I was reminded today that twenty years ago (in 2003, for anyone reading this in the years to come), I was offered a chance to work on a project related to Alice Cooper after my book, The Illustrated Collector's Guide to Alice Cooper, came out.
What was happening was that Warner Brothers was looking into releasing a boxset of Alice's albums that had come out from them over the years. The boxset was to included new remasters of the albums in CD form, along with additional bonus tracks. With that was the idea of added new liner notes to each album and an offer had been sent out to writers and even fans in general to submit their own liner notes to the project.
Thus, to be completely open about this, it wasn't like Alice's management came running to me, begging for me to do this. More like, an email sent out to me saying essentially, "we're working on this project, and if you'd like to contribute, give it a go and we'll see what happens."
There were also requests for the set's title and one I still have here in my notes from way back when is Beer, Babies, & Blood.
Well, it was still early days for me.
So I sent in my various "great" titles and two articles to use as liner notes, one for Alice Cooper Goes to Hell and another for Lace and Whiskey, both albums from a darker period in Alice's career, and one article that is a tad more fun than the other in the process.
The project never materialized, although I never heard why. My gut suggested that the sales on Alice's Life & Crimes boxset did not really push interest in following through on a massive boxset of multiple albums. Whatever it was, Warner passed, people moved on, and I still have these liner notes that I thought I would share twenty years on.
So if you're interested in "writers reading their early sh*t" then have a go.
The first here is for Alice Cooper Goes to Hell:
“How many said, ‘I wonder what happened to Alice?’”
There’s no doubt about it, Alice Cooper was facing a certain amount of risk in 1975. After seven studio albums with the same musicians, Alice had broken away from the group and ventured his future on the album Welcome to my Nightmare. Without the help of his fellow band members, Alice would have to prove that he could put together material that would stand up to the successful level of their previous work. It was also an album that helped cement the conceptual nature of some of the band’s previous work as well. None of the albums before it had tried to stick with a focal point for an entire album; with Welcome to My Nightmare, there was a theme to the songs gathered there. Perhaps the theme was a bit loose in places, but still a main theme throughout the album. (“Department of Youth” hardly falls into play as part of the “nightmare” setting of the album, unless you consider the kids seeing Donny Osmond as their leader a nightmare.)
Alice furthered that risk by using the album to expand upon what people should expect when seeing him in concert. Sure, Alice had done conceptual pieces on-stage since the very early days – like the guillotine, or the intervention of a dancing tooth, or even the pummeling of a sacred American icon such as Santa Claus – but now Alice progressed beyond incidental moments during a show and turned the entire show into that of some type of traveling Broadway musical.
Welcome to my Nightmare represented both in concert and on vinyl pieces of a story. If the audience had not appreciated the story being told, the album would have died on the charts and the tour would have had a hard time being successful. Fortunately for Alice, his gamble turned out to be correct. Welcome to my Nightmare was a huge success, leading to a Top Five album, a Top Twenty single, a popular tour, an hour-long network television special, and a full-length theatrical concert film. His stance that the audience wanted to see more than just a bunch of guys standing around on stage during a concert proved true.
The only problem after the final concerts were completed in late 1975 was how to follow-up on such a major challenge. Where could one go with the Alice character after taking him through his nightmares? The answer, of course, was to send him to Hell, and the aptly titled Alice Cooper Goes to Hell was the results.
Originally to be titled Hell, the album was recorded during March and April of 1976 at Soundstage in Toronto, Record Plant East in New York City, and the RCA Studios in Los Angeles, California. Producing the album was once again Bob Ezrin, the young producer that had worked wonders in the studio for Alice Cooper almost steadily since Love It to Death in 1970. As with Welcome to My Nightmare, Ezrin helped explore the landscape of Alice’s world with additional orchestration and an element of audio theatrics that would be a staple of most of Ezrin’s work through the 1970s and 1980s. By doing so, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell almost comes off as a radio play more than a “concept album,” with lyrics working as dialogue between characters (especially in “Give the Kid a Break”), establishing the plot and actions of the story instead of just giving listeners another song to fill up the allotted vinyl wax.
