Part I – The Alice Cooper Band 1967 - 1974
Alice Cooper Part I is arguably the most interesting of the mixes, especially when considering the Straight era releases. The first two albums contain material that is sufficiently strange to set it apart from a lot of what can be considered popular music. Oddly, the best song from the Zappa influenced period is “Nobody Likes Me” which was somehow excluded from the first album. If I had to guess what happened with the song, I would say that the band never felt sufficiently happy with its recording to include it in either of their first two albums and that the circumstances of the third album and subsequent change in style made it impossible to include it in later albums. What a true shame. Its eventual limited original release as a flexi-disc on the last page of the “Killer” tour program was a far worse fate than the song deserved. It should be considered an all time favourite of any Alice Cooper fan.
Although the most successful albums in this era were not as wholly unique as the first two and other songs written before the third album, they were still quite quirky and often brilliant. Of particular note is the title track from “Billion Dollar Babies” which should be considered to be one of the best songs ever written, never mind all time Alice Cooper song. Somehow it seems to get less acclaim than other singles from that album such as “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Elected” as well as the title track from the previous album “School’s Out.” This is unconscionable. Clearly the best song from the two albums combined is “Billion Dollar Babies.” The reason the song has less acclaim than the others is, without a doubt, because while “Billion Dollar Babies” is a quirky romp through duel vocal ridiculousness, the others are more straight ahead rock songs that follow a more traditional single structure. Not that any of the other songs mentioned are bad songs, they are just not as wonderfully special as “Billion Dollar Babies.”
Moving backwards in time there are the “Killer” and “Love It To Death” albums. The latter is the first album on Warner Brothers and the album that broke the band. It might very well be the second weakest album in the Alice Cooper band era. “I’m Eighteen” was the single that gave the band their initial recognition and made them a bona fide hit. It is a good song although both the second single, “Is It My Body” and “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” are better songs. The latter is of particular interest because it is the first appearance of the long horror themed heavy ballad on any Alice Cooper recording. This type of song would become a staple of both the band and later recordings after Alice Cooper became a solo performer. The song “Steven” from “Welcome To My Nightmare” is particularly reminiscent of this style. Another single from “Love It To Death” was a three minute rocker called “Caught in a Dream.” This track was omitted from Part I because it is not a strong enough song and just always seemed to be out of place on the mix, despite the existence of a slightly shorter single version.
In sharp contrast to the weakness of the first Warner Brothers offering is “Killer.” Regardless of the fact that the album only has eight tracks, it is brilliant. Five of the eight songs are worthy of inclusion on Part I. “Killer” is almost as strong of an album as the band’s most successful release (“Billion Dollar Babies”). Of particular noteworthiness is “Desperado” which is far and away the stand out track on this album. Again it treads slightly off the beat & path of mainstream rock and thus is not the song that receives most acclaim from this album. That honour would go to either of the two singles released from the album “Under My Wheels” or “Be My Lover”, both of which are great songs, but not as uniquely special as “Desperado.” The other two songs that are indispensable from this album are “(You Drive Me) Nervous” and “Dead Babies.” The former is good enough to be a single, but the latter suffers from a melded ending to the title track from the album which serves as its closer. “Killer” (the song) is not bad, but not good enough for an inclusion on a best of mix. “Dead Babies” is another long horror style classic that would never be considered for a single, but is a popular live offering.
The “School’s Out” album built on the success of the prior two albums and outsold them both. This was largely due to the success of the title track. The song is hugely popular and arguably the most well known Alice Cooper song of all time. Despite it being a very good song, it is not in the top 5 songs of this era, never-mind of the entire Alice Cooper catalogue. The rest of the album is definitively subpar by Alice Cooper standards. There is no way to include the second single (“Gutter Cat vs. The Jets”) on a mix and it is a struggle to even put another song from this album on a best of compilation. There are two candidates for second best of which “Public Animal #9” is a slightly better choice than “My Stars.” The latter is probably a bit more liked by Alice Cooper fans, but it tends to be a little more tiresome than the former.
In contrast to the terribleness that is the album “School’s Out” is the wonderfulness that is the “Billion Dollar Babies” album. It is, deservingly so, the highest selling Alice Cooper album of all time and has few songs not worthy of inclusion on a best of mix. In fact, it may be easier to talk about the songs that are weaker, but nevertheless not as much fun. Of the 10 songs on the album the title track and the two other singles mentioned earlier are all wonderful with the particular mention to “Billion Dollar Babies” being one of the best rock songs of all time. The other single from the album is a cover of a song originally performed by Judy Collins. Generally including songs written by people outside of the band or cover versions is something that should be frowned upon for compilations. “Hello Hooray” tests the resolve to omit due to the fact that it was a hit single and overall is not a bad song. It also is the best choice for a first song in this era. Two other songs are of special note from this album: “I Love the Dead” is particularly wonderful and must be the closing song for any compilation of this era, and “Sick Things” is a song that foreshadows the style explored by Alice Cooper the solo artist on his first release. There are a few other songs on this album that many Alice Cooper fans think are stand outs, but are not necessarily worthy of inclusion. The most popular of these is probably “Generation Landslide”, but it is fair to say that all of the songs on this album have their fair share of acclaim. The truth is, that no matter how good any of the other songs on this album may be, nothing compares to the brilliance of the title track.
