Several interesting things in this one, among them how album titles get leaked to the press and how viewpoints can change throughout life – Radio being the keyword here as Mr. Cooper runs his own show on radio at the time of writing. For a Cooper fan this is a must-see article.
Read on!
Alice shows his Muscle
In Toronto, Alice Cooper gives Ritchie Yorke the lowdown on his new album – and explains why he wants to live in Las Vegas…
“YA WANNA SCOOP?” grins Shep Gordon, the inimitable manager of Alice Cooper, a paragon of virtue in his rust-coloured brushed velvet jacket. “Sure” hisses the keen reporter, hobbling along with a swollen ankle damaged in an encounter with a door. “Let’s have it.”
“The title of the new Alice Cooper album is `Muscle of Love’,” whispers Shep, taking a swig from his glass of champagne – Warner Bros. champagne to be exact, hustled out to mark the presentation of four platinum albums to Alice for Canadian sales, all going down in a lavishly-decorated ballroom of the new Hyatt House. The smell of decadence positively tears at your nostrils.
“What —” exclaims the reporter, dropping his notebook. “Yeah,” Shep says casually, “that’s it.” And so the super group — which, when it went Super saw fit to bestow upon its countless fans such delightful and smutty trivia as ladies’ paper knickers, fake snakeskin jackets, a picture of Alice surrounded by one billion dollars in cash, “School Is Out” and “Love It To Death”, and a boa constrictor on stage — has come up with its ultimate title. “Muscle of Love” indeed!
Alice is over in the middle of the room, a blaze of anti-hero glory (white shorts, a blouse open all the way down the front, and sneakers) amidst the TV lights. The Pointer Sisters, playing a local concert tonight, have just been ushered in. Alice loves them.
Alice also loves Canada. Toronto is almost a second — or is it third? — home. The band was accepted in Toronto before any other city and Alice’s producers live hereabouts. That’s the reason Alice has been in Toronto for the past two weeks — rehearsing the songs for “Muscle of Love” which will be rush-released around the world by WEA on November 15.
Talking of Warner Bros., I asked Shep how they appreciated Alice’s black humour, evidenced by a series of bizarre events which have made headlines everywhere.
“Well, they sometimes wonder about it. I had to get the nod from the four biggest rack-jobbers in America before they’d agree to ‘Muscle of Love’. But they go along with it. I mean, it’s merchandising. Getting our message to the people.”
There is no information yet available on the jacket for “Muscle of Love” but Shep Gordon guarantees it will be sensational. “You know we’re gonna do it, man.”
I do.
An hour later and we’ve adjourned to Alice’s suite, where packing is in progress for the group’s early evening flight to Los Angeles, where the new album will be recorded.
I sit down. Alice hands me a bottle of Budweiser (“We drink American beer”) and Shep produces two documents. One is a letter to Alice from the publishers of “Who’s Who in America”, requesting his biograph for inclusion in the next edition. “Another scoop,” grins Shep.
The other document turns out to be a catalogue from the nearby Lovecraft store which specializes in various stimulants for the erotic palate. “You been there man?” queries Shep. “It’s outasite… really incredible.”
“Yeah,” agrees Alice, sitting down between us, `I must get back there before we leave.” He has changed into blue denim trousers, a black shirt, and a fetching array of silver bracelets. The reporter dutifully draws his notebook and asks Alice about the “Muscle of Love” album. Alice, meanwhile, has decided to switch channel on the TV. “If I wasn’t in this business, I could make a fortune on those quiz shows. I really could. I watch them all day. ” ‘Muscle of Love’. Yes, well… let’s start with the title song. It will have special significance to all of the young men out there who are just discovering their masculinity. That was quite a trip eh? The song is all about a young guy discovering sex and that he has this muscle of love which all along he thought he had for completely different reasons. He locks himself in the bathroom and reads his father’s books, terrified that someone will discover him doing it. It’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek but I can imagine a lot of guys relating to it. “Then there’s ‘Never Sold Before’ which is a song about a man who sells us his wife as a hooker because he’s too lazy to work. There a tune about New York City with a Gershwin-like piano section. And there’s `Head Hunter Alice’ which is sort of self-explanatory.
” ‘Woman Machine’ is a futuristic thing about buying a woman just like a piece of machinery. She can be a vacuum cleaner then you can switch her over to a cook and then to whatever you want. It’s my backlash against women’s liberation. I think there’s a lot of singles on the album but I’m not sure the market is ready for the title cut as a single.