Ezrin was not the only returning member to the party either. Brian Christian, who had worked on both the Love It to Death and Killer albums, returned to co-engineer and co-master the album. In the forefront of the musicians working on the album – nicknamed “The Hollywood Vampires” in the credits, which was also the nickname given to a group of famous personalities that Alice was hanging around with after-hours at the time (including such individuals as Keith Moon and John Lennon) – were Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter. Both had contributed to the success of Welcome to My Nightmare, with Wagner also helping co-write most of the songs on Alice Cooper Goes to Hell with Alice and Ezrin. Meanwhile, another alumnus from Welcome to My Nightmare, Michael Sherman, was present to lend backing vocals for the album.
The music on the album was a return to the conceptual nature of Welcome to My Nightmare, only going one step further. While Welcome to My Nightmare dealt with the protagonist of the album on a journey through his worst nightmares, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell did exactly what the titled implied and sent our protagonist down to Hell. Once there, he discovers that Hell is a huge disco (because, after all, wasn’t disco pretty much Hell to any rock-and-roller at the time?), and that the Devil was the coolest guy in town.
Meeting up with the Devil, Alice tries to prove that he’s even cooler, or at least he won’t cry about having to be there. Alice then tries to state his case as to why he must be in the wrong place, but they won’t just give him a break. Instead he realizes he may be guilty and stuck there for a long time. Yet, there’s always a chance that the Devil won’t be able to tolerate a good old sappy song like “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” If that’s the case, Alice may make it home after all. Or does he?
In developing the story – or, rather, the bedtime story told to “Steven,” as suggested in the opening paragraph printed on the original vinyl release’s innersleeve – in this pattern, Alice Cooper managed to move Alice Cooper Goes to Hell beyond the selection of short stories told on Welcome to My Nightmare and previous albums. Now the entire album was one complete story, with each song telling a chapter. Even “I Never Cry” fit into the story, although admittedly in the loosest way possible. But perhaps the biggest difference that stood Alice Cooper Goes to Hell apart from that of Welcome to My Nightmare, or even any of the previous Alice Cooper albums, was the level of humor shown in the lyrics. Although many songs in the Cooper catalog had a certain degree of humor about them, this album is full of comedic moments. Who couldn’t laugh at the “crimes” listed in “Go to Hell”? Or hearing the Devil going on about how cool he was in “I’m the Coolest”? Or that the backup singers even turned against Alice in “Give the Kid a Break”? In fact, one could even say that Alice Cooper Goes to Hell is actually Alice’s Divine Comedy, if such a title actually meant humorous intentions.
And as to some of the highlights along the way in Alice’s Inferno:
“Go to Hell” would go on to become a popular song for fans, even if it never was released as a single. In fact, Alice has returned to the song several times over the years in concert straight up to the present date. “Wish You Were Here” and “Guilty” also made the tour circuit in years to come.
“I’m the Coolest” was originally intended as a duet. In an interview for Crawdaddy magazine (August 1976), Alice suggested that he had wanted someone like Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles for the role of the Devil. Instead, a serious offer was made to actor Henry Winkler (who was gaining international fame as the Fonz on the television series Happy Days at the time), but Winkler turned it down, feeling that it would perpetuate his image as the Fonz and typecast him. So, instead, Alice himself played the role of the Devil, sounding oddly Zappa-like upon completion. (Then again, Alice was originally signed to Frank’s label, Straight Records, so perhaps it wasn’t quite that odd of a selection in a voice for a devil who knew how cool he was.)
“I Never Cry,” another ballad from Alice to capitalize off of the success of “Only Women Bleed” on Welcome to My Nightmare, was the first and only single released from the album — a rarity for Alice. “I Never Cry” was a big hit for Alice, reaching No. 12 on the US charts. It also became a standard in concert for the next several tours and a million-selling Gold single.