The last album in this era (“Muscle of Love”) is one of the band’s least popular efforts in this era and clearly not as strong as either “Killer” or “Billion Dollar Babies.” Still, it should be considered to be better than both “School’s Out” and “Love It To Death” and probably on equal footing to “Easy Action.” The two singles “Teenage Lament ‘74” and the title track are clearly the best songs here, but “Big Apple Dreaming (Hippo)” is a pretty good song as well. There is also a blatant attempt by the band to score a James Bond film soundtrack by recording the song “The Man With The Golden Gun” without being contracted by the movie’s producers. Sadly this failed, and to be fair the song is mediocre and generally just below the threshold for inclusion on a best of mix.
The first two albums in this era should really be discussed together. The Alice Cooper band was originally signed to Frank Zappa’s “Straight” label and they fit in rather well. More psychedelic than straight rock, the first two albums were decidedly strange with numerous songs that were under 2 minutes long mixed in with others that were over 5. The better of the two albums is the first (“Pretties For You”), which features the original version of a song (“Elected”) that would become the first single from “Billion Dollar Babies.” In 1969 the song was called “Reflected” and was the band’s first ever single release. Like most everything off the two Straight era albums it failed to generate much buzz. Overall “Pretties For You” is a strong album with songs such as “No Longer Umpire”, “Today Mueller” and “Changing Arranging” all being stand out tracks worthy of inclusion on any mix. One of the longer songs on the album titled “Fields of Regret” is also particularly good but a little too long to fit on a mix that is constrained to 80 minutes.
The band’s second album, “Easy Action” is not exactly at the level of the first, but still quite interesting. It forges on in a similar style and songs such as “Refrigerator Heaven” and “Laughing at Me” are as good as anything on the first album. The song that traditionally gets the most attention from the album is the first track, “Mr. and Misdemeanour.” Although it is not the absolute best song on “Easy Action”, it is one of the better songs from the album along with the song, which could be considered the title track due to the words “easy action” featuring in the bridge, “Still No Air.” Sadly, both of these songs could not be fit onto the 80 minute version of the mix, but did make the longer version. The last song on the album is a reworked version of a song originally recorded by the band when they were known as “The Nazz” in 1967. The version on this album is over seven minutes long and mostly instrumental. The 7 minute long epic that wound up on the album and is more reminiscent of a Grateful Dead / Phish style jam than an actual song, but the original Nazz version is quite good and should be included on any mix. In contrast to the bloated “Easy Action” album track, the original version of “Lay Down and Die, Goodbye” is just over two minutes long.
Overall Alice Cooper Part I may be the strongest of the four mixes and it is without a doubt the one that includes the most hit singles. The songs chosen are fairly well distributed with “Billion Dollar Babies” having only one more song than either the first album or “Killer.” Interestingly, if one were to consider “Nobody Likes Me” as a song that should have been on “Pretties For You”, then there is a tie for most songs from any album. There are a few slightly weaker albums in this era, but the only one that stands out as being especially poor is “School’s Out” which ironically contains arguably the best known Alice Cooper song. Hardcore fans of the band would probably disagree with the fact that one third of the songs included come from before the Warner Brothers albums, which are far more popular. Two singles have also been omitted, but neither of were all that successful or appear on the final release from this era which was a “Greatest Hits” album. It stands to reason that singles that do not appear on a 12 track hits album that is only taking songs from five albums (the first two albums were ignored), are not generally considered to be songs of any importance whatsoever. It should be noted that every single song that is features on that particular “Greatest Hits” is on Part I, although none come directly from the album since the songs are slightly remixed, with the exception of “Elected” on the longer mix. The shorter mix uses the single version of the song.
Part II – Stolen Identity 1975 – 1985
Similar to the first mix, Part II features two distinct sounding groups of albums. The difference is where Part I had only two albums that were quite different from the majority of the period, Part II is evenly divided with four albums that have a noticeable 70s sound to them and four albums that have more of an 80s flavour. At times the two sounds can have such a contrasting style that it is difficult to see how they could coexist on one mix, but the more interesting music produced in the later stages of this era tends to push the more 70s sounding material to the background. With that said, the single album that contains the most songs to make it to this mix is the first of the 70s albums and is considered by all Alice Cooper fans to be a classic.
