I was scared by Alice as a kid during his heyday with the Alice Cooper group (aka the band called "Alice Cooper"), but around 1974 became a true believer after seeing him do some shtick on The American Music Awards co-hosting with Diana Ross, and doing his full "Unfinished Sweet" number on a Smothers Brothers' "comeback" summer replacement series in the mid-'70s (where I also first discovered the blessed Fr. Guido Sarduchi). I've been following the Coop in the three-decades plus since with some ups (the albums that were great, but nobody bought; the latter-day recognition as a theatrical-rock pioneer) and a few downs (the whole "metal" period in the '80s; the acknowledgement of his devout Christianity, which has seemingly removed the twin elements of danger and insanity that characterized his best musical and stage work). Alice had once mentioned when he was in the doldrums that he wouldn't mind being just "dragged out for Halloween every year" or somesuch, and so I honor his important contribution to rock, stage rock, and just generally great cinematic pop with this post. I thought I'd provide a little "walking tour" through his career, as presented on — take a guess, why dontcha — YouTube. I only had the chance to sift through the first 600 or so hits, so I never got to the second thousand, but this is a pretty good cross-section.
First, the great band known as Alice Cooper when they were signees to Frank Zappa's Bizarre label, seemingly free-form weirdo musicians, but already with an ear towards the pop perfection that Bob Ezrin brought out of them for good in 1971:
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The Cooper group doing a raw version of "Is It My Body?"
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An extremely rare old-style video-camera recording of the group at a club, which has been identified as both the Stone Pony in NJ or a club somewhere in Detroit. When I scored a copy of this a few years back it was the Holiest of the Holies, now it's available fer free on YouTube. Here the band covers the awesomely upbeat "Sun Arise" (co-written by the terrific Rolf Harris, the man who gave us "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport"--huzzah):
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The single best introduction to the wild AC stage show of the early '70s is the concert movie Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper, which is weirdly available in two versions on the bootleg market: one in which the band does cheesy comedy skits that try to approximate Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles, and another in which the incredible concert sequences are intercut with old movie clips. This is the trailer:
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The Alice Cooper Group only made two or three "publicity films" (what we now know to be the precursors to music videos). This is the best, just because it's the least disciplined, and shows Alice on the streets of NYC, "Elected.":
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A number of Cooper group fans feel that when Alice went "Vegas" (or "Hollywood," depending on how you care to look at it) with his LP and stage show Welcome to My Nightmare, the journey was effectively all over. That's actually the time when younger fans like me came in, so I watch items like his TV special "The Nightmare" with a major fascination. The great filmmaker Alan Rudolph collaborated on the special, and I believe it's still available only on old VHS tapes:
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During his Hollywood period, Alice chummed up to Groucho and Mae West, and was often seen hangin' with the likes of Benny and Burns. You can find Alice's song from Sextette on YouTube, but I thought I'd link instead to his appearance on the comeback series of one of our Funhouse favorites, Soupy!
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Alice went New Wave at the turn of the '80s. The period (actually, only two albums) is written off by most folks, but I love those records. Here's his appearance on the suitably scary PInk Lady and Jeff with his biggest New Wave hit "Clones" (later covered by Smashing Pumpkins), which is his humble tribute to the Prisoner TV series (listen to the lyrics).
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Alice looks insanely unhealthy in the preceding clip (listen for a description of how his look makes him the "original punk" in Rudolph's movie Roadie), but here is him at his stangest-looking, an appearance on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show. This was from his "leather geisha"/Special Forces days. A very fucked-up look, to say the least:
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He looks exceedingly thin and scary here, but is still in New Wave (and geisha) mode, in a special from French TV, doing his ACG classic "Generation Landslide." One of his finest youth-rebellion anthems. The second clip is him interviewing himself in pigeon French, and doing his finest kick-ass '80s tune, "Who Do You Think We Are":
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Two more items that I never knew existed, revelations of YouTube. Alice's strangest incarnation may have been the leather geisha, but he had earlier done a neat turn away from his skullface-makeup image (or is it a dead Pierrot/Harlequin?) with a hardboiled private-eye persona that only lasted for one album ("Lace and Whiskey") that simply reeks of the '70s in some wonderful ways (ah yes, top 40 radio!). There was a big ballad that even was sung by Sinatra, but I have to give the nod to this astoundingly dopey publicity film made for his sorta-disco sounding (it's actually close to the "Philadelphia soul"/orchestral pre-disco sound) "No More Love (at Your Convenience)." Dig the Bogart, Lorre, and Cagney posters, and those crazy, fucked-up, long-ago '70s! (book me a flight on the rocketship)
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And, just because this is Halloween, we need to close off on some classic Coop doing a seasonally-themed beauty, "I Love the Dead" (with full guillotine shtick):
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