alice Cooper's status not only as one of the biggest rock and entertainment stars in the world but also as that rarest of personalities: someone who has become a household name. Alice's new persona was Steven, an evolvement of his Dwight Fry character, who was trying to come to grips with not only his guilt but also his rapidly eroding sanity. Nightmare was a morality play that touched on all of the classic Cooper themes. It also provided Alice with enough latitude to utilize all manner of special effects and costume changes. He was tormented by giant web-climbing black widow spiders, fought a duel to the death with a giant Cyclops, and encored with "School's Out" after exploding from a giant toy box. The most stunning visual effect came towards the end of the show during a filmed dream sequence that was projected onto a large screen onstage. The on-screen Alice, being chased by demons through a cemetery, escapes by literally running out of the movie, through the screen, onto the stage, and then back into the screen again. Alice used his illusion to astound audiences with great success every night. In addition to the title track, Welcome To My Nightmare also contained such other Cooper classics as the anthemic "Department Of Youth" and the coolly satiric "Cold Ethyl," a song that so totally offended advice-slinger Ann Landers with its theme of NecroSexuality that she devoted one of her syndicated newspaper columns to it, railing against its vulgarity. Good thing Ann didn't listen carefully to Alice's massive hit single "Only Women Bleed." This was his most deceptive song yet, not just because it was a ballad but also because of its neo-feminist subtext. Alice also enlisted horror master extraordinaire Vincent Price to do an eerily effective narration for "The Black Widow." It was a nice touch, but if you want a second opinion just ask Michael Jackson. He liked the idea so much that he "borrowed" it and had Price do the exact same thing, less than ten years later, for his album Thriller. While he was in Toronto recording the album, Alice filmed The Nightmare: the world's first full-length video concept album, which was subsequently shown on national TV. And even though the home technology wouldn't exist for it to be released on videocassette until 1984, The Nightmare nevertheless garnered another Grammy nomination when it finally was. It's worth noting that both album and show featured the guitar tag team of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, whose unique dueling style perfectly complemented the edgy schizophrenic tone of Alice's new project. Although he was now more famous than ever, events were slowly conspiring to wear Alice down. For one thing, the constant grind of having to record and tour was beginning to take its inevitable toll. For another, subsequent albums such as Alice Cooper Goes To Hell (an "Alice's Inferno" purgatory saga), Lace And Whiskey (Alice as boozy gumshoe), and The Alice Cooper Show (a live album), were all introduced into an oversaturated marketplace reeling from the rapid ascendancy of two new trends: a dreaded abominable aberration called disco and a cacophonous wallowing of disenfranchised youth that was being marketed as punk rock. When Alice heard that John Lydon had sung along to his recording of "I'm Eighteen" for his Rotten audition, he wasn't the least bit surprised. After all, the punks were doing little more than heavily appropriating the outrageous tricks that he'd created years before. And although they'd learned their lessons from him well, the fact remained that Alice was still the original biggest and baddest punk around. Still, like so many others, he found himself intrigued and amused by this new breed of bands. To paraphrase one of Alice's fans: the times, they were a-changin'. PART THREE: I ROCKED WITH A ZOMBIE The stylistic musical gridlock that disco and punk created was making it increasingly difficult for Alice and the rest of the hard rock community to effectively slug their way onto the radio. Always one to go against the grain, his instinctive survival solution was to continue releasing ballads, and the strategy worked. "You And Me," from Lace And Whiskey, became one of Alice's biggest hits ever, while "I Never Cry" was a certified million-selling single. Of special interest to Alice Cooper Group fans was the fact that, around the same time that Alice released Lace And Whiskey, Michael, Neal, and Dennis reunited as the Billion Dollar Babies for an album entitled Battle Axe. In keeping with Cooperian tradition, the Lace And Whiskey stage show featured a stage designed like a giant TV set - a concept later "borrowed" by U2 for their Zooropa tour. It was dubbed the King Of The Silver Screen tour in tribute to film noir private eyes like Sam Spade and, especially, the habitually-imbibing Nick Charles. In fact, as the album title suggests, the whole album was hazed by Alice's alcohol intake. "Disco drove me to drink," Alice would later say in jest, but his battle with the bottle was no joke. Alice's penchant for hitting the sauce had evolved from being a harmless pastime and diversion to being a serious hindrance and problem. This was also when fans next saw Alice in the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie. Committing himself into an institution served two purposes. First, it allowed Alice to dry out in suitable surroundings; and second, those surroundings inspired his next album, From The Inside. Working with producer David Foster and collaborating with drinking pal Bernie Taupin, From The Inside features some of Alice's most personal lyrics. From "Jackknife Johnny" and "Millie And Billie" to that object of intimate inmate desire, "Nurse Rozetta," every character study on the album came from an actual inpatient Alice met while incarcerated. Only the names were changed to protect the deviant dipsomaniac. Once again, Alice hit the road to bring his latest album to life with a manic stage show dubbed the Madhouse Rock tour. The new Cooper extravaganza was performed on a stage decked out as an insane asylum, upon which, in addition to dealing with his fellow mental ward psychos, Alice chillingly dramatized his bout with the bottle by literally duking it out with giant bottles of scotch and rye. Another film role found Alice appearing in the comedy Roadie, which itself was inspired by "Road Rats," one of the hot rockers off Lace And Whiskey. By 1980 disco had already begun its slow maturation into all forms of hybrid dance music. Punk, meanwhile, proved to be far too raw and radical for mainstream tastes after all. Accordingly, it was immediately castrated by the major record conglomerates who called their new neutered version new wave. Alice entered the new decade under a banner declaring "Alice Cooper'80." Flush The Fashion was a direct response to the musical climate of the era. This time, the concept was that there was no concept. Alice performed with a mean, lean, and streamlined image sans makeup on the album as well as on the new tour. The follow-up album, Special Forces, was a continuation of this "new" Alice but taken a step further with the unveiling of his next twisted sartorial statement: military drag. The album's theme and tour had the Degenerate General adopting a Field Marshall Cooper persona, replete with lipstick, leather, and false eyelashes. Next up was Zipper Catches Skin, an album that might best be described as featuring songs that displayed a lyrical stream of consciousness style, wherein Alice explored a myriad of topics ranging from throat-slashings to alien life forms to fanciful dark fantasies of Zorro. Alice's early '80s foray was completed with the surreal cerebral musings of DaDa. Loosely based on the peculiar story of a character named Former Lee Warmer, DaDa is a traumatic study of a cannibalistic elderly man locked up in an attic by his brother, who is subsequently forced to supply the old gent with a steady supply of fresh victims. Although considered cult classics by some Alice aficionados, these albums seemed a bit too abstract and personal to attract and keep the typical rock fan's attention. It was a lesson that wasn't lost on Alice. Once again, he found himself releasing albums into a rapidly changing marketplace where hard rock itself was floundering as a viable commodity. Everyone from Aerosmith to Kiss was feeling the effects as rock'n'roll underwent yet another transformation. It was during these turbulent times that Alice successfully recovered from a little-known relapse into alcoholism. Quitting the bottle once and for all this time afforded a welcome respite, which also allowed Alice the opportunity to lay back and assess the situation. After an extended hiatus, he signed with MCA for his next two albums. With Shep still by his side (who continues to be at the helm to this day), Alice then joined forces with Kane Roberts, a particularly adept guitarist who just happened to have the freaky attraction of looking like a professional bodybuilder. Alice made Kane his new foil, and together they began creating the music that ultimately would result in Alice's return to the roar of heavy metal. Alice also sought out new metal-oriented producers to help put some solid meat onto the bones of his new musical excess. Producer Beau Hill tightened up Constrictor, while ace metal mixmaster Michael Wagener helped Alice to Raise Your Fist And Yell. Once again, the famed Alice Cooper road show was back in its full gory glory. As always, Alice could expect his longtime fans to be in attendance. This time, however, a whole new slew of MTV-weaned headbangers - who, up until now, had only heard fabled rumors about Alice - showed up to actually see the legend perform in person for themselves. The Nightmare Returns is how the new tour was billed, and it was an advisory not to be taken lightly, for Alice had concocted his goriest and most violent stage show yet. "We make sure that the first 20 rows are soaked in blood," Alice bragged as he went from town to town. And he made good on his threat. The opening night concert was broadcast live from Detroit as an MTV Halloween special, and a year later the tour climaxed explosively with a final show headlining at the Reading Festival in England. On the movie front, Alice became musically involved in the sixth installment of the Friday The 13th series, while in John Carpenter's Prince Of Darkness, he stole the show with his ominous portrayal as the leader of the deranged homeless. Of course, it goes without saying that millions around the world have been entertained by Alice's worthy appearance in Wayne's World. Much to everyone's surprise, even in 1986, the man who invented controversy and turned it into an art form found himself once again in the crosshairs of countless numbers of grassroots organizations who, all around the world, had mobilized with the sole fanatical mission of trying to ban Alice from appearing in their town. In 1988 the German state of Bavaria actually did manage to censor Alice's doll chopping performance of "Dead Babies" by threatening him and his cohorts with imprisonment should he proceed with his act as planned. Meanwhile, back home in the land of the free, Tipper Gore's record-rating PMRC immediately installed Alice at the top of their Most Wanted list. As always, Alice wore their disgust as a badge of honor. With these performances, Alice Cooper once again