It is important to note that “Welcome To My Nightmare”, which was released in 1975, is the first solo album by the lead singer of the group Alice Cooper. He kept the name for himself after the group split up much to the chagrin of some of the other members. This fact makes it a logical place to separate Part I from Part II. “Welcome To My Nightmare” had success that rivalled all previous Alice Cooper albums excluding “Billion Dollar Babies” and many of the songs on the album have become Alice Cooper live standards that are unavoidable when creating a compilation. Even songs that were not featured as singles, such as “The Black Widow”, are so important that they cannot be left out of even shortest mixes. There were three official singles from the album that are all on the mix. Of these, only the title track is outstanding. “Only Women Bleed” is the first single and represents Alice Cooper’s first foray into the mellow ballad realm. It is a tolerable song, but only in its single edit form as the original is over five minutes long and tends to drag. The second single, “Department of Youth” is a song that sees Alice Cooper the solo artist attempting to recapture the sound of some of the more popular hits from the band era. The song is very good, but not great and fails to break any new ground. The standout track that is not a single is the song “Steven” which pushes forward the album’s story and develops a character that would be featured in Alice Cooper albums to present day. As previously mentioned, it is impossible to create an Alice Cooper compilation without “The Black Widow”, but the song “Cold Ethyl” also curries much favour with Alice Cooper fans and should be included in any compilation that features this era. In longer mixes it is worth including “Devil’s Food” which serves as a 3:30 intro to “The Black Widow”. The musical part of the song is quite good, but the latter half of the song is simply a long Vincent Price monologue. It can be a bit tiresome.
In contrast to the up to seven songs that should be included in mixes not constrained by time from “Welcome To My Nightmare”, the next three albums have precious little good material and what is there suffers from a having a dated sound. The first of these albums has only one song that is tolerable, but that one song is arguably better than any other song put out by Alice Cooper, the solo artist, in the 1970s. The de facto title track from the 1976 album “Alice Cooper… Goes To Hell” is as good as anything put out in this era. Unfortunately, it is also the only song of any worth from the album as well. It was not however a true single despite often being the only song from this album that is played live. The first, and only, single from the “Goes To Hell” album is a mellow ballad called “I Never Cry.” Seizing on the success of “Only Women Bleed” from the previous album, Alice Cooper would spend the rest of the 1970s putting one of these types of songs as the feature song on each album. The results were often repulsive and rarely engaging. Despite this fact, “I Never Cry” was quite a successful hit. “Go To Hell” was the B-Side and the clearly superior song. No other song from this album is included in Part II.
Sadly Alice Cooper went from bad to worse with the release of his 1977 album “Lace and Whiskey.” The irony is that despite this being an even less engaging effort than his previous release, there are two songs worthy of inclusion on mixes not constrained by time over the one from the previous album. If only one song is used from this album it has to be the hit single “You and Me” which is third in the line of mellow ballad hits from the 70s solo albums. It is a slight improvement over “I Never Cry” from the previous album, but is not really any better than “Only Women Bleed.” Similarly, the single edit version is the one used on the mix. Without the time constraints of an 80 minute CD, it is possible to add another song from this album. The only one that is good enough is the first track. Somewhat of a groovy rock song, “It’s Hot Tonight” is fun enough that it may warrant inclusion despite its 70s sound. With the luxury of “It’s Hot Tonight” being the song included from “Lace and Whiskey”, it is then preferable to use the live version of “You and Me” from “The Alice Cooper Show” album released in 1977. It has the added bonus of running for only 2:25 and thus wasting little time on a mediocre mellow ballad. This version of “You and Me” is mixed with a superior live version of “Cold Ethyl” from a show in the mid 80s that is better than the studio version and replaces it in the mix.
“From The Inside” is a somewhat better album and easily the best effort since the seminal “Welcome To My Nightmare” album, yet it only manages to deliver one song to Part II. This is in large part due to the production of the album which has the most dated sound of any Alice Cooper release. The terrible production could be in large part due to the fact that this was the first album not produced by Bob Ezrin since the Straight label albums, excluding “Muscle of Love.” The sound renders the album difficult to mix with other albums and the better songs on the album, despite being more interesting than most of the songs from the previous two albums are still woefully inadequate when compared to the next four albums. Had Part II been solely from 1975-1979 “From the Inside” would have featured heavily and delivered at least four songs. The best songs from the album are the title track, “Nurse Rozetta”, “How You Gonna See Me Now” and “Serious”, but only the title track is worthy of inclusion on Part II. For its part the version of “From the Inside” that is on Part II is the single edit. A single edit of the fourth in the line of mellow ballads, “How You Gonna See Me Now”, could potentially be worthy of inclusion on the version of the mix that is not constrained to 80 minutes, but ultimately it would likely drag the mix down and contribute to a more dated sound. In terms of how it fits in the pantheon of mellow 70s ballads, it ranks below “You and Me”, but above “I Never Cry.” “From the Inside”, the album, was about Alice Cooper’s (the person) stay at a clinic for alcohol addiction. This fact, made the album in many ways more interesting than its two predecessors, but it failed in two regards. First as an album, the production made it sound dated on arrival thus making many of even the good songs unlistenable and second it wasn’t long before Alice Cooper was drinking more heavily than ever before.