“I really am excited about this album… I especially like the idea of cutting it in the studio live. I never liked working in studios — they’re too contrived with the overdubbing and tape-cutting. What we’re going to do is play everything together, the vocals too, and get a sort of creative leakage effect. Each track on the 16-track machine will leak over into the others and it should give the album a very powerful and dirty sound.
“Track seepage can work very well for you — look at what the Stones did with ‘Out of Our Heads’. I loved that album because of the live sound. ‘Fun House’ by Iggy and the Stooges also had that live feel, with a hard, thick gut to it.
“Of course, we may also do some orchestral overdubs but all of the group’s playing will be live.” Orchestral overdubs? Not strings? “We might have a little bit of that. For once,” Alice replied.
One other addition will be the debut of a new producer, Jack Richardson, whose credits include Guess Who, Poco — and soon, the Kinks. Richardson is actually the partner of Alice’s usual producer, Bob Ezrin (whose first effort with Lou Reed, “Berlin”, is said to be remarkable), at present laid up with virus pneumonia. Richardson, who is not the world’s most eager hard rock fan, stood in at the last moment when the album could not be postponed.
Alice does not appear to be overly concerned about the change.
Shep Gordon comes off the phone to tell us that his office is trying to set up the making of a TV special around the album production (“A sort of how-a-record-album-gets-made trip”) for showing across America on the occasion of “Muscle of Love’s” release.
Unlike many musicians who act as though they listen to every important album that anybody releases, Alice makes no pretence of his lack of interest in what other groups are doing. “The only good record I’ve heard lately is ‘Live and Let Die’ by Wings. Have you seen the film? I’ve seen it three times. You really get your money’s worth. And isn’t that a terrific record?
“I never listen to the radio unless I’m in a car. I suppose I’m getting like Ray Davies of the Kinks. He doesn’t believe in being influenced by other people’s music. He told me that he still has not listened to `Sergeant Pepper’ and he never will. Isn’t that incredible? He hasn’t even heard ‘Sergeant Pepper’.”
Alice and the band won’t hit the road again for concerts until late December, and then they’ll probably play some warm-up dates in Eastern Canada before heading for Europe where they intend to introduce the highly-controversial “Billion Dollar Babies” show. “We haven’t done that over there yet.”
Then it’s back to the States, another tour and then a long, rest to prepare a completely different new show. If past indications are anything to go by, that show should be something else again.
None of the planned tours will be as long as the recent 65-concert effort which Alice is only now beginning to recover from.
“There won’t be any more long tours. We learnt our lesson last time out. At first it was great but after a while it became boring. It got to be the same routine every night. I found myself out on stage doing this number to thousands of kids and thinking about something completely different. It was really weird.
“It got to be like a job and I didn’t want that happening. We got into some improvising but it was still pretty dull — the same thing night after night. I was pretty brought down by it. After a while, I couldn’t stand having flash photographs taken. Every time a bulb would pop off, it would feel like I’d been hit in the face. Really, it was terrible. I was waking up in the morning with the shakes.
“It took me a full two months to come down off the tour.”
Coming from a self-confessed bright lights-lover such as Alice, that is something of a revelation. “I really do like to be in the heart of things,” he admits. “I’ve got a place in Greenwich in New York but I usually end up staying with a lady in a Manhattan apartment… Greenwich is just too far away from everything. If I’ve been rehearsing all evening, I want to go out at 3 am and hear some loud music.
“I don’t like things to be too quiet. I mean, you hear everybody talking about wanting to escape to the country. Not me man. I get out in the country and I go nuts. All those trees give me the shakes.”
You might call Alice a thoroughly-conditioned soul of the Seventies. “Take Las Vegas. That’s another trip. I really think I could live there. Maybe I will. I like it being totally bright all night. I like to get out and have fun at anytime of the night or day.”
One of the other members of the group comes in to borrow Alice’s black snakeskin jacket.
“Wheredidja get the coat?” Shep Gordon asks, putting down the phone. “In London, man, when we were there last. It’s genuine cobra skin. I had it made for me.”
We have a short discussion on the present dismal state of rock music, the details of which I shall not inflict upon you. Let me instead leave you with Alice’s prediction on where the music is going.
“I really think I know what’s going to happen next. There’s going to be a renaissance of romanticism. It’s due. It’s time for it. We’ve had the glitter era and the romantic era will be answer to that. Just wait and see.”
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