Welcome to My Nightmare_The Alice Cooper Story

by Dave Thompson

  Returning to the RCA Studios in Chicago, recording Killer was as straightforward as Love It To Death had been protracted. Again Bob Ezrin produced, and again he introduced his own subtle flourishes to the band’s basic roar. Alice laughs when he recollects Ezrin first suggesting the addition of oboe and cello to beef up some of the bass lines, and how the band waited, boiling with trepidation (and the chance to mock his efforts of course) as the producer keyed up the tape.

  But it worked, just as Ezrin said it would; and so did another of Ezrin’s personal touches, drafting guitarist Rick Derringer into the studio to handle two particular guitar parts; Glen Buxton was having girlfriend problems, and simply wasn’t learning his parts quickly enough. So Ezrin found somebody who would, and simply smiled as Derringer walked into the studio, spent 15 seconds tuning his instrument, then laid down precisely the sound that Ezrin was looking for. And if the watching Coopers learned a little lesson in professionalism that day, all the better.

  And so Killer came together as a classic combination of a band that knew the sky was the limit, and a producer who dreamed of flying even higher. Plus it packed the most photogenic cover star of the year, the smouldering eyes and patient smile of Kachina the constrictor.

  Certainly the media was hypnotised. Killer, proclaimed Lester Bangs in Rolling Stone, “is without a doubt the best Alice Cooper album yet and one of the finest rock’n’roll records released in 1971. It brings all the elements of the band’s approach to sound and texture to a totally integrated pinnacle that fulfils all the promise of their erratic first two albums, and beats Love It To Death‘s dalliance with thirties flick ‘spooky’ cornball riffs by the sheer sustained impact of its primal rock and roll jolt…. This is a strong band, a vital band, and they are going to be around for a long, long time.”

  Alice alone made his first excursion to Europe in June 1971, flying to London for three days of press receptions prior to a longer tour in the autumn. It was a busy schedule, and one that got off to a bang, Warners’ UK office declared, the moment the plane touched down on English soil and it was discovered that the old lady seated next to Alice on the flight was dead, and not fast asleep as people had assumed. The story was an invention, of course, the first of many that would shock the UK press over the next couple of years, but that didn’t stop Alice from playing along with it. Natural causes were the culprit, but wouldn’t it have been funny, he smirked, if he’d painted a couple of fang marks on her neck?

  Most of Alice’s time was spent in hotel rooms and record company offices, talking to the media. But his schedule also allowed time for some sightseeing and shopping, including a visit to a Kings Road boutique whose owner, and customers, would in later years become as notorious as Alice Cooper; under the new name of Sex, the little store at World’s End would unleash the Sex Pistols on the world. Right now, however, Let It Rock catered for London’s Teddy Boy community, the leftover fifties rockers who still littered the streets in decades-old fashion, and glared menacingly at anyone who passed by.

  Malcolm McLaren, the store’s co-owner (with partner and designer Vivienne Westwood) recalls, ‘All the visiting Americans used to come in because they couldn’t find clothes like ours at home, so Alice came in, nobody knew who he was at the time, or not many people anyway, but he introduced himself and bought some leather trousers, some tops… and he signed an album cover to put on the wall. Somebody stole it a few months later, but we always had Alice on the jukebox after that.” And that jukebox would play its own part in the Sex Pistols history, when Johnny Rotten auditioned for his future bandmates by miming to Alice Cooper’s ‘I’m Eighteen’.

  The trip was a well-marshalled exercise, one which first necessitated the waiting Anglos to be bombarded with the imagery that the American media was already familiar with. Brian Blevins of the UK magazine Cream warned, “audiences are likely to see some or all of the following: pigeons and chickens (quite warm and alive) thrown into the audience, followed by a whirlwind of feathers torn from a pillow; the massacre of a watermelon with a hammer, with juice and pulp gushing over the floor; the use of crutches and brooms and inflatable toys, smoke machines and a huge inventory of other gadgets and gimmicks; and physical fights among the members of the group.

