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adventures with a straitjacket and
electric chair followed, keeping the
audience bewildered. The suffering
was so sham it was surreal. No wonder
Salvador Dali offered one of his .
paintings as a future LP sleeve. All the
lads are former art students, as you
should know by now. WHAT? You
haven't been doing your homework?
Since it was their debut nobody
knew what to expect, apart from
the publicity about sexual duality
and fowl play. The show wasn't evil
and it wasn't very feminine either.
Alice wore black thighboots and
tarantula eye make-up but he still
looked pretty raunchy, and drummer
Neal Smith sounded like Rocky
Marciano.
Their lyrics are smart and nasty
but the basic sentiments are nothing
new. Eric Burdon was here six years
ago: we gotta get outta this place,
you'll be dead before your time is due,
girl there's a better life for me and
you. The Animals are an obvious
influence but there are plenty more.
Musically, Alice Cooper are the brigh-
test band of kleptomaniacs you'll
ever hear. They've nicked a lick from
everybody, Yardbirds, Who, Steppen-
wolf, early Velvet Underground, even
Country Joe-it's all there, Sixties
rock hacked up and re-cycled Detroit-
style. Their sound is World War III,
the sound of 15 psychopaths having
a destruction derby with 15 bull-
dozers.
Narcissism, danger and materialism
are among their most perennial
themes, and they surface strongly on
Killer, their last album. Recorded in
Chicago, it features eight songs written
by the band for the band. Until this
album I couldn't imagine Alice Cooper
jamming, but I gotta admit their playing
is now ultra-proficient.
Michael Bruce offers a crackerjack
chick song called Be My Lover: "Told
her that I came from Detroit City, and
I played guitar in a long-haired rockan-
roll band, she asked me why the
singer's name was Alice . . ." The longest
and most ambitious number is Halo of
Flies where a menacing funereal intro
gallops into a tom-tom TV-space-series
soundtrack. It seems that Alice is off
to Monte Carlo. "Daggers and
contracts and bright shiny limmos, I
got a watch that turns into a lifeboat,
glimmering nightgowns and poisonous
cobras." A trifle obscure and long-
winded, with Moog, bass solos and a
neanderthal drum bash, but like all
their well-built material, it enjoys
a certain momentum.
"Your as dead as a desert night"
howls Alice on Desperado, "You're a
notch and I'm a legend." Paranoia rears
its ugle head amid the dive-bomber
guitar stylings of You Drive Me
Nervous, and there is grim story about
little Betty who eats a pound of aspirin.
Dead babies can't take things off the
shelf. This is music to watch the News
at Ten by, a half hour horror show
with a slice or two of comic relief.
What is life, anyway, but a bitter
comedy of survival?
Sometimes I have my doubts. I
wonder if they'really wanna make
friends with a lot of people in the danger
zone. How about an album live from
Alcatraz? Death Row? Attica State?
Or maybe they should go to Vietnam
instead of Bob Hope. Not to scare the
Vietcong, just to show the GIs things
are a bit wild back home.
Alice says all their theatrics and
gimmicks are choreographed, but not
so much that it precludes improvisation.
Some of the mistakes come out beauti-
fully, he says. Lets hope so. At press-
time I'm looking forward to their show
at the Empire Pool. It should suit them
since they play all the huge halls in
the States, colossal basketball stadiums
and roller rinks, selling out wherever
they go. At their last London produc-
tion I suspended judgement and
became a fan. As music it's not half
bad, as showbiz it's riveting and as
trash it is absolutely incomparable.
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