Probably due to the fact that the sales of Alice Cooper albums were on the decline throughout the late 1970s, the 1980s saw a change direction that made for more interesting and exciting music from Alice Cooper. The first of these albums to receive a musical facelift was “Flush the Fashion.” Released in 1980, it generated a top 40 hit single that is one of the featured tracks on Part II. “Clones (We’re All)” was actually written by someone other than Alice Cooper (David Carron), but is such a great song that it merits inclusion on any Alice Cooper mix. It should not considered a cover version since Alice Cooper was the first artist to ever record the song, yet it was not written specifically for Alice Cooper. It was a song that he chose in order to push forward in a new musical direction. The fact that of the ten songs on this album only six are written by Alice Cooper does a disservice to how good of an Alice Cooper album it truly is. The next best three songs after “Clones” are all Alice Cooper songs and two of those are on the longer mix. Unfortunately, “Pain” is the only other song to make the CD version of Part II. Although not officially released as a single, an alternate version of the song exists on the “Roadie” film soundtrack. This version is inferior to the “Flush the Fashion” one, but still notable. Considering how good of a song “Pain” is and the fact that a different version of it exists, it is surprising that the second single released from the album is a much weaker song written by someone other than Alice Cooper. “Talk Talk” is the first track on “Flush the Fashion”, but it is not worthy of inclusion on any Alice Cooper mix and the single failed to achieve any success. The other song that is included on the longer Part II is a song called “Headlines” which is the final track on the album, but not a good closing song. “Grim Facts” is a song that would not be out of place on a mix if there was room for more songs, but it loses out to “Headlines” in part due to less interesting lyrics.
Despite having a more 80s sound “Flush the Fashion” is still a predominantly guitar driven album. The same cannot be said for “Special Forces” which followed in 1981. Keyboards tend to be the predominant instrument used on the album and they are generally used to great effect. The first single released was a double A sided single of “Who Do You Think You Are” and “You Want It You Got It”. Both are great songs and easily make the mix, but the former is the star of the show. Breaking from convention, the album version of “Who Do You Think You Are” is preferred over the single version, because the intro of the song makes for a perfect start to a mix. On the version of the mix that is not constrained by time the song that directly precedes “You Want It You Got It” is used in the album order due to the last line of “Skeletons In The Closet” having a direct correlation to the next song in the sequence. The other song that merits inclusion is “Don’t Talk Old To Me” which unfortunately is also omitted from the CD version of the mix. Much as with “Flush the Fashion”, the second single from “Special Forces” is a song not written by Alice Cooper and not worthy of inclusion. It is a cover from the 60s band “Love” called “Seven and Seven Is.” Unfortunately, this single was more successful than the first one from the album in the UK. Nevertheless, there are better songs on the album and this cover does not merit inclusion. A British single that does make the mix is a song called “For Britain Only” which was only available in the UK. Released in 1982, it does not appear on any album, but should be considered to be more associated with “Special Forces” than the next album despite being driven by guitar rather than keyboards. If we consider that “Special Forces” also includes a live version of the “Billion Dollar Babies” song “Generation Landslide” having 4 songs out of 9 original songs is pretty good. If “For Britain Only” is considered to be from this album then it becomes 5 out of 10 songs on the longer mix with one of those ten being a cover.
The next album in the sequence sounds a lot more like “Flush the Fashion” than “Special Forces.” In fact, “Special Forces” should be considered a one off that manages to fit in with the other albums in this era more because of style than instrumentation. Probably due to the fact that “Special Forces” failed to sell in the United States, Alice Cooper went back to a more guitar oriented sound. The resulting album “Zipper Catches Skin” is yet another good album from the early 80s, but this one featured perplexing singles choices. Even before the album was released, the single “I Am The Future” appeared on the soundtrack to the film “Class of 1984.” It was yet another song not penned by Alice Cooper that does not merit inclusion on a mix. The sales of this single were poor enough to justify its exclusion. The second single was a radio only promo of the song “I Like Girls”, which is one of the worst songs on the album. Despite these follies, the album has quite a few good songs. The best of the album tracks is “I Better Be Good” which is absolutely hilarious and should be considered an all time classic Alice Cooper song; sadly it is not. The song can be regarded as the de facto title track since it features the line “when zipper catches skin.” This song must be included on any mix that covers this era. The other two very notable songs are “Adaptable (Anything for You)” and “Make that Money (Scrooge’s Song).” Unfortunately only the former fits on the CD version of the mix, but both can be found on the version not constrained by time. Although it is not possible to fit them on the mix, there are several good songs on this album including, “Remarkably Insincere” and “Zorro’s Ascent.” The latter has some great verses that would merit its inclusion in a mix, but the chorus is a letdown and lowers the overall quality of the song to the point where is falls below other songs on the album.
