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“Eyes” His Past As He Looks To The Future |
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COVER
FEATURE
by Tom Lounges
Try as they may, none
of these modern age pretenders to the throne have come close to matching
the creative, macabre genius of this 55-year-old son of a Detroit
preacher.
Nor can they match his
track record of hits or his sheer endurance. Cooper, a former alcohol
abuser who now takes great pride in his good health, has undertaken four
world tours in as many years.
“I’ve been on the
road almost non-stop since releasing The
Last Temptation... album in ‘99,” said Cooper in a phone
call from Florida where he had just wrapped up his daily round of golf.
“But that’s who I am. I’m
just very old school when it comes to that kind of stuff.
As an artist, you put an album out, you do a ton of press, and
then you go out and pound the pavement all around the world, playing
those songs for the fans night after night after night!”
Cooper eschews using
high tech methods for marketing his wares, favoring the tried and true
method of taking the music straight to the people.
“I don’t rely on the internet to sell albums or get my music
to my fans. I believe in
just going out on every stage that will have me and playing my ass off
for for people, taking my songs directly to them and saying – ‘Here
you go...I hope you like them’,” he continued. “That’s always
been my power, the concert stage. The show makes Alice’s songs and the
songs make Alice’s show. Let’s face it, Alice Cooper songs demand to
be done live on stage, because they are written with that in mind.”
Guillotine
decapitations, a gallows hanging, dancing skeletons, swords, sorcery,
dead babies, and buckets of blood have all been a part of the Alice
Cooper experience over the years. And they still are in varying
degrees...
Cooper recycles his
past the way the rest of us recycle soda pop cans and milk cartons.
“I think of Alice as being timeless.
I like to bring back some of Alice’s classic stage props from
past tours, along with some of the old Alice songs that we haven’t
played live in years,” he
said.
Cooper went back in
the warehouse and pulled out the old 1972 Love
It To Death stage backdrop for this latest tour. He
is also bringing with him a lot of Marshall amps, because he explained,
back in the Seventies, it was all about who had the biggest wall of
Marshalls.
“I’ve brought back
the snake for this tour. It’s
been a long time since the snake has been part of the show and it was
something a lot of fans said they missed,” said Cooper.
“I adhere to the old Barnum & Bailey philosophy of giving
the people what they want...”
Unfortunately for this Cooper fan, the
“people” evidently do not want to see ol’ hard-hearted Alice
dangling from the gallows. “The
guillotine is something the fans never seem to get tired of seeing,”
said Cooper. “We’ve
been using that on the last couple tours.
When that wears out its welcome, we might bring back the gallows
again.”
What was planned as
the third and final installment of Cooper’s new millennium saga about
tormented souls trapped in a battle-scarred world of madness and mayhem,
which began with 2000’s Brutal Planet and carried over to 2001’s Dragontown, has been
scrapped in favor of doing what Alice refers to as – “An old
fashioned rock n’ roll album!”
As for why the
original trilogy concept was forsaken and forgotten, Cooper commented --
“I realized that doing a third album based on the same storyline would
really be redundant. I
believe that I told the story the best that I could over the course of
those [two] albums. I could
come up with some more characters and some more stories about what goes
on in Dragontown, but what’s
the point?”
The point would be for
him to free us –– “his victims” –– from their torment and
bring us home safe.
After all, by the last
track on such past horror-themed gems as Welcome To My Nightmare
and Goes
To Hell, Alice always showed us the loop hole, the secret to
escaping and returning safe and sound.
“Well, NOT
this time!,” cackled evil Alice.
“There is NO redemption for those in Dragontown.
They’re all beyond salvation.
I’m leaving you all there.”
Ouch! Alice you
truly have become hard-hearted! Cooper managed to
personally escaped the darkness and despair of Dragontown by turning on the radio and discovering that a whole new
generation of young rockers had come to embrace the raw Detroit garage
sound that his original teenage band, The Earwigs, had pioneered along
with seminal acts like The Stooges and the MC5. “I
started hearing these bands like The Vines, The White Stripes and The
Strokes and they all sounded so exciting and raw,” said Cooper.
“They sounded a lot like we did back when we were all just
starting out. That made me realize how much I liked those old albums we
made and that sometimes you need to go back to your roots to recharge
your soul.” Wanting to step away
from the effects-heavy sound of his recent conceptual epics, Cooper bid
goodbye to the studio wizardry of his long time producer Bob Ezrin (Pink
Floyd, Kiss). Rising
young studio talent, Mudrock (Godsmack),
was put behind the studio console in his place.
Mudrock shared Cooper’s dream of taking Alice’s music back to
Detroit circa 1972, and recapturing a short slice of time that was
post-Earwigs / pre-Welcome
To My Nightmare. “To
succeed in getting that old sound like we had [on the Love It To Death or Killers
album] back in the early ‘70s, we needed to go back and find the same
kind of old gear that we had back then and we needed to play instruments
from that era,” said Cooper. “So we brought in these dusty old tube
amps and we brought in about a 100 old guitars -- from old Les Pauls to
old Silvertone surf guitars -- that the guys would switch on and off
using from song to song.” To the chagrin of his
young band, Cooper insisted on plugging in and playing live in the
studio, just as he and the original Alice Cooper Band had done thirty
years ago. “We went in
and rehearsed a song all morning and then would take a dinner break,”
explained Cooper. “Then
we’d come back to the studio and do 20 takes of the song and pick the
best take to use on the album.”
When a member would
catch a musical flaw, Cooper dismissed their suggestions to “go in and
fix it” by noting that with all the mics open during recording, that
flaw was all over the tape, making it impossible to re-do individual
parts. “To me that
is what makes a good rock ‘n’ roll record,” said Cooper.
“I didn’t want to make a Steely Dan record here, I didn’t
want a perfect sounding record. I
wanted a dirty, old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll record with all the
warts.” In the end, Cooper
attained what he set out to accomplish with this album.
“Overall, I think it is the most radio friendly album I have
made in 20 years,” he said. “Radio folks must thing so too, because we’re getting
played!” A half dozen new
tracks from The Eyes Of Alice Cooper are being mixed in with a horde of
classic Cooper favorites like “Billion
Dollar Babies,” “Eighteen,” “Desperado,” “No More Mr. Nice
Guy,” and “Under My
Wheels.” New numbers showcased
on this current tour include such instantly memorable ditties as “Between
High School and Old School,” “The
Song That Didn’t Rhyme” and his current U.S. single, “Novocaine.”
Another number being
blasted nightly from the mountain of Marshall amps that replicates the
arena-rock look of early Cooper shows, is “Detroit
City,” a song that salutes Cooper’s embryonic days and gives
props to the other Motor City bands of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
“I’ve
got Wayne Kramer of the MC5 playing guitar on that song,” boasted
Cooper, proud of the added authenticity Kramer’s iconic presence
brings to the overall album’s sound and that song in particular.
There’s a lot of talk about “old
school” these days in music. Well
kiddies... this is the real deal. The guy who sang -- “School’s
out forever!” -- is now ringing the bell for us to get back into
the classroom for a lesson in what “old school” really means.
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The
archtype for all theatrical rock artists -- Alice
Cooper -- long ago set the bar too high for the likes of Marilyn
Manson, Slipknot and other mask wearing wannabes to beat.
With
a great new album to hawk -- The Eyes Of Alice Cooper