With the release of the album (featuring a cover that was actually just a blown-up photo of Alice from the innersleeve of the Billion Dollar Babies album) on June 25, 1976, Alice had big ideas for a tour that would really open up the music on the album and turn the show into a full retelling of the story in-concert. From stories told about the planned tour, it really would have been a full-blown touring Broadway show. Plans were made to build a muti-level stage, with the main portion being that of a Disco to represent Hell itself. Musicians Hunter and Wagner, and most probably the rest of the band that toured with Alice for Welcome to My Nightmare, were positioned to take part in the tour as well. Everything seemed to be set to begin the tour in Canada and the U.S. during the summer of 1976, and even an announcement about the first four dates were listed in the rock magazine Circus at the time.
Unfortunately, that was not to be. Two days before rehearsals were to begin, Alice was diagnosed with anemia, and his doctor advised rest for a period of time. In light of his health at the time, the tour for Alice Cooper Goes to Hell was canned. The plans for the tour that would have seen this comedic rock opera brought to life were derailed, never to be brought up again. Instead, Alice would go promote his album with a series of television appearances, mainly in August and September of 1976. Such promotion helped the album reach No. 27 on the US charts and No. 23 on the UK charts. It was also certified Gold on November 23, 1976, a pretty big accomplishment for an album that had no tour to help promote it.
Even with the success in sales, Alice was unable to capitalize on the conceptual nature the album. As stated, there was no tour to be critiqued, photographed, or mulled over by fans in the years to come. There are no commercially-available movies or videos to document the narrative of Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. Even his television appearances in support for the album were fleeting in nature and rarely seen at best, available to fans only in faded, video-dupes that are little more than guest-appearances on variety shows.
Because of the inability to promote the album properly, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell never took off in fans’ minds like Welcome to My Nightmare did. Thus, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell has become a “lost” album. Fans today remember a couple of songs from the album; and as previously mentioned, a few of the songs have even been returned to in concert over the years; yet Alice Cooper Goes to Hell is not an album the fans immediately refer to as one of their favorites when discussing the Cooper catalog. Nor is the album seen as a building-block for the straight narrative that would come with such later albums as From the Inside or (even later) The Last Temptation. Even the following year’s release of Lace and Whiskey has brought forth more heated discussions amongst Cooper fans than the comedic story of Alice trip to Hades.
That’s a shame, as there is a lot of material on Alice Cooper Goes to Hell that still sounds fresh and cleaver today. And thanks to this remastered edition of the album, fans will have a chance to get reacquainted, or perhaps even introduced, to the adventures of Alice down the rabbit hole.
Way, way, way down the rabbit hole.
And, if you're still reading, here's my "more fun" take on Lace and Whiskey:
“Never put a dollar on a horse named Immortality.”
The kid standing in the middle of my office had a look on his face that was as empty as my wallet. I decided to finish my thought anyway, even if it did fly over his head like a baseball knocked out of the park. “Never put a dollar on a horse named Immortality, because it’s a bet you’ll never collect on.”
From the way the kid was just blinking at me in confusion, I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere with my advice. Sadly shaking my head at his loss, I grabbed the paper bag he had in his hands and looked inside to make sure my dinner-order from Sam’s Deli was there. With my credit at an all-time low with Sam, I wanted to make sure he didn’t send me a bag that should be set on fire and stuck outside the front door.
“Uh, Mr. Escargot,” the kid hesitantly said, while holding out his right hand. “When I said that Sam allows the delivery boys to get tips, I didn’t mean advice. Y’know, advice isn’t really a tip.”
I nodded in agreement, impressed that his words were almost as sage-like as my earlier comment about Immortality. “That’s pretty good, kid. I hear that one all the time. Must be a popular saying.”
The kid stood there for a few seconds, staring at me. Probably wondering how a smart guy like Maurice Escargot had to order out to a deli on a Friday night when he should have been out on the town or perhaps even solving a case. I dug into the bag and pulled out my roast beef sandwich, as the kid muttered something under his breath, stomped out the door, and slammed it behind him. Probably in a hurry to tell his buddies about my words of wisdom, no doubt.