The last album in the sequence is yet another departure and arguably the best album in the whole era. “Welcome To My Nightmare” has the most renown, but “DADA” is at times pure genius. “Zipper Catches Skin” was the first album that failed to chart entirely in the US since “Easy Action.” In a desperate attempt to reverse this trend, Bob Ezrin, who had produced every Alice Cooper album between “Love It To Death” and “Lace and Whisky” excluding “Muscle of Love”, was brought in to recapture the old Alice Cooper glory. The result was brilliant, but failed to result in any sales. The music industry had appeared to have moved on. This does not change the fact that “DADA” is listenable from start to finish without skipping a song. That said the first track is really a spoken word introduction that should not count as a song. This leaves 8 full songs to choose from for a mix. Of these only “I Love America” was released as a single. It is included in the CD length mix as well as the tracks “Former Lee Warmer”, “No Man’s Land”, and “Pass The Gun Around”; the last of which makes for a perfect end to a mix, albeit jarringly so. Although there are no subpar songs on “DADA” it would change the flow of the mix too severely to have it be high jacked by the album, therefore only one additional song (“Scarlet and Sheba”) is added to the version not constrained by time. Despite how easy it is to get the song “Enough’s Enough” stuck in your head, it ended up being omitted from Part II. There is one additional song on the mix that is not on any album in this era. The song is called “Identity Crisises” and it is originally from the 1984 film “Monster Dog.” It is one of two Alice Cooper songs featured in the film. The other one (“See Me In The Mirror”) is a good song, but falls just below the threshold for this mix. Part II is named “Stolen Identity” in part because of the inclusion of “Identity Crisises” and the fact that the name of the band Alice Cooper was co-opted by the solo artist.
The contrasting styles from the first four albums in this era with the last four create problems for the Part II mix. On the 80 minute limited version of the mix there are only two songs from each of the first three albums released in the 1980s. It would be preferable to put more songs from this period, but to do so would require the complete elimination of songs from both “Lace and Whiskey” and “From the Inside.” This is not acceptable. Songs such as “Don’t Talk Old To Me” and “Make That Money (Scrooge’s Song)” are better than anything on offer from the final two albums released in the 1970s, but both are left off the shorter mix in favour of the “You and Me” and “From the Inside” single versions. These are compromises that had to be made in order to create a representative mix of the entire era. Due to the fact that it was the only album to be a big seller, “Welcome To My Nightmare” effectively acts as a bully in this era over all other albums. There are six songs from that album that must be included on any mix, which limits the space available for more obscure material. There is one hit single completely discarded in this era. “I Never Cry” was certified Gold in the US and is a legitimate hit, but the song is almost completely unlistenable and has been left off. “How You Gonna See Me Now” was also somewhat of a hit, but the fact that another single from the same album was included as the only song from that album allows for enough leeway to not include it. The song is yet another 70s mellow ballad that is difficult to listen to. The other singles that were discarded were all not written by Alice Cooper and not hits from 80s albums with the exception of “I Like Girls” which although written by Alice Cooper, was only an ineffectual promo single and really has no business being a single at all.
It would be possible to divide Part II into two further parts, but this would create other problems. The largest one would be that both the 1975-1979 and 1980-1985 periods would seemingly become more important than any other era due to the attention received for each individual album. There is no way that either period should be awarded more space than the Alice Cooper band era, which contains seven albums, while both the late 70s and early 80s periods only have four albums each. Furthermore, to match this inequity by doing the same to the band era would only work if the first two albums are separated from the Warner Brothers five and that, in itself, would be uneven. Lastly, although the early 80s period contains enough good material to create a viable 80 minute mix, it is questionable as to whether the late 70s era would be listenable. The inclusion of “I Never Cry” would become unavoidable, for example. The early 80s period does not mix at all with the metal sound of the latter 80s so pushing that material later does not work either. Having Part II be from 1975 – 1985 is the only logical solution.
Part III – A Hairy Story 1986 – 1998
Part III in many ways is the most simple to do since it encompasses an era when the albums were acquired within weeks of their commercial release by this reviewer. It was sometime in early 1987 that Alice Cooper came into my consciousness when a friend named Fernando held up a copy of the “Constrictor” album at the Valentim de Carvalho store in Amoreiras. Not knowing even a single song by the artist resulted in practically no attention being paid to the album. Later that year the video for “Freedom” and the album cover of “Raise Your Fist And Yell” featuring the screaming Alice Cooper hand made a good impression and would result in more serious attention not only to that album to but the artist as a whole. Although “Raise Your Fist And Yell” is excellent, both of these mid-80s albums were not hits and although they improved slightly upon the performance of the early 80s albums, they failed to reestablish Alice Cooper as a successful artist. That only happened in 1989 with the release of “Trash” which featured songwriter de jour Desmond Child and the big hair-metal sound that was extremely popular at the time. Seemingly Alice Cooper was back with a vengeance and with singles a-blazing.