  “The musicians… will wear narcissistic shiny silver jumpsuits, dresses, a straitjacket, leotards or anything that fits, most of it made with loving care by Cooper’s mother. Sometimes they will play music …”

  Now that music was to be heard in concert. Despite the singer nursing a vicious dose of flu, Alice Cooper’s UK debut finally arrived in November, with a late-night warm-up at the Mayfair Ballroom in Birmingham, out of sight of prying critics and out of reach, too, of many of those who were waiting to see the band.

  Britain had been divided over the Coopers’ worth long before their plane touched down. Word of their outlandish stage show had encouraged more than one publicity-hungry Member of Parliament to suggest that the group should be banned from visiting, while Alice insists that a ban actually came into force, “because of urban legends… ‘Alice Cooper worships the dead and is cruel to animals’.”

  In fact, with the guile that so many record companies are capable of tapping when it comes to awakening interest in a new musical import, the ban and many of the outraged quotes were strictly for show, hyper-active minds in the press office calling their favourite contacts at the music and daily press, and passing on a story that might have been dreamed up in a meeting only an hour before.

  If the Birmingham debut was low key, however, two nights later brought a baptism of fire as Alice Cooper launched into two shows at the London Rainbow, a converted cinema in the north London corner of Finsbury Park that had been hosting rock concerts (as the Astoria) since the mid-sixties.

  The first of these, on November 6, 1971, saw them opening for the Who as part of a three-day event reopening the venue; they were a last minute addition (the lightweight rockers Quiver were the “official” opener) and, although an audience tape exists of the Alice Cooper band’s performance, it cannot be said that they attracted much attention. It was the following night’s show that drew all the eyes, as Alice Cooper headlined the venue, billed above former Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band mainstay Roger Ruskin Spear, and Arthur Brown – himself no stranger to theatrical rock outrage and, in terms of a tempestuous career arc, even more of a role model to the Coopers than that.

  Best remembered for the 1968 chart-topper ‘Fire’, Brown was blessed with one of the fullest voices in rock, capable of shifting in seconds from satanic whisper to blood-chilling scream, but his influences were American soul and R&B, shot through with jazz, lengthy improvisations and even four or five minute comedy skits. “It was the beginning of the underground,” Brown remembers. “There was Soft Machine, ourselves, Pink Floyd, Marc Bolan was just starting out, and we were the sort of people they’d send out to places where there wasn’t an underground and we’d carve the way. Sometimes people would kick our gear down the stairs because they objected to our music, sometimes they’d accept it.”

  They accepted it within the fertile atmosphere of London’s prime underground nightclub, UFO, and it was there that Brown’s imagery coalesced. Drummer Drachen Theaker recalled, “It was a wild act, but it wasn’t that wild musically. We were just an R&B group underneath. What made it psychedelic was Arthur’s acting ability, and the fact that [organist Vincent Crane] and I just overplayed to death at gigs. We made a hell of a noise for two people!”

  Two period views of the Crazy World sum them up. First, journalist Charles Fox, writing in the New Statesman: “… there is a sinister element… one which recalls the smell of seaweed and the rattle of spades and pails. For somehow Arthur Brown contrives to be both the malevolent Punch and – in drag, with grotesque wig and flowered gown – a psychedelic Judy.”

  And now, author Nik Cohn: “… he was one long gangling skinny streak, complete with haystack black hair and great staring eyes and an elephant’s nose. And when he came on, he was we
aring Sun God robes, a science fiction mask, the Bug-Eyed Thing, and his head was on fire.”

  Got that? His head was on fire. Not his hat, not even his hair. His head. And though it eventually transpired that, actually, it was his hat, and occasionally his hair as well, still the effect – as Charles Fox continued – was “disconcerting, even faintly perverse”.

  The focus of the Crazy World’s act shifted after Brown came up with ‘Fire’. Part Biblical horror, part bad trip, ‘Fire’ was the cue for Brown’s “crown” – originally a vegetable colander with a candle stick attached, but later developing into a considerably more elaborate helmet – to burst into flames.