I poured myself a drink from the bottle in the right-hand drawer of my desk and had just bitten into the hard roll sandwich when there was a knock at my office door. Before I could tell whoever was on the other side to go away, the door opened and a gorgeous dame entered the room. She was a fiery red-head and the word built came to mind to describe her as she was so built there was no need for any other words than the word built. Her expensive dress clung close to her body – just as it should – and in combination with the cool confident of her glide across the room and her jutting jaw, she looked like a cobra happily ready to strike. And I knew I was in her strike-zone.
Normally, I would have told her to come back another time, but the rent was behind and the dame was in front of me, so I figured a case might be around the corner. I motioned for her to sit down as I took a swing from my glass of “orange juice” in order to force the food in my mouth down my throat.
After coughing for several seconds to clear my windpipe, I began my questioning of the dame. “What can I do for you, Miss - "
“That doesn’t matter,” she spat out like Bette Davis on twelve cups of coffee, as she dug into her purse. “What matters is that I need your help in finding out information about someone.”
“What kind of information?” I leaned back in my chair and nonchalantly put my feet up on the desk, crushing my roast beef sandwich in the process. As I wiped away the horseradish from my shoes, she handed me a small, square, clear box with what appeared to be a cover for some cheap dime detective novel. I winced looking at it, as I’ve read a few of those books over the years and never thought they were believable. Too sedate for my taste. Still, I had to admit that the guy who photographed it, Richard Seireeni of Rod Dyer, Inc, did a fine job in capturing the excitement of the action I faced every day.
“I need to know how recording this music album and the tour that followed affected this man,” the dame said, pointing at the case I had in my hand. “His name is Alice Cooper and the album is Lace and Whiskey.”
“Lace and Whiskey, eh?” I flipped the box over and saw a picture of a man sitting behind a typewriter and trying to look stern and intelligent. He looked vaguely familiar as well, but I couldn’t quite place as to where I may have seen him before. Probably in a police line-up somewhere. I opened up the case and deduced that it there was some type of recording disc inside – like a miniature vinyl record – which said “Compact Disc Digital Audio.” I pulled out the little booklet that was inside the case and – knowing a little about the music biz myself – looked at the credits for the recording. “Looks handsome, but my critique of his mug is not what you’ll be paying me for, doll. What is it about this guy that you need to know?”
“I need to know what happened when he was working on this album. You see, I --“ She hesitated and her eyes darted back and forth like ping-pong balls in a ping-pong match being played by ping-pong players. “I work for Mr. Cooper and he remembers recording the album, but he was drinking a lot then and when he looks at it now it’s just a bit of a fuzzy memory for him. I worry that it may have done him more harm than good.”
I coolly snapped my arm to hand the box back to her, little realizing that she had pulled out a cigarette and was leaning over my desk to get to my lighter. After apologizing for knocking the cigarette across the room, I stood up and continued with my investigation.
“First things first. What can you tell me about the album, Sugar?”
“Well, Alice recorded the album back in January through February 1977, with Bob Ezrin producing once again.”
“Once again?” I called out from the corner of the room where I had seen the cigarette land.
“Alice recorded the album back in January through February 1977, with Bob Ezrin producing once again”
“No,” I said smoothly as I picked up her cigarette from the floor, dusted it off, and straightened it out before handing it back to her. “I mean, this Ezrin guy was producing again?”
“Oh, yes. Ezrin had produced a lot of Alice’s albums, going back to 1970 and Love It to Death.” She took the cigarette, but it had somehow been folded in half by the time she got it. She threw it in the wastepaper basket and pulled out another. “He even played keyboard on the album and did some vocals. In fact, there were a lot of people on the album that Alice had worked with before.”
I reached over my desk to the lighter and lit the brand new cigarette she had placed to her luscious red lips. Once done, I tossed the lighter in the basket without hesitation. I positioned myself in front of her and leaned back on the desk. “What can you tell me about these other people Alice had worked with?”
“Well, besides Mr. Ezrin, there was also Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter. They played guitar for Alice on his past two albums: Welcome to My Nightmare in 1975 and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell in 1976. They had even toured with him for his Welcome to My Nightmare album. In fact, Wagner was a major co-writer with Ezrin and Alice between 1975 and 1977, working on three albums together.”