“Constrictor” is overall a rather weak album and the only one in this era that fails to put at least four songs on the longer mix. The big featured song was actually released prior to the album both as a single and on the “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives” soundtrack. “He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask)” is a very good, if not great song. It has the distinction of being the only song from this era where the keyboards feature more prominently than the guitars. That said, it still fits in well with the rest of the material here and has a healthy helping of guitar to go with the keyboards. The second single from the album, “Teenage Frankenstein”, is also included in the mix and again is good, but not great. The other song of note from the album is “Life and Death of the Party” which, unfortunately became the last casualty of the 80 minute mix, but is used on the longer mix. A song that did make the CD mix, but failed to make the “Constrictor” album is “Hard Rock Summer” which is featured in the Friday the 13th soundtrack as well. This song is only on the mix because it is the best song from this era that is under 3 minutes. Overall this album showcased Alice Cooper’s direction change that saw him seizing upon the success of artists like Ozzy Osbourne, by cultivating a heavy metal sound.
“Raise Your Fist And Yell” was a lot more successful at cultivating that sound than its predecessor from a musical perspective, but unfortunately delivered similar sales. Regardless of the public’s interest, this album is a far more interesting album that does not have an unlistenable track on it. This fact makes it difficult to choose songs for a mix. “Freedom” is an obvious choice because it was the first (and only) single from the album and quite a good song, but the song that is the quasi second single due to its appearance in the film of the same title, is not one of the best songs from the album. With that in mind, “Prince of Darkness” is not included on any mix. The songs that are included in all mixes are the standout tracks “Give the Radio Back” and “Step on You.” Additionally two more songs that could not fit on the time constrained mix, “Time to Kill” and “Roses on White Lace” are used on the full length mix.
Faced with a continued lack of sales, Alice Cooper made yet another direction change, but this one was only slight. Changing the model from one old metal guy having success, in the person of Ozzy Osbourne, to a group of old guys having success in the metal genre (Aerosmith) proved to be the ticket to returning to Platinum status. Alice Cooper didn’t just model his next album after Aerosmith, but also sought out the man responsible for writing some of the biggest hits in the hard rock genre of the day. Desmond Child first came into prominence in 1986 for his collaborations with Bon Jovi on the Diamond selling “Slippery When Wet” album and co-wrote with Aerosmith on the album that would return them from obscurity in 1987. Two years later he would do the same for Alice Cooper. Nine of the ten songs on 1989’s “Trash” album were co-written by Desmond Child and Alice Cooper. This proved to be a winning formula that produced three hit singles, one of which (“Poison”) was certified Gold in the United States. A fourth single, “Only My Heart Talkin’” was also a hit, but was the only song from “Trash” not penned by Desmond Child. All three of the singles written by the formidable Cooper/Child pairing are included on the shorter CD version of the mix, as well as the excellent album track, “This Maniac is in Love With You.” The title track, along with “Only My Heart Talkin’” and “Shot in the Dark” are included in the expanded mix to bring the total up to seven of the ten songs on the album being used. The album itself is highly listenable from start to end without skipping a track, but as with much of the stuff written by Desmond Child at the time, it tends to have a shorter shelf life and can get tiresome after a while. This is a big reason why the shorter mix only includes four songs. The drop from seven to four represents the single biggest drop in number of songs between the expanded edition of a mix and the CD version.
Excluding a couple of songs that are not up to the “Trash” standards, “Hey Stoopid” is a Desmond Child free effort. The success that was emblematic of the previous album was also acting as an anchor on future albums. Alice Cooper was now fully associated with the “Hair Metal” bands of the late 80s and the Mtv cull of those bands in 1992 was quickly putting an end to any thoughts of continued success. Released in the summer of 1991, “Hey Stoopid” barely made it in before the dirty Viacom revolution. The three singles did get some exposure and resulted in enough sales to certify the album Gold in the United States. Had the album been released a year later it would have been dead on arrival. To be fair, “Hey Stoopid” is less good musically than either of its predecessors, but the three singles from the album are all great and must be included on even 80 minute mixes. The fourth song that must be included on any compilation from this era is the last song on the album. “Wind-Up Toy” is easily the best song on the “Hey Stoopid” album and one of Alice Cooper’s best solo songs of all time. The song marks the return of the character Steven from the “Welcome To My Nightmare” album and the results are spectacular. “Wind-Up Toy” is the only correct choice for a song to end the mix from this era. Sadly the rest of the album is not as inspired as the three singles (“Love’s a Loaded Gun”, Feed My Frankenstein” and the title track) and the last song, so no other song is used on the Part II compilation. Both this and the subsequent album have the distinction of producing four great songs that are worthy of inclusion on any mix, but none that are worth using on a mix not constrained by time. These albums deliver four very high quality songs, but nothing more that is noteworthy.
