When
you invoke the name of Alice Cooper, you’re gonna get a reaction. The rock fan
nods in knowing reverence, John Q. Uptight cringes. With a 35-year reign of
challenge, instigation, and gender-bending theatrical horror, Cooper is truly a
pop culture icon.
The
music on Cooper’s new record, The Eyes Of
Alice Cooper, is the standard sarcastic, self-effacing hard rock he’s known
for, mixed with the sinister macabre for which he’s loved. Where Cooper might
have gotten caught up in the times, technology-wise, with his last few
platters, The Eyes is back to basics,
bare-boned, bleak, and unforgettable. It wails straight out of the Detroit
garage. It is classic Alice Cooper.
Cooper and his group cranked out the
album in two weeks, playing almost everything live in the studio. No frills. No
fluff. No polish.
“It’s hard to play simple,” he says
via phone from, I’m guessing, Wonderland. “And sometimes it’s hard to find a
band that doesn’t overplay. You get guys that go in there and the drummer’s
filling every hole, the guitar player wants to play the lead through
everything. And in order to make a really good, solid garage rock album, you
have to back off everything. You have to tell the drummer, ‘OK, no fills, just
play the beat straight through.'”
However,
sometimes Cooper concedes. “Every once in a while we’ll do a song where it’s
like, ‘Go ahead, go for it. Just go Keith Moon on me.'”
Cooper’s new band has obviously been
raised on Cooper. They were in diapers when he was in straitjackets; They were
losing their virginity while he was losing his head. With their proficiency and
obvious reverence to the classic sound, they threaten to out-Cooper Cooper.
“These guys are all aficionados of
that Detroit Sound. They’re all very educated in that sound. So are The Vines,
so are The Strokes, and The White Stripes.” And they’re bringing Cooper back to
the old sound, like “a dog chasing its tail,” he says.
“All of a sudden the new-school
bands are playing old-school music,” he says. “And the old-school bands like us
are picking up on that and going back to our original sound.”
No
apologies. The Coop thinks folks are just fed up.
“I think it’s a reaction to slick
rock — I’m not going to call it rock ‘n’ roll, it’s not rock ‘n’ roll at all
— slick music. I think there are kids out there that are sitting around going
‘Hey, what happened to rock ‘n’ roll? How come we can’t have that music
anymore?'”
When the Alice Cooper Group first
hit the scene in the late ’60s, with the help of Frank Zappa, people freaked.
“Everybody was so terrified that
their kids were gonna end up like me,” he says. Even Ann Landers got her
panties in a bunch, dedicating a whole column admonishing Cooper for his ode to
necrophilia, Cold Ethyl.
“We were just street guys playing.
We learned from The Yardbirds. We just threw in a little West Side Story, a
little Edgar Allan Poe.” And the people who were shocked probably didn’t get it
anyway.
As
far as providing a shock in rock now, Cooper laughs, “That ante has been upped
a hundredfold.” This from the man who once promised to “drive a stake through
the heart of the Love generation.”
“Rock
kids today are still hungry for a real rock band,” he says referring to The
Ramones, The Stooges, and even himself.
So The Eyes Of Alice Cooper is here to feed that jones. The theatrical
satire and mayhem are there as well, but the Coop feels they’ve lost a little
of their sting.
“How
do you shock an audience with a guillotine and a snake when you just saw an
entire war on television… live,” he asks. “Suddenly that little piece of
theater, it’s not really that shocking is it?”
Cooper
the man (Vince Furnier), separates himself from Alice Cooper the character.
“I’m
Dr. Jekyll and he’s Mr. Hyde,” he says. “And for 35 years, he’s been my
favorite rock star.”
Alice Cooper plays on
Friday, October 31, at the Bear’s Den, in the Seneca Niagara Casino, 310 Fourth
Street, Niagara Falls, at 10 p.m. Tix: $35. 716-299-1100
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2003.