She looked at me with her eyes and I couldn’t turn away. She had two, which were a good combination and more than enough for me. I felt warmth come over me as I looked at her. I felt hot. Too hot. Like a flame was flickering out of the corner of my eye.
“Do you realize your wastepaper basket is on fire,” she asked in that seductive purr her voice had. I chuckled and swaggered my head to my left to see what she was pointing at, and then ran behind my desk to pull out a bottle of seltzer water I had in the bottom left-hand drawer. I calmly put out the fire in the basket as I plied more information out of her.
“Go on about the musicians on the album.” I said, stomping on the smoldering ashes in the basket.
“Speaking of Wagner and Hunter, Ezrin had Tony Levin on bass, and Jozef Chirowski on keyboards. In fact, Ezrin used those four for an album he recorded for Peter Gabriel that year in the same studio, Soundstage in Toronto, Canada.”
“I see.” I became to pace the room, thinking over the events she had just told me while hearing the rhythmic clanging of the basket stuck on my foot as I walked. “And what was the name of the Peter Gabriel album?”
“Peter Gabriel.”
“Precisely.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Peter Gabriel.”
“Yes.”
“The name of the album was Peter Gabriel.”
“Ah! A trick question … on my part … just wanted to see if you were paying attention!” I walked/clanged back behind the desk and sat down opposite the dame. “Anyone else from his past on the album?”
She looked at the booklet again. “There’s Prakash John, who also played on the Welcome to My Nightmare album and played on the tour for that album as well. Then there’s Tony Levin again, who played on that album and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. Speaking of Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, Jim Gordon played drums on that album and on three tracks of Lace and Whiskey. Oh, and Brian Christian engineered the album, just like he did on Alice Cooper Goes to Hell.”
“I see.” I leaned back in my chair once again and started to prop my feet up. This time I remember to move my smashed sandwich over to the side, and swung up my feet, only to have water and trash from the stuck wastepaper basket on my one foot cascade up my pant-legs to my waist. “Ugh. Excuse me for a minute.”
I went into a little washroom I had in the office to clean up. I kept an eye on the redhead through a crack in the door, while beginning to unbuckle my pants so I could clean up. At that moment I heard the door to my office open and the sound of someone’s footsteps entering the room. The woman turned and around and gasped, standing up in fright.
“Rocco,” she cried out.
“Yes, it’s me, baby. I’ve been asking down at the construction site about you and they told me you were here. Are you still trying to find out how Lace and Whiskey affected Alice?”
“Yes, Rocco, I am.” The woman stood her ground, cool as a cucumber, while I stood with my pants around my ankles in the washroom. “I want to find out why he would make such a change in his career at that point. He had been the ‘Killer’ for so many years and people loved it to death. Why, the money he was making was easy action. He could have made a billion dollars, baby. Then he decided to pull out this detective character, and even showcased him in the middle of his concert tour to promote Lace and Whiskey. You remember, Rocco? The King of the Silver Screen tour back in ‘77? The one he named after one of the songs on the album. People didn’t really understand where he was going with all that gumshoe stuff. They were confused by it. I think it made him sick. Alice went to Hell and it was a nightmare.”
Rocco moved forward, but I really couldn’t see him clearly. “Aw, school’s out, baby. He was already sick. It just caught up with him on the tour, that’s all. Besides, he stuck with the ‘Killer’ during most of the show, as you said. It was only during part of the show that he brought out that dumb character. All that tough-guy talk was something he felt he had to do.”
Rocco stopped right in front of the dame and cradled her chin in his right hand. She jerked her head away and backed up a bit. “But, Rocco, it wasn’t all just talk. What about ‘I Never Wrote Those Songs’ or ‘My God.’ Those sounded like pleas for help.”
“Wrong, Sugar –“
“My name’s not Sugar.”