Having a release that just made it in before the Mtv cull of 1992, afforded Alice Cooper the opportunity to put out one more album with Epic records before they dropped him. That said, in 1994 it was a forgone conclusion that anything even vaguely associated with “Hair Metal” would not sell very well at all. Despite the fact that Alice Cooper had only put out a couple of albums that could be linked to the disowned genre, he was permanently scarred and seen as being one of “those bands.” The fact that the music on “The Last Temptation” had precious little to do with what was perceived as “Hair Metal” and included songwriters from the popular genre of the time (grunge) did nothing to boost sales. There were only two singles from the album and both of them are top shelf songs, despite not being legitimate hits. “Lost in America” was the first single and one of the best songs from this era and “It’s Me” is a truly moving ballad that demonstrates how Alice Cooper can do so much more with slow songs than was demonstrated on the poor 70s mellow ballads from the previous era. Two more songs are included on mixes regardless of time constraints from this album. “Sideshow” is the first song on the album and sees Alice Cooper recapturing the feel of the title track from “Welcome To My Nightmare.” Despite the fact that the song runs over six minutes in length it should not be ignored. Also of note is “Stolen Prayer” which is co-written by Chris Cornell of the band Soundgarden. Although the song really sounds more like a Soundgarden song than typical Alice Cooper fare, it works beautifully not only within the context of the album, but in any compilation. “Stolen Prayer” is one of the most interesting songs recorded in this era. Less good is the song that is written solely by Cornell. Where “Stolen Prayer” manages to fit in and ultimately feel like an Alice Cooper song, “Unholy War” just sounds out of place anywhere other than on a Soundgarden album.
The late 80s through 90s era is punctuated by a live album recorded at Sammy Hagar’s club in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The show itself is good, but was only released in its entirety in Japan. Sadly the songs omitted from the other regions are the less often played gems of “Clones (we’re all)” and “Bed of Nails.” The fact that these songs (especially Clones) are not available on most versions of the album reduces its value greatly. The Japanese version of the album has since been deleted and is almost impossible to find. The only thing that gives the standard editions of this album any value whatsoever is the inclusion of a brand new studio offering, “Is Anyone Home?” The song is as good as almost any other song from this era and should not be omitted from any compilation.
Overall Part III might actually be the weakest of the four mixes. To be fair, it is the era that includes the fewest full length albums and thereby the greatest opportunity for weaker songs to make a compilation. That said, it is still not easy to whittle down the mix to 80 minutes due to the fact that so many of the songs are well known, especially to fans that are too young to have heard the Alice Cooper band in their heyday. The fact that the songs from this era are the longest in the entire Alice Cooper catalogue also adds to the difficulty in preparing a mix. As for singles, every one from this era is used in the longer mix, but “Only My Heart Talkin’” is left out of the 80 minute version. Sadly, “Only My Heart Talkin’” is actually the second highest selling US single from this era, largely because it is yet another mellow ballad. Unlike the other parts this mix does not have a style change and tends to have a good sense of cohesion and flow, moving from Heavy Metal, to Pop Metal to Alternative Rock almost seamlessly. It is an innocuous evolution.
Part IV – A New Millennium of Terror 2000 – 2011
Unlike the previous era, Part IV can again be split into two distinctly different stylistic periods. For the first two albums in this era Alice Cooper tried to distance his music further from the hair-metal sound by incorporating industrial metal elements into the songs. This worked to great effect on the first of the two albums musically, but once again failed to deliver any bump in sales. Much like the late 70s to early 80s era, the new millennium for Alice Cooper is characterized by falling sales and general ambivalence by the public. Only more recently, due in large part to the obliteration of the music industry as previously constituted, have sales begun to rise slightly. The current constitution of the music industry will never allow for artists like Alice Cooper to be Platinum sellers again, but it can allow for a small niche market to be cultivated. Part IV is really about Alice Cooper coming to terms with this fact and embracing his place in the music industry of the new millennium.
The beginning of this era finds Alice Cooper attempting to co-opt yet another musical trend; this time industrial metal. Buoyed by the success of artists who cited him as a major influence in their work such as Rob Zombie, Monster Magnet, and Marylyn Manson; Alice Cooper looked to seize upon their popularity. Borrowing quite a bit from the sound of Marylyn Manson’s most successful albums, “Brutal Planet” forges the new sound effectively. On the longer mix a full eight out of the twelve songs from the Japanese version of the album warrant inclusion. This is whittled down to just five on the CD version, but nevertheless, is impressive. “Brutal Planet” never stops being good from beginning to end. There are two singles from the album; one was commercially released and one only exists as a promotional single. Both merit inclusion on even the 80 minute mix. The promotional single is the album’s title track and although the “Gimme” commercial single failed to have any success, it remains as one of the album’s standouts. The other three songs that must be on any mix from this era are “Blow Me a Kiss” which marks the return of Bob Ezrin as a co-writer, “Sanctuary”, and “It’s the Little Things.” The latter is particularly fun due to its chorus homage to past Alice Cooper hits with the line “Welcome to my nightmare, no more Mr. Nice Guy.” The three songs that fall just below these three and only make the mix not constricted by time are “Eat some More”, “Cold Machines” and the Japanese bonus track, “Can’t Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me.” Not only are all of these very good songs, but excluding the mellow ballad that attempts to further leach off the success of “Only Women Bleed” (“Take It Like a Woman”), any song off this album could be included on a broad mix without hurting the overall quality.