  ‘Fire’ went on to top the charts throughout much of the civilised world, establishing and maybe even typecasting Brown as the God of Hell Fire. Certainly, he was never able to repeat its success, but the fire dance became one of the most famous routines in rock theatre. And now here was Alice Cooper, vying for a crown that Brown must surely have believed was his forever.

  By 1971, Brown’s live set had progressed far beyond a simple blazing hat. Caught on film at the Glastonbury Festival earlier in the year, with his new band Kingdom Come, Brown appeared surrounded by burning crosses, in and around which he would dance and flare, while unleashing those unearthly shrieks from the depth of his soul. Indoor venues were somewhat more safety conscious, and that included the Rainbow, whose own history included the night Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar on stage for the first time. So Brown contented himself with scaling things back, and crucified himself instead.

  Beat that, Alice Cooper.

  No problem, replied Alice and Melody Maker journalist Michael Watts sadly reflected that, “The kids who’ve never heard of Arthur Brown and Lord Sutch, and to whom the Stones and Zappa are an obsolescent fact of life. [have] discovered a new hero in Auntie Alice. Just wait till their moms and dads learn more about him, till they realise he chops up babies and is hanged on stage. Just wait till they start asking questions in the House about this ‘undesirable American performer’.”

  Alice certainly shrugged away accusations that he was indebted to Brown. “I thought he was really good, but he wasn’t really an influence. He probably has the greatest vocal range ever, but he was using his fantasy as I use mine. His was fire, mine was guillotines and babies,” and it would be another 40 years before the two could truly be compared side by side, when Brown was special guest at Alice’s Halloween 2011 show at the Alexander Palace in London.

  Two hours into a show that had already seen him guillotined, Alice stood back while Brown was readied for his performance, face-painted in a twisted parody of the Yin and Yang symbol, robed and crowned and then ignited, to unleash that unearthly shriek once more. By which time, of course, it didn’t even matter who had done what first or best. This was rock theatre in the hands of its two greatest exponents. Just like it had been, four decades earlier.

  Then what about Screaming Lord Sutch? He, too, had a nice line in theatrical costuming and notions, and it seems almost petty, four decades removed, to recall the way the British press lined up to throw what were, in truth, very passing local fancies into Cooper’s face, as though he deliberately sat down and thumbed through the last 10 years’ worth of Anglo music papers, in search of past heroes to callously rip off. Yet it happened, and Sutch himself was not above poking fun at his new adversary.

  “I was wearing white powder and black around my eyes in 1959,” he told America’s Hit Parader. “Alice Cooper has a nice act but I was doing that exact same thing 10 years ago. The only thing different is the sound of the music. I did everything that Alice does now. I used to do swords and axes and have the make-up on. I actually saw a picture in one rock magazine that I thought was one of my stage shots – but it turned out to be Alice. He was wearing top hat and tails, which is what I wore to promote the Lord Sutch image.”

  Interviewed some quarter of a century later, however, Sutch laughed at attempts to belittle Alice Cooper by pointing out his own precedents. “I borrowed from Screaming Jay Hawkins. He borrowed from… whoever. It goes on and on, and everyone takes something from someone and runs with it. Yes, Alice did a lot of the things I used to, but so what? He did a lot of things I didn’t, and he entertained a lot of people by doing so. To be truthful it used to make me mad when I’d read about people putting him down for ripping me off, because it reminded me of how I felt when they said the same things about me.”

  The other big difference, of course, was that Alice had a sharp manager and a big record label behind him, but Sutch must have been very annoyed the week after the Rainbow concert.

  “Alice Cooper gave a most moving performance at London’s Rainbow Theatre on Sunday night,” Melody Maker’s Chris Welch declared in his review of the show. “She made me want to move right out of the theatre; out of the rock business; out of the country. But I only got as far as the conveniently placed fountain in the foyer, where it was better to vomit than over the packed, wildly cheering audience.” And his view was not an isolated one.

  No less than in the United States, Alice Cooper divided as they conquered, slicing the waiting audience neatly between those who saw shock theatre as a welcome adjunct to a regular show; and those who believed it was the music that mattered, and that any attempt to do more was simply hyperbole and flash. Melody Maker clearly fell into the latter camp, at least for now. “America’s greatest industry is packaging and its finest culture is advertising,” snarled Welch. “Alice Cooper is crescendo and finale in gift-wrapped emptiness. Buy now. But your values cannot be refunded.”