“Right, honey, but wrong about those songs. Just because he wrote them doesn’t mean that he was soul-searching there. Hell, doll, just because he wrote ‘Cold Ethyl’ doesn’t mean he made love to a dead person. The album was just a mistake, plain and simple. Something he shouldn’t have done.”
She turned away from him and dug into her purse. “I guess you’re right, Rocco. But doing the tour from June through August 1977, right on top of his Australian Nightmare Tour in March and April, probably was what wiped him out. The whole album . . . the whole tour . . . it all detoured his career and his health. And I can’t let it happen again.”
She pulled something from her purse and spun around. I could see the light reflecting off of the Derringer in her hand, as Rocco raised his hands slowly above his head. I knew then I had to make a move. Picking up a bar of soap from the sink, I whipped it through the open door of the washroom at her hand. The soap flew through the air and knocked her upside the head, causing her fingers to tighten on the gun as she turned sideways. The gun fired, and a bullet scraped Rocco’s right leg.
Rocco screamed like a schoolgirl. He looked up at me as he reached down to feel the small scratch on his leg. “You idiot! I would have been able to talk her out of the gun if you hadn’t have hit her with that soap.”
“No, Rocco, don’t thank me,” I said as I scooted into the room. “Because I have good news for both of you.”
Rocco reached over to the dame and helped her back on her feet. “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with your pants around your ankles.”
Looking down, I quickly pulled up my pants and moved back to my desk.
“No, it’s just that I now remember a thing or two now about this album. You see, Warner released this album in April 1977 and although it didn’t reach quite as high on the album charts as some of his other albums, it did make it to 42 in the US and 33 in the UK. It also had a huge hit with his ballad, ‘You and Me,’ reaching number nine in the US; not to mention being Alice’s biggest hit in Australia, reaching number three there. Not too shabby for any album, no matter who you are.”
Rocco and the redhead glanced at each other and tried to respond, but all they could do was nod their heads like a couple of yes-men. “Oh, sure,” I continued, “there was the cover version of Warren Smith’s ‘Ubangi Stomp’ that seemed a bit out of place, but there were also a couple of classic on the album that Alice would return to in later years on tour. Like ‘It’s Hot Tonight’ and ‘You and Me.’ And don’t forget the ‘Road Rats’ would become the basis for the 1979 movie Roadie, which featured a good cameo by Alice, honeybunch.”
“But what about the tour?” The hot-blooded pin-up girl said. “That surely was disruptive.”
Rocco latched on to the thought. “That’s right. Alice had to go away to a sanitarium after that tour to deal with his alcohol problem.”
I smiled. I was on a roll and knew it. “True. In fact, he was gone for all those days. From October until December of 1977, actually. But what you’re forgetting, sweet lips . . . uh, Rocco . . . is that his School’s Out Summer Tour1978 was done from April to September 1978, and it was essentially a continuation of the Lace and Whiskey tour. It was only after finishing the second tour that he started working on recording From the Inside. So he really was concentrating on making Lace and Whiskey a success.”
“So,” the dame’s face brightened. “Lace and Whiskey really didn’t hurt Alice? He wasn’t just trying to forget it?”
“Nope, sweetheart. He may not have many memories about it now beyond having fun recording it, but the album did nothing to hurt him. Or his career. Oh, maybe it was more scattershot and less ‘conceptual’ than Welcome to My Nightmare, or From the Inside; and maybe it was a bit off the beaten track from ‘Killer Alice;’ but there’s nothing wrong in trying something different every once in a while.”
“I – I never thought of it that way before.” The sweet girl sparkled like a cheap novelty bracelet and the waterworks started. “Thank you Mr. Escargot. I guess I was getting worried for no reason. Now Rocco and I can get married.”
“Why, yes,” Rocco exclaimed. “I hardly know you, but after we go to the hospital to have them look at my bleeding leg, we’ll drive all night to Vegas and get hitched.”
They turned to me with the biggest smiles on their faces. “Thank you, Mr. Escargot,” they said in unison as they turned again and raced to the door.
“Hey,” I shouted to the back of their heads. “What about my fee for solving the case?”
The door opened, then shut.