reclaimed his rightful position in the pantheon of rock 'n' roll. Having strongly re-established himself as one of the premier live rock'n'roll acts in the business, Alice (who by now had worked the blood'n'guts of the MCA years out of his system) signed with Epic Records and trained his creative sights on the making of what would become one of his biggest successes ever. Once again, he turned his attention to a familiar subject that had served him well since the days of "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" and "Is It My Body." There was no denying that the old dynamics of sex and romance had, over the years, severely mutated into something scarier than even Alice could ever have envisioned. It was a source of inspiration just waiting to be used. Enlisting esteemed hitmaker Desmond Child to cowrite and produce his new album, Alice once again headed into the studio, accompanied by Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, both of whom were recruited to sit in on a few tracks. The result was Trash, which spawned the megahit "Poison" and became the biggest-selling album of Alice's career. Alice Cooper Trashes The World was the new tour's theme, and the title was more than a fair description. Upon its completion, Alice went to work on the follow-up, Hey Stoopid. Included in the sessions this time around were special guests Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Mvtley Cr|e. Also making an appearance was Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, thus continuing an association that dates back to the first time Alice and the Gunners toured together in 1988--tandem teamwork that includes two collaborations: a hot-wired version of "Under My Wheels" and Use Your Illusion I's "The Garden." Their respect for Alice, however, is by no means an isolated incident; countless others in the music business have also showed their appreciation by covering Alice Cooper material. A double-CD tribute entitled Welcome To Our Nightmare features the talents of numerous alternative bands, while Humanary Stew is a tribute CD that includes, among others, Roger Daltrey and Megadeth. The Last Temptation, a harrowing theological account of lost innocence, rounded out Alice's trilogy of terror for Epic Records. From Dave McKean's disturbing cover photocollage to Sandman author Neil Gaiman's accompanying graphic novel, it was more than apparent that this time Alice Cooper wasn't fooling around. "The Last Temptation is the first album I've done in a long time that's a true concept album," says Alice. "In the '90s, there are certain words we avoid or think we've outgrown. Words like temptation, sin, redemption. These words are old words, but they're not dead. These are words that I wanted to explore with this new album." In addition to hard-edged fan-favorites like "Lost In America" and "Bad Place Alone," The Last Temptation also made good use of the unique songwriting ability and corrosive vocal cords of Soundgardener Chris Cornell, who helped nail home Alice's various points of view on the dual duets "Stolen Prayer" and "Unholy War." Next came a new live album, A Fistful Of Alice, specifically designed to update his only prior in-the-flesh offering, 1977's The Alice Cooper Show. Recorded at Cabo Wabo, Sammy Hagar's infamous Mexican watering hole, the album was aided, abetted, and ably executed by guest guitarists Sammy and Slash. Even everybody's favorite cool ghoul Rob Zombie (who'd also teamed up with Alice to record the Grammy-nominated X-Files track "Hands Of Death (Burn Baby Burn)" crawled out of his casket and braved the harsh Mexican sun, just to hang out and perform with his horror hero. But of all the indignities Alice Cooper has inflicted upon an unsuspecting public over the years, arguably none has had as wide-ranging an impact in tight-laced conservative circles as his well-publicized unholy alliance with the symbol of All That Is Good--that white-bucked denizen of decency, the Anti-Alice himself, Mister Pat Boone. When Pat earned his merit badge in hipness by recording his own good-natured version of "No More Mr. Nice Guy," some wondered if he actually realized just how potent a force for social disruption Alice Cooper truly was. Needless to say, the humorless religious right was quick to repeatedly bring this fact to Pat's attention, publicly rebuking him at every opportunity. Pat wore their disgust as a badge of honor. To his credit, he told them to get a sense of humor and didn't back down in the face of their relentless indignant fury. Meanwhile, 30 years after first performing in those small Phoenix nightclubs and bars, the man responsible for Pat's personal purgatory continued his ongoing march to the millennium and beyond. As the ruinous Ringmaster of Alice Cooper's Rock 'n' Roll Carnival, he embarked upon a new world tour that took him across the U.S., through Europe, and into Australia. It was with great sadness that fans the world over learned of the untimely death of Alice Cooper Group founding member and lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died October 18, 1997, at a hospital in Clarion, Iowa, as a result of complications from pneumonia. "I grew up with Glen and started the group with him. He was one of my best friends," says Alice, recalling his crony in crime. "I think I laughed more with him than with anyone else. He was an underrated and influential guitarist - a genuine rock'n'roll rebel. Wherever he is now, I'm sure that there's a guitar, a cigarette, and a switchblade nearby." On a happier note, it's heartening to know that Glen had the opportunity - on various occasions - to spend time with all of his Alice Cooper bandmates before he passed away. For regardless of any sporadic differences which may have arisen along the way as a result of the group's breaking up, the guys remained friends over the years and still kept in touch. Insolent, impertinent, and impudent, the lineup of Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, Michael Bruce, Neal Smith, and Alice Cooper - also known as the Alice Cooper Group - was that rarest of entities: an aggregation of five uniquely distinctive personalities, who together not only sounded great but also looked great as a rock 'n' roll band. There can be no denying that this is nothing less than the gripping story of one of rock 'n' roll's most exciting heroes. The chronicle of Alice Cooper's vastly influential career is as sensationally spellbinding as the very life it depicts. His accomplishments herald Alice Cooper as a true original in an era where originality is disdained. The triumphs and tribulations heard on Alice Cooper's albums continue to thrill millions all over the world to this day, with his name and image remaining an inextricable part of our language and culture, as familiar as they are enduring. Indeed, no better example of Alice Cooper's timelessness can be found than in the fact that he still sings "I'm Eighteen" with all the passionate fervor and belief that he first brought to the song. For as long as there is a part of us that will always remain 18, we will all have far more in common with Alice Cooper than we might realize--or dare to publicly admit. After all, you're still here, and so is Alice. Rocking out like all get out. And ain't that what it's all about? Remember The Coop, huh? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Track Listing CD 1 1) The Spiders "Don't Blow Your Mind" (Vincent Furnier, Dennis Dunaway) 2:36 2) The Spiders "Hitch Hike" (William Stevenson, Clarence Paul, Marvin Gaye) 2:01 3) The Spiders "Why Don't You Love Me" (James McDermott, David Trimnell, Roy Little, Francis Gornall) 1:57 4) The Nazz "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" (Furnier, Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dunaway, John Speer) 2:07 - Original version 5) Nobody Likes Me (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Neal Smith) 3:23 - Demo version 6) Levity Ball (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 4:45 - Studio version 7) Relfected (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:14 8) Mr. And Misdemeanor (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:00 9) Refrigerator Heaven (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 1:54 10) Caught In A Dream (Bruce) 2:55 - Single version 11) I'm Eighteen (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 2:58 12) Is It My Body (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 2:39 13) Ballad Of Dwight Fry (Cooper, Bruce) 6:34 14) Under My Wheels (Bruce, Dunaway, Bob Ezrin) 2:47 15) Be My Lover (Bruce) 3:21 16) Desperado (Cooper, Bruce) 3:29 17) Dead Babies (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 5:42 18) Killer (Bruce, Dunaway) 7:05 19) Call It Evil (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith, Reggie Vincent) 3:28 - Demo version 20) Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets (Buxton, Dunaway, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim) 4:40 21) School's Out (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:31 - Single version CD 2 1) Hello Hooray (Rolf Kempf) 4:15 - Edited version 2) Elected (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:43 - Single version 3) Billion Dollar Babies (Cooper, Bruce, Vincent) 3:39 - Edited version 4) No More Mr. Nice Guy (Cooper, Bruce) 3:07 5) I Love The Dead (Cooper, Ezrin) 5:07 6) Slick Black Limousine (Cooper, Dunaway) 4:27 7) Respect For The Sleepers (Cooper, Bruce) 3:48 - Demo version 8) Muscle Of Love (Cooper, Bruce) 3:45 - Edited version 9) Teenage Lament'74 (Cooper, Smith) 3:52 - Edited version 10) Working Up A Sweat (Cooper, Bruce) 3:31 11) Man With The Golden Gun (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 4:09 12) I'm Flash (Steve Hammond, Dave Pierce, Steve Pierce) 3:11 13) Space Pirates (Hammond, Dave Pierce) 3:13 14) Welcome To My Nightmare (Cooper, Dick Wagner) 2:47 - Single version 15) Only Women Bleed (Cooper, Wagner) 3:30 - Single version 16) Cold Ethyl (Cooper, Ezrin) 2:54 17) Department Of Youth (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) 3:17 - Edited version 18) Escape (Cooper, Kim Fowley, Mark Anthony) 3:14 19) I Never Cry (Cooper, Wagner) 3:43 20) Go To Hell (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) 5:12 CD 3 1) It's Hot Tonight (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) 3:21 2) You And Me (Cooper, Wagner) 3:25 - Single version 3) Billion Dollar Babies "I Miss You" (Bruce, Mike Marconi, Smith) 3:31 4) No Time For Tears (Van McCoy) 2:59 5) Because (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) 2:45 6) From The Inside (Cooper, Bernie Taupin, Wagner, David Foster) 3:30 - Single version 7) How You Gonna See Me Now (Cooper, Taupin, Wagner) 3:53 8) Serious (Cooper, Taupin, Foster, Steve Lukather) 2:41 9) No Tricks (Cooper, Taupin, Wagner) 4:15 10) Road Rats (Cooper, Wagner) 2:43 11) Clones (We're All) (David Carron) 2:51 12) Pain (Cooper, Davey Johnstone, Fred Mandel) 4:10 13) Who Do You Think We Are (Cooper, Duane Hitchings) 3:05 - Single version 14) Look At You Over There, Ripping The Sawdust From My Teddybear (Robbie Leff, Billy Snell) 3:18 - Demo version 15) For Britain Only (Cooper, John Nitzinger, Mike Pinera, Jan Uvena, Eric Scott) 3:02 16) I Am The Future (Lalo Schifrin, Gary Osborne) 3:45 - Single version 17) Tag, You're It (Cooper, Nitzinger, Scott) 2:52 18) Former Lee Warmer (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) 4:07 19) I Love America (Cooper, Graham Shaw, Wagner, Ezrin) 3:47 20) Identity Crisises (Cooper) 2:50 21) See Me In The Mirror (Cooper) 3:12 22) Hard Rock School (Cooper, Kane Roberts) 2:31 CD 4 1) He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask) (Cooper, Roberts) 3:20 - Demo version 2) He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask) (Cooper, Roberts, Tom Kelly) 3:44 - Movie Mix 3) Teenage Frankenstein (Cooper, Roberts) 3:32 4) Freedom (Cooper, Roberts) 4:04 - Edited version 5) Prince Of Darkness (Cooper, Roberts) 5:09 6) Under My Wheels (Cooper, Dunaway, Ezrin) 3:10 - with Axl, Slash and Izzy of Guns N'Roses 7) I Got A Line On You (Randy California) 2:59 8) Poison (Cooper, Desmond Child, John McCurry) 4:27 9) Trash (Cooper, Mark Frazier, Jamie Sever, Child) 3:58 10) Only My Heart Talkin' (Roberts, Andy Goldmark) 4:44 11) Hey Stoopid (Cooper, Jack Ponti, Vic Pepe, Bud Saylor) 4:15 - Single version 12) Feed My Frankenstein (Zodiac Mindwarp, Cooper, Nick Coler, Ian Richardson) 4:42 13) Fire (Jimi Hendrix) 3:00 14) Lost In America (Cooper, Dan Wexler, Saylor) 3:54 15) It's Me (Cooper, Jack Blades, Tommy Shaw) 4:40 16) Hands Of Death (Spookshow 2000 Mix) (Rob Zombie, Charlie Clauser) 3:53 17) Is Anyone Home? (Cooper, Wexler, Saylor) 4:10 18) Stolen Prayer (Chris Cornell, Cooper) 5:36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CD 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) The Spiders "Don't Blow Your Mind" (Vincent Furnier, Dennis Dunaway) 2:36 [Single release only] Produced and Engineered by Forster S. Cayce. Recorded at Copper State Recording Studios, Tucson, AZ. Performed by The Spiders: Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper) - Lead Vocals John Tatum, Glen Buxton - Guitars Dennis Dunaway - Bass, Backing Vocals John Speer - Drums, Backing Vocals "The band chipped in for the $14 it cost to get a Fuzztone, because we wanted to get that guitar sound on it so it would sound like "Satisfaction". The song was on its way to becoming a local #1 hit in Tucson but stalled when "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys came out and went straight to the top of the charts. Still, hearing our song on the radio was a huge deal for us. Despite the title, the lyrics had nothing to do with any drug references, because we didn't know anything about drugs." Alice Cooper I said one day I'd find the game Well now you know I'm not insane You tried to take me for a ride Now all you feel is suicide Chorus: We're two of a kind Take what you can find But don't blow your mind ... away You led me to another life... Of work and pain and sacrifice Yes, I broke away from you somehow And look who's goin' through it now Chorus So now you know the reason why I'm laughing here and why you cry Cuz you don't mean a thing no more And I'm just like I was before ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2) The Spiders "Hitch Hike" (William Stevenson, Clarence Paul, Marvin Gaye) 2:01 "We covered this, not because it was the Marvin Kaye song but because The Rolling Stones had done it. It's me, trying to sound as close to Mick Jagger as I could at the time." Alice Cooper Well, I'm going to Chicago That's the last place my baby stayed Hitch hike Hitch hike baby (2) I'm gonna pack up all my bags I'm gonna leave this town ... right away Hitch hike Hitch hike children (2) Chorus: I'm gonna find that girl If I have to hitch hike 'round the world Well, Chicago city That's what the sign on the freeway read Hitch hike Hitch hike baby (2) I'm gonna keep right on looking yeah Before I just go out of my head Hitch hike Hitch hike baby (2) Chorus So c'mon c'mon baby hitch hike Hitch hike Hitch hike baby (2) Hitch hike (2) Hitch hike children (2) Hitch hike (4) So c'mon c'mon hitch hike yeah Hitch hike baby Oh hitch hike children Now well, I'm going to St. Louis But my next stop will be in L.A. Hitch hike Hitch hike baby L.A. Ain't got no money in my pockets So I'm gonna have to hitch hike all the way Hitch hike Hitch hike baby (2) Chorus So c'mon c'mon baby hitch hike Hitch hike Hitch hike baby (2) Hitch hike (2) Hitch hike children (2) Hitch hike (4) Hitch hitch hitch hitch hike Well c'mon c'mon baby hitch hike ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) The Spiders "Why Don't You Love Me" (James McDermott, David Trimnell, Roy Little, Francis Gornall) 1:57 Tracks 2-3/[Single release only] Produced by Jack Curtis. Engineered by Dave Oxman. Recorded at Audio Recorders Of Arizona, Phoenix. Performed by The Spiders: Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper) - Lead Vocals John Tatum, Glen Buxton - Guitars Dennis Dunaway - Bass, Backing Vocals John Speer - Drums, Backing Vocals "Our first recording session. It was a very Beatles-esque song that had been done by The Blackwells in the movie "Farry Cross The Mersey". We figured it was obscure enough that no one could ever notice the original, so that maybe we could get a hit out of it. I learned how to play harmonica for this song." Alice Cooper Chorus: Why don't you love me? (2) Well, if you don't love me baby Don't come around tonight Seen you comin' baby Comin' 'round tonight Don't you love me baby? Said you did last night Well, if you don't love me baby Don't come 'round tonight Chorus Yow Why don't you love me? (2) Well, if you don't love me baby Then don'tcha come 'round tonight Comin' round me baby Comin' round my door Why don't you love me baby? Said you did before Well, if you don't love me baby Then don'tcha come 'round no more Why don't you love me? (2) Well, if you don't love me baby Then don't come 'round no more ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4) The Nazz "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye" (Furnier, Michael Bruce, Glen Buxton, Dunaway, John Speer) 2:07 - Original version [Single release only] Produced by Dick Phillips. Engineered by Loy Clingman. Recorded at Viv Recording Studios, Phonix. Performed by The Nazz: Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper) - Lead Vocals Michael Bruce - Guitars, Backing Vocals Glen Buxton - Guitars Dennis Dunaway - Bass, Backing Vocals John Speer - Drums, Backing Vocals "Our first real attempt to sound like The Yardbirds-"Over Under Sideways Down" in particular. It was usually the last song of our live set, and we always gave it the big psychedelic rave-up treatment." Alice Cooper Well I pray in my final hour ... for the people who yet must die For the liars and the robbers and the cheating crimes... who tortured the deadly times Chorus: Well I've written ... home to mother The ink ran from my tears I said "Momma, momma, oh please Tell me why you've brought ... me here" Well I'll hang on another minute But really I have to go If you ever want to see me again ... you know what you can do Chorus ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) Nobody Likes Me (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Neal Smith) 3:23 - Demo version [Previously unreleased] (1968) Produced and Performed by The Alice Cooper Group. Engineered by Les Braden. Recorded at The Cooper Topanga Canyon Home, Fernwood, CA. "Dennis had the idea for this. My idea was when we performed it live, I would sing it through a window. Every kid has this experience of not getting picked to play on a team and then having to watch through the bedroom window with envy while others kids played without you, thinking that nobody likes you. Groucho Marx loved this song." Alice Cooper "Nobody liked us in the early days (and I mean 'nobody'), so I wrote the song to reflect that. I added the lyrical twist on the end, "Oh yes, we all like you, we like you a lot" to suggest this attitude for consideration by the audience. And that is the sole reason for our success." Dennis Dunaway ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6) Levity Ball (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 4:45 - Studio version [Previously unreleased] (1968) Produced and Performed by The Alice Cooper Group. Engineered by Dick Kune. Recorded at Whitney Studios, Glendale, CA. "I wrote this in the basement of our house in Venice, California, when the guys from Pink Floyd were our sometimes house guests. Hanging out with them definitely had an influence on this song. It was kind of about the Cheetah Club in L.A. but was also inspired by the 'dance with the dead' scene in the movie 'Carnival Of Souls'." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7) Relfected (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:14 (from the album "Pretties For You" (1969)) Produced and Performed by The Alice Cooper Group. Engineered by Dick Kune. Recorded at Whitney Studios, Glendale, CA. "We used to say, "How can you criticize what we do since we are merely reflecting society?" Of course, living in Hollywood wasn't exactly your typical society." Dennis Dunaway ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8) Mr. And Misdemeanor (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:00 "At the time, I was trying really hard to write lyrics with as much wordplay as I could. The line "Parked beside the ocean, Landscapes alive agoshin', Who put all of this in motion" was written right after a big Los Angeles earthquake that we had just lived through. The five of us were also having scary dreams about tidal waves. The music to this has a real Doors/Robbie Kreiger sound of it." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9) Refrigerator Heaven (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 1:54 (Tracks 8-9 from the album "Easy Action" (1970)) Produced by David Briggs. Engineered by Barry Keene. Recorded at Sunwest Studios, Hollywood. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group. "We had been reading about cryogenics and Walt Disney being frozen. The Beatles' "White Album" influence as well. Pretty funny song." Alice Cooper "We often played the sounds of words and double entendres off of each other in our lyrics. In "Refrigerator Heaven," we mixed that with a sci-fi concept of storing dead bodies on the moon until a cure for a killer disease is discovered here on earth, then returning the bodies to be cured. We wanted a very cold drum sound and icy production." Neal Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10) Caught In A Dream (Bruce) 2:55 - Single version "Great Michael Bruce guitar line. Bob Ezrin had a lot to do with getting the final version of this done. This was the beginning of the Alice Cooper 'radio' sound." Alice Cooper "We were literally setting our sights on our goals here and perhaps even predicting the "Billion Dollar Babies" era. A great song musically from Michael." Neal Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11) I'm Eighteen (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 2:58 [single titled as "Eighteen"] "This came out of a jam session that we came up with while smashed on cheap wine. We would warm up with it; and whenever Ezrin heard it, he thought we could turn it into something special. The basis was that old adage that an 18-year-old was old enough to be drafted into the army but wasn't old enough to vote. Instead of complaining about it though, we made it into a celebration of feeling confused. Angst at its finest." Alice Cooper "The original song was from a jam called "I Wish I Was Eighteen Again." Alice had several versions of lyrics for this, but his final words are just the greatest. Truly a classic." Michael Bruce "The first time I ever saw the group perform was in the back of Max's Kansas City in New York. I was overwhelmed with the power of the show, and, more than anything else, I remembered this fantastic song called "I'm Edgy." When I met them after the show, it was a lovefest. We told each other we could make hit records together... I said I was particularly interested in recording their song called "I'm Edgy." After some vacant stares, they finally figured out that I was talking about 'I'm Eighteen.'" Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12) Is It My Body (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 2:39 [single titled as "Body"] "While other bands were worried about being sex objects, we desperately wanted to be rock stars and wanted(!) to be sex objects. This was also the song that the snake was used on in concert." Alice Cooper "Drums for strippers and burlesque have always been very influential in my drumming. This influence gives "Body" a sexy, sulty feel. When we wound up using Kachina, my pet boa constrictor, onstage with Alice for the first time, this was the perfect song for it. Little did Kachina know that she would be immortalized forever on our next album cover for 'Killer.'" Neal Smith "I used extra heavy gague bass string on this and worked very hard to bend those notes." Dennis Dunaway ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13) Ballad Of Dwight Fry (Cooper, Bruce) 6:34 (Tracks 10-13 from the album "Love It To Death" (1971)) Produced by Jack Richardson and Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Brian Christian. Recorded at RCA Mid-America Recording Center, Chicago. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Bob Ezrin - Keyboards on "I'm Eighteen" Add Alice Cooper - Harmonica "'Let's put Alice in straightjacket and see what happens.' The difinitive Alice Cooper stage song. Alice Cooper "If Bela Lugosi were any less great, Dwight Frye would have upstaged him. How can someone who eats spiders can not be your hero? The explosion was a slowed down recording of an Alka-Zeltzer dropping into a glass of water. This is my all-time favorite Glen Buxton guitar solo." Dennis Dunaway "One of the first true 'Alice Cooper Group Classics.' Giving the world a strong, loud-and-clear fist in the face of what dark and macabre side of the original masters of shock rock were all about. Giving ourselves, as musicians, a new uncharted dimension to explore, create, and develop. Hit songs opened the door, but inside the door was a newly created monster... the marriage of horror, theater, and rock'n'roll. The real Alice Cooper group was born." Neal Smith "When we recorded the vocals, we put Alice underneath a pile of folding chairs to get that feeling of confinement, so that, while lying on the floor, he could really feel it when he sang, 'I gotta get out here, I gotta get out here...'" Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14) Under My Wheels (Bruce, Dunaway, Bob Ezrin) 2:47 "Total Detroit. This is garage band rock 101." Alice Cooper "Michael and Dennis kept us all night long writing "Under My Wheels". They were camped out behind a turned-over couch in upstate New York busy composing another Alice Cooper Group classic." Neal Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15) Be My Lover (Bruce) 3:21 "Whenever I record, I spin my sticks just like when I play onstage. This always used to drive Bob Ezrin and studio engineer Brian Christian crazy. One session, it finally happened... I was spinning my drumstick and it flew out of my hand and landed right on the shell of a bass drum and trickled down through the hardware to the floor. You can hear it happen on this song." Neal Smith "These lyrics were inspired when Ashley Pandel's sister (at the time Pandel was our road manager in Michigan) came to the farm we were living at. She was beautiful! And then later, I was talking to an old lady on the airline flight who was asking about the name Alice Cooper." Michael Bruce ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16) Desperado (Cooper, Bruce) 3:29 "A lot of our songs were movie and TV oriented. Robert Vaughn played the gunslinger in 'The Magnificent Seven', who did indeed wear leather and lace. I internationally did the vocals and lyrics as a tribute to Jim Morrison. Jum was a drinking buddy and an early supporter of the band who really meant a lot to us." Alice Cooper "The original lyrics were written by Dennis and it was titled "Desert Night Thing." Alice later reworked them for a tribute to Jim Morrison." Neal Smith "My first 'filmic' production where my main concern was to paint a picture and create an atmosphere with sound and music. The recording equivalent of a cinema noir piece written by Alice and Michael. Recording this and "Dwight Fry" really informed my approach to production for the rest of my life." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17) Dead Babies (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 5:42 "It started out as a simple song about parental neglect. Bob Ezrin turned it into a Gothic classic. Our most misunderstood song." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18) Killer (Bruce, Dunaway) 7:05 (Tracks 14-18 from the album "Killer" (1971)) Produced by Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Brian Christian. Recorded at RCA Mid-America Recording Center, Chicago. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Bob Ezrin - Keyboards Rick Derringer - Additional Guitar on "Under My Wheels" "This was the first song that was written and recorded specifically for the stage show. A 'virtual soundtrack' song." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 19) Call It Evil (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith, Reggie Vincent) 3:28 - Demo version [Previously unreleased (1971)] Produced by Alice Cooper Group. Engineered by Artie King. Recorded at The Cooper Mansion, Greenwich, CT. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Rockin' Reggie Vincent - Guitars "Crazy thing about this track is that no one from the band, including myself, really remembers anything about it! I do know that Rockin' Reggie and Glen Buxton had been working on it at the band's mansion while we were coming up with songs for the "School's Out" album. The rest of us then kind of stumbled into the room one by one, and we wound up with this take. Between touring, writing, recording, and promoting, things were flying pretty fast. This was the song that just came and went. Luckily, the tape recorded was rolling or it would have never been thought of again." Michael Bruce I've been around watching little late shows Drink a lot of beer Like playing cards with my friends Call it evil Call it pain It goes knock, knock, knock-knock-knock-knock, on my door That rock and rock, yeah, call it evil Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, on my door, Yeah! Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, on my door Going to get as my babe It goes knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, on my door Playing sopwith in the back of my head What you trying to be crazy? People look at me, they look at me, but you're dead Call it evil Call it pain It goes knock, knock, knock-knock-knock-knock, on my door It goes knock, knock, knock-knock-knock-knock, come on Knock-knock-knock-knock, one more Knock-knock-knock-knock That rock and rock, yeah, call it evil Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, on my door ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 20) Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets (Buxton, Dunaway, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim) 4:40 "I had my new set of 24 chrome drums from Slingerland, the world's largest set of drums at the time. I recorded the songs on "School's Out" on them. "Gutter Cat" was one of the first songs to be recorded, and the tom sounds are great. We were always giant fans of "West Side Story"... what a great combo, 'Bernstein and us, the Alice Cooper Gand.'" Neal Smith "I'm proud to have cowritten a song with Leonard Bernstein... even though he had no say on it." Dennis Dunaway "We go from the black-and-white feel of the 1930s and '40s into CinemaScope and Technicolor, and then we add street gangs to the cast. A sort of garage band homage to Broadway and Hollywood." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21) School's Out (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:31 - Single version (Tracks 20-21 from the album "School's Out" (1972)) Produced by Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Roy Cicala and Shelly Yakus. Recorded at Record Plant, New York, The Cooper Mansion, Greenwich, CT. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Rockin' Reggie Vincent - Guitars, Backing Vocals Bob Ezrin - Keyboards "The two most intense and joyous times of the year are Christmas morning and the end of school. The few minutes waiting for that final school bell to ring are so intense that when it happens, it's almost orgasmic. I think we captured that feeling with this anthem. Certainly our signature song." Alice Cooper "A genuine five-way songwriting collaboration. Glen's immortal intro riff, Michael's chords and melodies, Dennis' bass weaving the song together over a drum bottom/bolero chorus, finished off with one of the best written song lyrics in the history of rock'n'roll. The anthem of anthems for a generation." Neal Smith "We intentionally pushed things over the edge and really overly distorted many things on this, particularly some of the guitars. Then we made it extremely edgy and bright when we mastered it so that when it came on the radio, it was always louder than anything that was played right before it. A very early grunge song." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CD 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) Hello Hooray (Rolf Kempf) 4:15 "Bob Ezrin introduced us to this Rolf Kempf song for the "Billion Dollar Babies" album. Even though we didn't write it, we 'Cooperized' it, and it worked perfectly to open the album and the "Billion Dollar Babies" stage show." Neal Smith "Whenever I hear this song, I think of the stage light coming up, the fog clearing, and the screams and faces of all the fans. This is the greatest feeling in the world." Dennis Dunaway "Where my orchestration skills really started to develop and my first real incursion into 'rock grandeur.'" Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2) Elected (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 3:43 - Single version "Total political satire. We hated politics, but the idea of Alice, the scourge of the entire world, being President was just too good. Bob Ezrin helped turn it into this huge masterpiece. While we were working on this, John Lennon would come to the studio a lot and listen to this song and tell me, "It's great, but Paul would have sung it better." He was right!" Alice Cooper "It was important to give this a real dramatic value because the vocal itself was so campaignlike. To achieve that, I arranged for a full-length mirror to be placed in front of Alice while he sang so he could really sell the charecter to himself." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) Billion Dollar Babies (Cooper, Bruce, Vincent) 3:39 "The idea behind "Billion Dollar Babies" was that we were a bunch of kids from a garage band, and suddenly he had all of these people paying us millions of dollars. We had a healthy attitude about it and were willing to make fun of ourselves. Neal's classic drum riff was the foundation of this song. Donovan wound up singing on it simply because he happened to be down the hall in another recording studio. It was a great juxteposition to have someone like him be on something about excess." Alice Cooper "Neal Smith's classic opener that many drummers are still trying to learn today. Dennis burns it up again as well. Another rock standard." Michael Bruce ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4) No More Mr. Nice Guy (Cooper, Bruce) 3:07 "Built around the Who's "Substitute" (ironically Roger Daltrey wound up singing it years later on an Alice Cooper tribute album). The funny part of this song was that we had all of this horrific publicity, and then we came out and declared, "All right, everyone ... now it's no more Mr. Nice Guy time. The gloves are off." People were going, "Huh?!? What? Now they're going to get worse?!?" Also I wrote the lyrics out of anger because of how many parents were treated by some of the press. It was particularly hard because of my dad being a minister. Fact is, my parents were the only ones who knew I was a nice guy." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) I Love The Dead (Cooper, Ezrin) 5:07 (Tracks 1-5 from the album "Billion Dollar Babies" (1973)) Produced by Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Shelly Yakus, Frank Hubach, Robin Black, Peter Flanagan, Jack Douglas and Ed Sprigg. Recorded at The Alice Cooper Mansion, Greenwich, CT, Morgan Studios, London, Record Plant, New York. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Steve Hunter, Mick Mashbir, Dick Wagner - Guitars Bob Ezrin - Keyboards Dave Libert, Jim Mason - Backing Vocals Donovan Leitch - Additional Backing Vocals on "Billion Dollar Babies" "An exercise in horror rock and our most over-the-top song. There's a thin line between comedy and horror, but I think this walks the line pretty closely." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6) Slick Black Limousine (Cooper, Dunaway) 4:27 [U. K. release only] Produced by Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Shelly Yakus, Frank Hubach, Robin Black and Peter Flanagan. Recorded at The Cooper Mansion, Greenwich, CT, Morgan Studios, London. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Mick Mashbir - Guitars "Originally titled "Coal Black Model T." With this song I thought I would start with an ending. The conclusion is a spontaneous romp that Shockhausen would be proud of. This is our take on what it sounds like to crash and die. It was released as a give-away flexi-disc in Britain's 'New Musical Express' magazine." Dennis Dunaway Well I hope I die in a slick black limousine Oh come along momma gonna take a look at me Gonna fly though the city Gonna fly to the sea Gonna fly my my my my my I get set get ...it is Well I get first prize I remember it quite clear Gonna fly though the city Gonna fly to the sea Gonna fly yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yow I hope I die in a slick black limousine Yeah come along momma gonna take a take a look at me We're gonna fly to the ocean Gonna fly to the sea We're gonna fly yay yay yeah Ninety miles an hour Swervin' all over the road Hundred miles an hour My hand's on the radio Baby's in the back seat Bompin' all over the road No one, no one touch my limousine Yeah the lord ... my limousine (3) Now stuck up livin' with a Model T My machine, my machine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7) Respect For The Sleepers (Cooper, Bruce) 3:48 - Demo version [Previously unreleased; preproduction rehearsal recording of the song "Muscle Of Love" (1973)] Produced by The Alice Cooper Group. Engineered by Andy Mills. Recorded at The Michael Bruce Home Studio, Greenwich, CT. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Mick Mashbir - Guitars "The idea of this early lyrics was that I had a lot of respect for people like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin, but the fact was that they all died before their time. Seems most people I used to drink with wound up that late. My vocals are very raw on this recording, since it's a rehearsal and I was just beginning to work on the lyrics to this song." Alice Cooper "Glen's sarcastic song title (Glen hated being woken up by our road manager and wanted him to respect his sleeping in late) was used by Alice for these early lyrics over the rough bed track of "Muscle Of Love." Alice took sleeping as 'six feet under.'" Michael Bruce Well I don't really know my self Cause I ain't I really tried Rutting leaning on that crazy stuff Too many friends have died Got respect for the sleepers But the sleepers... I'll be buried in the same old way But probably not for years Yeah, I'll be buried in the same old way From TV whiskey and beer Got respect for the sleepers But the sleepers are dead Well I don't really know my self Cause I ain't I really tried But falling that crazy stuff Too many friends have died Got respect for the sleepers All the sleepers are dead Yeah, they're dead ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8) Muscle Of Love (Cooper, Bruce) 3:45 "One of our most Yardbirds-sounding songs. Especially, the guitar breaks." Alice Cooper "We were in a limousine driving into Seattle. It was near the end of the "Billion Dollar Babies" tour, and we were thinking of names for the next album. We were brainstorming and the ideas were flying all over the place. Glen was lying on the floor chillin' and blurted out "Muscle Of Love." Great title." Neal Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9) Teenage Lament'74 (Cooper, Smith) 3:52 "It was hard to be a teenager in 1974. You had to make major decisions, such as whether you should cut your hair like David Bowie or like Alice Cooper." Alice Cooper "I was off the road relaxing between tours at our Alice Cooper mansion in Connecticut, and I wrote this while lying in bed. We had all been to hell and back with our grueling schedule, and I was doing a little reminiscing. Liza Minnelli, Ronnie Spector, and the Pointer Sisters all did great backup vocals for this one." Neal Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10) Working Up A Sweat (Cooper, Bruce) 3:31 "A straight-ahead rocker with some great slide guitar by Mick Mashbir." Michael Bruce ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11) Man With The Golden Gun (Cooper, Bruce, Buxton, Dunaway, Smith) 4:09 (Tracks 8-11 from the album "Muscle Of Love" (1973)) Produced by Jack Richardson and Jack Douglas. Engineered by Jack Douglas and Phil Ramone. Recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, Record Plant, New York, The Cooper Mansion, Greenwich, CT, A&R Recording Studios, New York. Performed by The Alice Cooper Group with Mick Mashbir, Dick Wagner - Guitars Bob Dolin - Keyboards, Backing Vocals Stu Day, Dennis Ferrante, Dave Libert - Backing Vocals Sarah Dash and Nona Hendrix (of Labelle), Liza Minnelli, The Pointer Sisters and Ronnie Spector - Additional Backing Vocals on "Teenage Lament'74" The Pointer Sisters - Additional Backing Vocals on "Working Up A Sweat" Liza Minnelli - Additional Backing Vocals on "Man With The Golden Gun" "I was reading the James Bond novels even before the first film came out. Everyone in the band loved Bond novels and especially the John Barry soundtrack music. I had found out that the next Bond was going to be called "Man With The Golden Gun." I figured, 'Perfect, I'll beat them to the punch and use that title for our own song, figuring that they would want to use it.' When it came time for them to do the soundtrack, they used a song by Lulu. Lulu?!?" Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12) I'm Flash (Steve Hammond, Dave Pierce, Steve Pierce) 3:11 "I was approached to do this song for a rock opera project based on Flash Gordon. The songs they brought me did a good job of capturing the Alice spirit." Alice Cooper Chorus: I'm Flash I'm the hero I'm the bopper who's the poppa of the crew I'm Flash... And I fight evil And my spaceship flies the red, white and blue I'm Flash Like a streaker You'll find me cruising out among the stars And I'm feared ... by every outlaw And every renegade from Jupiter to Mars The jails are full in Saturn and I ... can tell you why 'Cause I'm the full-blasting, protoblasting hero of the sky On Mars the smugglers starve no matter what they the try 'Cause I'm the ever lasting, flabber-ghasting guy who's flying high I'm Flash Yeah, I'm the hero... From the star sprangled U.S of A I believe in packin' ... punchin' ... power And hitting fast ... 'cause that's the only way Flash I'm Flash... And I'm a mover My spaceship glides twice the speed of light I'm Flash... And I'm a He-Man I'm a six foot one inch block of dynamite I'm Flash... In shining armour And I love to rescue damsels in distress And my wave length ... is always open So I can any call of S.O.S I've been in trouble of the worst kind ever since I left the womb I'm a death defying, terrifying spotlight in the gloom When you see me coming, boys, just give me lots of room 'Cause I'm the liquefying, crucifying harbinger of doom Chorus I'm Flash And I fight evil And my spaceship flies the red, white and blue You know, my spaceship flies the red, white and blue I said, my spaceship flies the star sprangled red, white and blue I'm Flash, spelled F L A S H ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13) Space Pirates (Hammond, Dave Pierce) 3:13 (Tracks 12-13 from the album "Flash Fearless Vs. The Zorg Women (Parts 5 and 6)" (1975)) [various artists] Produced by John Alcock and Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Geoff Workman, Dave Palmer and Mike Stone. Recorded at Chrysalis Studios, London, Record Plant, New York and Los Angeles. "I'm The Flash" Alice Cooper - Lead Vocals; Robert A. Johnson - Guitars; Johnny Weider - Guitars; John Entwistle - Bass; Bill Bruford - Drums. "Space Pirates" Alice Cooper - Lead Vocals; Keith Moon - 'Long John Silver' Vocals Steve Pettican - Slide Guitar; Justin Hayward - Acoustic Guitar; John Entwistle - Bass; Nicky Hopkins - Piano; Kenny Jones - Drums. "This was a fun song and Keith Moon's pirate ramblings are priceless. He really did want to be Long John Silver." Alice Cooper Chorus 1: Out of the blue came a kill-crazy crew... Whose motto was to stomp on the weak With bones in their hair they was hungry as bears And there leader was King of the freaks Chorus 2: They was ... Space Pirates The lowest scum ... of the yellow sun They was ... Space Pirates Sack a galaxy just for fun (Spoken): Fire away Well now, out of the blue came this wolf pack who knew... That the name of the game was to hate Perverts and pimps followed one-legged gimps They was bow legged bastards of fate They was ... Space Pirates Skulls lie white on the martian sands They was ... Space Pirates Empires ransom in their hands (Spoken): People were scared Out of the blue came this mind-blowing zoo A collection of mutated crud Death on their hips, there was foam on their lips... And behind them a shadow of blood They was ... Space Pirates Broken bodies and twisted minds They was ... Space Pirates Screaming nightmares left behind Chorus 1 & 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14) Welcome To My Nightmare (Cooper, Dick Wagner) 2:47 - Single version "I needed a song to literally set the stage for the nightmare... we wanted something creepy yet jazzy. Alice gives Broadway a nightmare." Alice Cooper "Sparked by a hurricane, this song led to the biggest rock'n'roll tour of that era. There were steady 70-mile-an hour winds blowing up from the beach as Alice and I sat on our lawn chairs and I started playing the opening riff and chords on my acoustic guitar. Suddenly Cooper sings, 'Welcome to my nightmare - I think you're gonna like it.'" Dick Wagner ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15) Only Women Bleed (Cooper, Wagner) 3:30 - Single version "Before we released the "Nightmare" album, one of the guys from the record company went around and played this song for people, asking them to guess who was singing. NO ONE guessed it was Alice Cooper of all people. Some of them did think it was James Taylor, though. Turned out to be our most covered song, including a version by Tina Turner (that's too cool)." Alice Cooper "Something we were not supposed to be able to do with Alice Cooper... a ballad. And even in doing something this essentially romantic, because it was Alice Cooper, we had to find a twist. The record company was really scared of it and of its title. It turned out to be a huge hit and was quite career expanding for Alice." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16) Cold Ethyl (Cooper, Ezrin) 2:54 "Another piece of the nightmare. A lighthearted take on necrophilia taken much too seriously by the likes of Ann Landers." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17) Department Of Youth (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) 3:17 "This song didn't quite fit into the nightmare, but that's the great thing about dreams - they don't have to make any sense! Of course, the ending line was the part about Donny Osmond." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18) Escape (Cooper, Kim Fowley, Mark Anthony) 3:14 (Tracks 14-18 from the album "Welcome To My Nightmare" (1975)) Produced by Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Dave Palmer, Jim Frank, Ed Sprigg, Corky Stasiak, Rod O'Brien and Phil Ramone. Recorded at The Soundstage, Toronto, Record Plant, New York, Electric Lady, New York, A&R Recording Studios, New York. Performed by: Alice Cooper - Lead Vocals; Dick Wagner - Guitars, Backing Vocals; Steve Hunter - Guitars; Bob Ezrin - Keyboards; Josef Chirowski - Keyboards, Claviet, Backing Vocals; Tony Levin - Additional Bass on "Welcome To My Nightmare" and "Escape"; Johnny Badanjek - Drums; Michael Sherman - Backing Vocals; Prakash John - Additional Bass on "Only Women Bleed", "Cold Ethyl" and "Department Of Youth"; Whitey Glan - Drums; Michael Sherman, David Ezrin and The Summerhill Children's Choir - Backing Vocals "Another Alice-autobiographical song. Whether it was getting out of a straightjacket or out of school or getting out of a nightmare, it seems like I was always trying to escape from something." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 19) I Never Cry (Cooper, Wagner) 3:43 "An alcoholic confession. I have managed to drink away most of my emotions. Sitting there, I couldn't remember the last time that I had cried." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 20) Go To Hell (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) 5:12 (Tracks 19-20 from the album "Alice Cooper Goes To Hell" (1976)) Produced by Bob Ezrin. Engineered by Brian Christian, John Jansen, Ringo Hrycyna, Corky Stasiak and Jim Frank. Recorded at Soundstage, Toronto, Record Plant, New York, RCA Recording Studios, Los Angeles. Performed by: Alice Cooper - Lead Vocals; and The Hollywood Vampires: Dick Wagner - Guitars, Backing Vocals; Steve Hunter, John Tropea - Guitars; Bob Ezrin - Keyboards, Backing Vocals; Al MacMillan - Piano; Bob Babbitt, Tony Levin - Bass; Jim Gordon, Allan Schwartzberg - Drums; Jim Maelen - Percussion; Shawn Jackson, Bill Misener, Colina Phillips, Michael Sherman, Laurel Ward, Sharon-Lee Williams - Backing Vocals "As I recall, this started in the back seat of a taxi in Barbados, where I came up with the verse's riff while playing it on the floorboard and sat on the cab with my feet and hands. When I got back to New York, Dick and Alice and I turned it into another Alice-autobiographical anthem. Along with cowriting the song and leading the band, Wagner came up with that heavy metal character in the second half of the song." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CD 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) It's Hot Tonight (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) "Very heavy guitars but with a real groove to it. I guess that's why the Beastie Boys sampled it for one of their songs." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2) You And Me (Cooper, Wagner) - Single version (Tracks 1-2 from the album "Lace And Whiskey" (1977)) "Showing my romantic side that I usually kept pretty hidden. Frank Sinatra once covered this song while performing at the Hollywood Bowl. Backstage, he came over to me and said, "You keep writing 'em, kid - and I'll keep singing 'em." Wow. Alice Cooper "I actually took the chorus from "Love At Your Convenience" and wrote a new song on the spot, in the studio... the next Top 10 single." Dick Wagner ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) Billion Dollar Babies "I Miss You" (Bruce, Mike Marconi, Smith) "My wife, a model, was away in Italy on an international photo shoot. I was feeling down and was missing her, and that's when I wrote this. When she returned, she was wearing a new ruby and diamond ring from a 'friend' had given her while she was cruising with him in his convertible Rolls-Royce. Needless to say, she became my ex-wife shortly thereafter." Neal Smith Touched by thoughts as cold as ice Like some bathroom floor No love can be worth this price Still I ask for more Endless days and restless nights And forgotten scenes Hopelessly I tried to find Escape from this deam Baby I miss you When are you coming home No matter where you are I hate being alone Love is sweet And bitter too The taste can leave cold You know I hate it But I cannot refuse to capture control How it seems There's no way out I guess I never knew Emptiness has left no doubt Now I want you Baby I miss you When are you coming home No matter where you are I hate being alone Baby I miss you When are you coming home No matter where you are I hate being alone Baby I miss you When are you coming home You've been gone for so long Baby I miss you When are you coming home Tell me you're coming back ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4) No Time For Tears (Van McCoy) "A song that I did for a Mae Vest movie 'Sextette.' She really did ask me to come up and see her sometime! And she was serious! It was tempting, but it would have been the most frightening experience of my life... she was 86! It was an honor to have worked with her." Alice Cooper No time for tears Stars don't have time to cry No time for tears He's just another guy Who used your heart But don' forget who you are You're playing the part The greatest movie star So soul aches You think it's The end of it all But tears always dry And all of us lie That's all Yeah tears always dry And all of us lie That's all Your soul aches You cry out You're weeping You're while But tears always dry And all of us lie Sometimes Yeah tears always dry And all of us lie Sometimes But tears always dry And all of us lie Sometimes? Yeah tears always dry All of us lie Sometimes? Only sometimes ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) Because (John Lennon, Paul McCartney) "When I was told I was going to work with George Martin, it was the first time ever I was a little nervous going into the studio. This was a guy whose music I grew up with. When I first sang it, I did it sounding exactly like John Lennon. George thought it was fine but then asked me how I thought John would want Alice to do it. So, I did it again, and I could see George through the studio glass laughing away at my nuances. He loved it!" Alice Cooper Because the world is round it turns me on Because the world is round Because the wind is high it blows my mind Because the wind is high Love is old, love is new Love is all, love is you sweetie Because the sky is blue it makes me cry Because the sky is blue ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6) From The Inside (Cooper, Bernie Taupin, Wagner, David Foster) - Single version "This comes from my three-month stay in an institution for my alcoholism, where I met the wackos that inspired the characters of this album. More storytelling from Alice. The combination of Cooper/Taupin songs and David Foster resulted in what I consider my classiest-sounding album." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7) How You Gonna See Me Now (Cooper, Taupin, Wagner) "Based on an actual letter that I wrote to my wife. She never really known me as a sober person. Once I had dried out, she didn't know what kind of person I was going to be, and I didn't know how she would react to me. More than 20 years later, we're still married." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8) Serious (Cooper, Taupin, Foster, Steve Lukather) "One of my personal all-time favorites. I wanted something that was in overdrive. Rick Nielsen's guitar style was perfect. Also, one of Flo & Eddie's many appearances on Alice Cooper albums. Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9) No Tricks (Cooper, Taupin, Wagner) "Performing this was a bit of stretch for me, as it was really the only bluesy/soul song I had ever done. The lyrics were on my secondhand knowledge of what it must be like to be a junkie. I imagined withdrawal was similar to what it was like for an alcoholic to stop drinking." Alice Cooper No tricks Up my sleeve I kicked the downs And now I'm clean No shakes Up my spine I beat the speed and I Dumped the wine No tracks That was yesterday I changed my style The way I play (Don't you believe it) No blues No depression No more panic Or obsession Don't you believe Anything he said All them junkies talk that way It's just as bad as it was before I see the man knockin' at his back door ... this kid's straight And put on ice The street corner deals at any price Come on and check my veins And check my eyes No tracks That was yesterday I changed my style The way I play (Don't you believe it) No blues No depression No more panic Or obsession Some tricks Just go away And other tricks They're here to stay (Oh don't you know me) Sometimes my spirit's willin' The flesh is weak and That's what's killin' Don't you believe Anything he said All them junkies talk that way It's just as bad as it was before I see the man knockin' at his back door Hey now this kid's straight Put on ice The street corner deals at any price Come on and check my veins And check my eyes I tried so hard But I'm hurting for another fix It's just this habit I, I can always kick What do you say there friend? (Don't you call me..) It's just a game And I can beat it any day No matter what this lovely lady say Hey, wanna be my friend? Some tricks They go away And other tricks They're here to stay (Oh don't you know me) Sometimes my spirit's willin' My flesh is weak and That's what's killin' Don't you believe Anything he said All them junkies talk that way It's just as bad as it was before I see the man knockin' at his back door I said this kid's straight And put on ice The street corner deals at any price Come on and check my veins And check my eyes ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10) Road Rats (Cooper, Wagner) "A tip of the head to my road crews... made up of that special breed of roadie who lives on the road from tour to tour and doesn't even look forward to going home." Alice Cooper ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11) Clones (We're All) (David Carron) "I wasn't too sure about this song at first, but Roy Thomas Baker kept after me to give it a chance. We worked on it to make it very deadpan and robotic, which I liked. An odd song and a left turn musically for Alice." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12) Pain (Cooper, Davey Johnstone, Fred Mandel) "One of my favorite lyrics. What would it be like if pain were a person? This is how I described him." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13) Who Do You Think We Are (Cooper, Duane Hitchings) - Single version "For some strange reason I started reading 'Soldier Of Fortune' magazine on a regular basis, and this is what came out of it. My weirdest incarnation... Apocalypse Alice. We used the action of real guns for the sound effects on this album." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14) Look At You Over There, Ripping The Sawdust From My Teddybear (Robbie Leff, Billy Snell) - Demo version "The missing song for fans of the 'Special Forces' album is now finally heard for the first time anywhere. There is a simple explanation as to why this mystery song was listed on the album cover. The credits wound up being done before the album was actually finished. Alice originally intended on this song to go on the album, but at the last minute, he decided it didn't really fit in with the rest of the songs. He was right." Brian Nelson, box set producer You got your crust Turning my daydreams into dust Oh look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear Yeah look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear You're so darn pretty girl Well I think you know it you was you On Monday morning putting back yakity yak Oh look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear Yeah now look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear You take the pebbles from the babies rattle You make Santa's raindeer look like cattle You take Tinkerbells rust And turn it into sawdust Yeah now look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear Yeah look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear You take the pebbles from the babies rattle You make Santa's raindeer look like cattle You take Tinkerbells rust And turn it into sawdust You got your crust Turning my daydreams into dust Yeah now look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear Yeah now look at you over there Ripping the sawdust from my teddybear Look at you over there Yeah look at you over there Look at you over there Over there, over there, over there, over there My poor teddybear, teddybear, teddybear, teddybear ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15) For Britain Only (Cooper, John Nitzinger, Mike Pinera, Jan Uvena, Eric Scott) "It had been several years since we had toured England, and I was pretty overwhelmed by the great reaction. This is a tribute song to my home away from home." Alice Cooper We blasted Glasgow Invaded France Assaulted Sweden Took down our pants And lovely England My little kitten Deliriously Black widow Billy For Britain only Only for Britain, yeah For Britain only Only for Britain Jumped on the concord Ain't much for sittin' I told my boys, now No public spiting No bar room fighting No bad head splitting Behave yourself 'cause we're, we're back in Britain For Britain only Only for Britain Cost six years of time and space It took so long to change his face To redesign his streamline face Now strong and sleek but still no taste Guilty I'm guilty Won't go to Hungary Iran is out Welcome to Moscow, huh I have my doubts Can't get near Libya That boy's insane Let's head for London Where we can scream again For Britain only Only for Britain, yeah For Britain only Only for Britain For Britain only Only for Britain, yeah For Britain only Only for Britain ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16) I Am The Future (Lalo Schifrin, Gary Osborne) - Single version "I was a big fan of Lalo Schifrin?.. I mean the guy wrote the theme to 'Mission Impossible'! He was very good about allowing me to adapt the song to make it more 'Alice.'" Alice Cooper "Alice and I had a very exciting working collaboration. I was very impressed by his intellect and his acute perception of social and philosophical matters. We laughed a lot together, and we carefully avoided talking about the technical aspects of music." Lalo Schifrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17) Tag, You're It (Cooper, Nitzinger, Scott) "My odd to the new genre of horror movies that had emerged at the time, 'Halloween' in particular. When you get tagged in this game, it's generally with a butcher knife. We spent a couple of hours in the studio stabbing watermelons to get the right slashing sound effects on this." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18) Former Lee Warmer (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) "One of Alice's quirkiest and most Edgar Allan Poe lyrics. The darkness and the disjointedness... the near schizophrenia of this song and indeed the whole 'Da Da' album was the result of the intense struggle with alcoholism that Alice had returned to. None of us were in the best of shape at the time, in fact. That having been said, there is some real genius in the lyrics of this song." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 19) I Love America (Cooper, Graham Shaw, Wagner, Ezrin) "Maybe the funniest song that we ever came up with. Imagine Alice Cooper as a big, dumb, redneck truck driver, giving his testimony on the U. S. of A. I would love to go back and do a video for this song." Alice Cooper "Alice and me in a hotel suite, Toronto, dead of winter, laughing our asses off writing this one." Dick Wagner "Brilliant Cooper social commentary of the same ilk as 'Generation Landslide.' One of the things that Alice does is take a snapshot of America through the filtered lens of a child of the television age. We were very focused as a team and really enjoyed ourselves on this one." Bob Ezrin ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 20) Identity Crisises (Cooper) "I was offered to star in a low-budget splatter movie in Spain. The producers promised me that it would only be seen in The Philippines, but it found its way into every video store from coast to coast. The song is performed with myself as different characters in the film. A very Iggy-sounding song. I give this movie two stars." Alice Cooper Sometimes I'm James Bond Sometimes I'm Billy The Kid Sometimes I feel like Sherlock Holmes Sometimes I feel like Jack The Ripper 'Cause I got an image out of control Identity crisisis I don't need a new face 'Cause mine's been erased Identity crisisis Sometimes I'm on a case Sometimes I'm shooting bad dudes Sometimes I'm slashing the face Sometimes I'm looking for clues Sometimes I'm braking the law Sometimes I'm solving a crime I'm always fast on the draw I get the girls all the time 'Cause I got an image out of control Identity crisisis I don't need a new face 'Cause mine's been erased Identity crisisis Sometimes I'm James Bond Sometimes I'm Billy The Kid Sometimes I feel like Sherlock Holmes Sometimes I feel like Jack The Ripper 'Cause I got an image out of control Identity crisisis I don't need a new face 'Cause mine's been erased Identity crisisis 'Cause I got an image out of control Identity crisisis I don't need a new face 'Cause mine's been erased Identity crisisis ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21) See Me In The Mirror (Cooper) "Vampires and Gothic romance." Alice Cooper See me in the mirror if you want to See me in the mirror if you really want to Maybe not too clear, but the face you'll see is mine Do you feel my eyes burning thru you Do you feel the burn when my eyes see thru you Do you see my eyes when their burning to your mind I can feel the teardrops hit the ground where I'm layed I can feel you breathing while I sleep thru the day See you in a vision when there's dark and no light? Your soul may go to heaven, but your heart's mine tonight Do you feel my skin when you touch me Do you feel my skin when you reach and touch me Calling you within but it's still somehow alive And you can feel my blood running thru you You can feel the rush of my blood run thru you You can feel the gush when my blood runs up your spine And I can feel the teardrops hit the ground where I'm layed I can feel you breathing while I sleep thru the day See you in a vision when there's dark and no light? Your soul may go to heaven, but your heart's mine tonight See me in your mirror if you want to See me in the mirror if you really want to Maybe not too clear, but the face you'll see is mine See me in the mirror, mirror, mirror See me in the mirror, mirror See me in the mirror, mirror See me in the mirror, mirror See me in the mirror, mirror, mirror ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 22) Hard Rock Summer (Cooper, Kane Roberts) "An upbeat, American rock'n'roller that we did to offset the horror-laced stuff we were doing at the time. We didn't put it on the album, but they did use it for the chase scene in the movie ('Friday The 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives')." Alice Cooper I'm a rock and roll vagabond I'm a streetwise runaway Sixteen when I left home And I don't regret it a single day I'm a sucker for a loud guitar Got one tatooed on my chest It's hot July My mouth's too dry(?) You know I'll be screamin Hard rock summer Hard rock summer ... ... Hard rock summer in the USA Hard rock summer in the USA Got a job It was so damn hard Just workin' for the man (?) All year long I saved my pay And I stashed it in a rusty can ... And blew my head Then he blew me out of town I ... my van at the L.A. sand California screamin' Hard rock summer Hard rock summer Rock all night Gonna blow this town Til morning light Going round and round Hard rock summer in the USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CD 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1) He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask) (Cooper, Roberts) 3:20 - Demo version "No one seems to be sure why this version wasn't on the album. Someone at the record company got scared, I guess. I really liked it though, and I kept pestering Alice about it. So he rewrote it and turned it into the song 'Trick Bag' on the 'Constrictor' album." Brian Nelson ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2) He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask) (Cooper, Roberts, Tom Kelly) 3:44 - Movie Mix "This song fit right into the game plan as we were doing the 'Nightmare Returns' tour and splatter movies were at their height of popularity. It was fun being on the cover of 'Fangoria' magazine with Jason. The single went to #1 in Sweden... go figure." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3) Teenage Frankenstein (Cooper, Roberts) 3:32 "Alice and I wanted to write something that expressed how we felt freakish sometimes when we were teenagers. That was one of the appeals of the Frankenstein monster, cuz everyone has days when they could swear there are bolts sticking out of their necks and toilet paper hanging on from their asses." Kane Roberts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4) Freedom (Cooper, Roberts) 4:04 "My message to P. M. R. C., who had become worried that I was back recording and touring." Alice Cooper "We were on tour and Shep started cracking the whip. He wanted to hear some more songs for 'Raise Your Fist.' Alice and I had been particularly inept in trying to figure out the recording equipment we had pieced together in the room to use in the hotels, so we found a tiny studio in Pittsburgh (it was actually some dude's home setup) and wrote and recorded a demo in one day." Kane Roberts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5) Prince Of Darkness (Cooper, Roberts) 5:09 "John Carpenter used a piece of this in his movie 'Prince Of Darkness' and cast me as the leader of the street zombies. I got to impale someone with a bicycle frame. Probably Kane's finest guitar work on this one." Alice Cooper "This is a glimpse into the true greatness of Alice Cooper. The lyrics (written in under 30 minutes while he lay on a couch in the studio) are flawless and chilling. Writing the music to these words was both effortless and an honor. There is a joy working with Alice, because despite all the controversy surrounding the man, I was always aware of the uncontrived taste of reality he gives us from time to time (which is the difference between him and some of the wanna-be shock rockers who claim to be 'real' crazy and yet they're still trivial enough to actually spend five minutes of an interview criticizing Alice for not being crazy enough)." Kane Roberts ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6) Under My Wheels (Cooper, Dunaway, Ezrin) 3:10 (with Axl, Slash and Izzy of Guns N'Roses) "I had always thought that would be a good song for Guns N'Roses to do when I first heard 'Welcome To The Jungle.' So, it was pretty perfect when we wound up doing it together for the movie ('The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II, The Metal Years')." Alice Cooper (Alice): Telephone is ringing You got me on the run I'm driving in my car now Anticipating fun (Axl): I'm driving right up to you, babe I guess that you couldn't see, yeah yeah But you under my wheels Why don't you let me be (Together): 'Cause when you call me on the telephone Saying take me to the show And then I say, honey, I just can't go Old lady sends me packing leaving home (Axl): The telephone is ... ringing You got me on the run I'm driving in my car now I got you under my... (Together): I got you under my wheels Yeah, you're under my wheels I got you under my wheels Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah The telephone is ringing You keep me on the run I'm driving in my car now Anticipating fun I'm driving right up to you, babe I guess you that couldn't see, yeah yeah But you was under my wheels, honey Why don't you let me be I got you under my wheels (5) Yeah yeah (Axl): We're gonna drive down to LA We're gonna watch the young girls play Because I want you Because he wants you I got you under my wheels (11) I got you under my... I got you under my wheels ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7) I Got A Line On You (Randy California) 2:59 "A good, straight-ahead rocker, originally done by a band called Spirit, that I think shows again that Alice can do straight-ahead rock'n'roll. Another Flo & Eddie appearance." Alice Cooper Now, let me take you babe, down to the river bed Well, I got to tell you something that'll go right to your head, yeah I got a line on you babe (2) Yeah, I got a line on you I got a line on you babe C'mon! Now, put your arms around me, every little bit of your love Oh, you know what to do, I'll make love to you You got the right stuff ... and I do to I got a line on you babe (2) Yeah, I got a line on you I got a line on you babe Yeah! I got my eye on you babe, on your velvet skin I wanna put my hands were they've ... never been Get real hot ... in the midnight steam Soaking in the rain in my favorite dream Your lips are red, the moon is blue I only ask you once what you want to do Gonna touch you babe 'til the night is thru Look out honey, got a line on you Oh yeah! The winter's almost over, the summer she's coming on strong I wanna love you, love you, love you, love you all year long Yeah I got a line on you babe (2) Yeah, I got a line on you I got a line on you babe Ah yeah! I got a line on you babe (2) Yeah, I got a line on you Yeah, yeah, yeah I got a line on you babe (2) I got a line on you I got a line on you babe ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8) Poison (Cooper, Desmond Child, John McCurry) 4:27 "My band tells me that every stripper that they've met had danced to this song. Desmond and I really worked hard on this one. The background vocals alone took three days to do." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9) Trash (Cooper, Mark Frazier, Jamie Sever, Child) 3:58 "We recorded some of this at Jon Bon Jovi's house, and he sang his part in two takes. We were very loose during the session and totally ad-libbed the stuff at the end of the song. This was dedicated to the infamous Cathouse nightclub in Los Angeles." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10) Only My Heart Talkin' (Roberts, Andy Goldmark) 4:44 "Steven Tyler was great on this. I think he was the best rock'n'roll voice in the business. It wasn't easy trying to keep up with his vocal range!" Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11) Hey Stoopid (Cooper, Jack Ponti, Vic Pepe, Bud Saylor) 4:15 - Single version "My anti-teenage suicide song. At the time it seemed everyone in rock'n'roll was acting depressed, which didn't interest me at all." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12) Feed My Frankenstein (Zodiac Mindwarp, Cooper, Nick Coler, Ian Richardson) 4:42 "Doing this in the 'Wayne's World' movie turned this song into an instant classic. I always thought Zodiac Mindwarp had a great feel for what Alice Cooper was about. Also, this is the first time ever that Joe Satriani and Steve Vai had ever been recorded together." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13) Fire (Jimi Hendrix) 3:00 "The band kept running through this to warm up before recording, so we wound up taping it one day just for the fun of it. Probably my favorite Hendrix song." Alice Cooper (Spoken): One, two One, two, three Alright! Now dig this trash, baby You don't care about me, I don't care about that I got a new fool, I like it like that I got only one burning desire Let me stand next to your fire Let me stand next to your fire (2) Let me stand Let me stand next to your fire I wanna stand Let me stand next to your fire Listen here, baby Now stop acting so crazy You say your mom ain't home, that ain't my concern If you play with me, ah, you won't get burned I got only one kitchen desire Let me stand next to your fire Let me stand next to your fire Oh, let me stand Let me stand next to your fire Yeah, let me stand Let me stand next to your fire Come on, let me stand Let me stand next to your fire Oh, yeah Move over, Rover Let Alice take over Aah, you know what I'm talkin' about Get over that, baby That's what I'm taking about Dig this You gotta give me your money, better save it, babe Save it for your rainy day I got only one burning desire Let me stand next to your fire Let me stand next to your fire Baby, let me stand Let me stand next to your fire Whoah, let me stand Let me stand next to your fire I wanna get that man where *** Oh, let me stand I just wanna stand Ah, Jimi's rolling over now Hey, hey, K. J. Aah, you know what I'm talkin' about Huh, yeah yeah, fire I just, just wanna stand In ya fire So how baby ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14) Lost In America (Cooper, Dan Wexler, Saylor) 3:54 "I tried to make it as dumb (and funny) as possible... kind of a tribute to Beavis and Butt-head. I love how the lyrics go around in a circle like a dog chasing his own tale." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15) It's Me (Cooper, Jack Blades, Tommy Shaw) 4:40 "In my head, this was always the last song on the album ('The Last Temptation'). The calm after the storm. The showman will always be there for the song's protagonist, Steven, no matter how far he goes. Alice's interpretation was much gentler and more inspirational." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16) Hands Of Death (Spookshow 2000 Mix) (Rob Zombie, Charlie Clauser) 3:53 "Working with Alice was like Luke Skywalker confronting Darth Vader; the circle was complete. The student meets the master. It was a dream come true." Rob Zombie Creep and crawl inside, to the heart of cold So dead and paralyzed, perversion of the soul Seduce the wicked ones, disturb the mortal sting I am the only one, a dark and dreary thing I am the blood washing, across the crucified Yeah so few are chosen, I do not die I am the whore of fire, I see through sulfur eyes Your guardian in denial, a genius of the night In the hands of death, burn baby burn Creep and crawl inside, into the heart of cold So dead and paralyzed, perversion of the soul I'm the blood washing, across the crucified Yeah so few are chosen, I do not die In the hands of death, burn baby burn Burn baby burn ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17) Is Anyone Home? (Cooper, Wexler, Saylor) 4:10 "My rebuke to the Internet and how people become dependant and antisocial because of it. Some of it is about a friend of mine and one of his nervous breakdowns." Alice Cooper Talking in my sleep, next to no one Never never, say never again I can't rise and shine, no I won't even try My rainy windows are ... crying, crying Shoulda Woulda Coulda been ... like it shoulda been Hot contender like Marlon Brando Eani Meani Minei Mo, caught a virus won't let go Been down so long it looks like up to me I'm so lonely, I can almost taste it In a perfect world I'd just be wasted Send me an angel, wrap me in her wings Hello, hello, hello... Is anyone home? Where people love to talk, when I can hardly walk To them I'm probably just the news and a living It's the edge of night ... as the world turns Mis-understood or just the wrong medication I wish, I wish upon a star I wish it hadn't gone this far Been up so long it looks like down to me I'm so lonely, I can almost taste it In a perfect world I'd just be wasted Send me an angel, wrap me in her wings Hello, hello, hello Is anyone home? Hello, hello I'm really, really wasted I live in a big dull house ... and nobody's home, just me and my mouse (2) I'm so lonely, I can almost taste it In a perfect world I'd just be wasted Send an angel, my own little angel Hello, hello Is anyone home? Is anyone home? Hello, hello Is anyone home? Hello, hello, hello Is anyone home? Hello, hello Is anyone home? Hello, hello, hello Is anyone home? Hello, hello, hello Is anyone home? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18) Stolen Prayer (Chris Cornell, Cooper) 5:36 "Alice Cooper meets Johnny Cash. Chris Cornell's voice is in a class of its own." Alice Cooper ------------------------------------------------------------------------