  Elsewhere, minds were less closed to the chaos. “It was one of the best shows yet seen [at the Rainbow],” remarked the International Times, the hyperbole dimming only when you remembered that Alice Cooper was just the second band to headline the place since its name change. “The glamorous drag prince from America came to town and tore the place up. Perfectly structured singles rolled out from Love It To Death, a rocking razzamatazz in gold and silver lamé, like a scene from Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.

  “Further adventures with a straitjacket and electric chair followed, keeping the audience bewildered. The suffering was so sham it was surreal…. As music, it’s not half bad, as showbiz it’s riveting and as trash it is absolutely incomparable.”

  The view from the paying customers, too, was expansive. Martin Gordon, who in years to come would play bass for that very same Sparks band who once wrestled Alice Cooper to be Los Angeles’ most hated, recalls the show vividly. “I saw Alice Cooper for the first time on November 6, 1971 at the Rainbow Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park. It was my first experience of rock theatrics. The stage darkened, and a single spotlight fell on the stringy figure on his knees at the front of the stage. Alice (for it was he) was viciously bashing a hammer on the floor, and the syncopation (thump thump, thump thump) resolved itself into the Aussie ballad beloved of sheep-shaggers the world over – ‘Sun Arise’. Alice sang the opening verse alone in the spotlight. With a flourish, the stage lights went up and the band crashed into the chorus. What a moment… it was revelation!”

  They were, he laughs, a “gang of ruffians who stepped into the Rainbow Theatre spotlight; impossibly skeletal bassist Dennis Dunaway, swaggering guitar duo Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton – not people I wanted to meet in a dark alleyway. Or even a well-lit alleyway, come to that. It was West Side Story brought to life.”

  A similarly warm welcome awaited elsewhere on the continent, as Alice Cooper filed away shows in Denmark, Holland, Switzerland and Germany, where they shot a sensational “I’m Eighteen” for local TV’s Beat Club.

  There was a star-packed party in Paris, France, where guests were invited to attend dressed as actress Raquel Welch – another symbol, of course, of American packaging at its finest. Charlie Watts, Bianca Jagger and Alain Delon were among those who showed up (sans costume, sadly), but the star of the evening was Omar Sharif who, according to a report in Express magazine, “came as Raquel in the part of Myra Breckin
ridge. But he looked more like Groucho Marx. A lot of people came as Raquel in the part of Kansas City Bomber. You’ve never seen so many well-built ladies on roller skates in your life. They caused chaos.”

  The real Raquel, incidentally, was not invited.

  French television got in on the act, airing captivating clips of ‘Is It My Body’, ‘The Ballad Of Dwight Fry’ and ‘Black Juju’, and providing future historians with one of just two widely circulated video souvenirs of the Coopers at their peak (the other was a few grainy black-and-white excerpts shot at a club in Asbury Park that same year). The snake and the straitjacket are both in evidence, and no matter how uninviting the venue, or tiny the stage, still Alice Cooper behaved as though they were visiting royalty, and not an American cult with a nice eye for dress-up.

  ‘Black Juju’ is relentless, scarifying and scabrous, hypnotic even before Alice begins the hypnotism, and if the electric chair routine relies more on bright lights and a slump of the shoulders, still Alice’s revival is as intense as it is insistent, Smith’s drumsticks beating clockwork behind the singer’s sibilant demands… “rest, rest, bodies need their rest”. And then, “wake up!”

  The Cooper band bade farewell to the UK with one final performance, on television’s Old Grey Whistle Test rock show and, almost exactly 40 years later, Alice sat down with one of the show’s regular hosts, disc jockey Bob Harris, to reminisce. “Coming from Arizona, where we watched Shindig and Hullabaloo, and every week there’d be a new band from England and we’d sit there as kids and go ‘Wow, we’ll never get over to England, a little bar band like we are.’ And we finally got [there] and it was a huge deal being on British television playing rock’n’roll.”