Where “Brutal Planet” succeeds, “DragonTown” fails miserably. It is easily the worst album in this era and only two songs merit inclusion on any compilation. It is not the fact that “Brutal Planet” is an industrial metal album that makes it great; it is the quality of the songs. “DragonTown” continues the industrial flavoured sound from the previous album, but fails to deliver much in the way of songs that are worth listening to. There are no singles from this album, but it is widely accepted that “Triggerman” should be considered the de facto single. A remixed version of the song exists, although was not released on any Alice Cooper album. Not only is “Triggerman” the song that most resembles a single on this album, it is by far and away the best song on the album. The only other song worth mentioning is “Sex, Death, and Money” which despite questionable lyrics is not a bad song. One has to hope that the lyrics of “Sex, Death, and Money” are written sarcastically from the point of view of a puritanical conservative Christian dimwit. It is best to assume that they are. The rest of the album is almost completely unlistenable.
In terms of sales the trend was becoming pretty obvious. The previous five albums had all failed to equal their predecessor. Rather than try to latch on to the next big thing, the decision was made to go for a more basic hard rock sound which would presumably be most appealing to the Alice Cooper core audience. What clearly should matter most is the quality of the songs, not the idiosyncrasies of specific sub-genres, but it seems as if to many so-called fans such things are important. Musically “The Eyes of Alice Cooper” is superior to “DragonTown”, but that is not difficult to achieve. There is nothing really spectacular on this album and there were no singles that were released. There is however a song the fits the bill of a single and would have been the single had the record industry not degenerated. “Between High School and Old School” was cited by critics and fans alike as being an instant Alice Cooper classic and easily acts as a would-be first single. If only one song is included from this album it should be this one. Luckily there are a few more good songs on “The Eyes of Alice Cooper” that merit inclusion even on the shorter mix. Notably, “The Song That Didn't Rhyme” may be one of the best Alice Cooper ballads of all time and as silly as anything from the earlier periods. The song should be included on any compilation from this era. Both “Backyard Brawl” and “Spirits Rebellious” are also quite good, but due to time constraints neither of these songs fit on the CD version of the mix and are only found on the longer version.
The next album in the sequence is fairly similar to “The Eyes of Alice Cooper” both in terms of style and substance. “Dirty Diamonds” once again contains no singles and it is difficult to discern what would constitute a single. The best guess is probably the title track since it is one of the standouts on the album and not only worthy of being on any mix, but also the best candidate for opening song from this era. The interesting thing about this album is that even though there are only three songs that are good enough to make any compilation, those three songs are spectacular. Beyond the aforementioned title track is the hilarious country flavoured ballad “The Saga of Jesse Jane.” There is no way that this song should be left off of any mix that features songs from this album. The third great song from “Dirty Diamonds” is “Your Own Worst Enemy”, which sees Alice Cooper successfully returning to the fun short rocky romp of the band days. The song is spectacular and there is no excuse for it not to be included in the Part IV compilation.
2008’s "Along Came a Spider" is much more difficult to come to terms with than any other album in this era. It is a concept album that deals with a disturbing storyline. There is nothing humorous about any part of this album. Other concept albums in the Alice Cooper catalogue such as “Brutal Planet”, “DragonTown”, “Welcome To My Nightmare”, “Alice Cooper... Goes To Hell”, “From the Inside” and “DADA” all have some elements that will bring a smile to the listener’s face. Even the most jarring and depressing of these concept albums manages to make fun of the protagonist in the story. For example, despite how harsh the ending of “DADA” album is with the gunshot at the end of “Pass the Gun Around”, there is still the ridiculousness of “I Love America” and “No Man’s Land.” Such contrast is nowhere to be found on “Along Came a Spider.” It is the story of a serial killer that goes about murdering his victims by encasing them in silk and removing a leg until he has collected eight of the appendages. Despite the dreary storyline that permeates the lyrics of every song on the album, one song stands out above all others. “Wake the Dead” is so good, that it earns the coveted 3rd track not only on the album, but in the mix as well. The song is co-written with Ozzy Osbourne who also provided some guest vocals. Beyond “Wake the Dead” the rest of the album is good, but not great and the fact that the lyrics are mostly upsetting doesn’t help matters. It is difficult to pull songs out of the context of this concept album without inducing horrific effects. The songs here are all slaves to the concept. It reads more like a horror novel where each track is a chapter than a music album. One of the songs used on the short 80 minute mix is a track that is only available on the 2010 rerelease of the album. Lyrically “I'll Still Be There” doesn’t stray from the dreary story, but is a little more interesting than most of the other songs on the album musically. The other one that makes it to the CD version of the mix is the track “The One That Got Away” which was co-written by Kerri Kelly and Jani Lane. It is interesting to hear Alice Cooper sing on a song that vaguely sounds like it has some elements of the band Warrant in it. Another two songs were used for the version of the mix that isn’t constrained by time. Of these “Salvation” is a ballad that continues the trend observed on the previous two albums of Alice Cooper writing higher quality ballads. Still, it is nowhere near as good as “The Saga of Jesse Jane” or “The Song That Didn't Rhyme” and suffers from the same lyrical malady that plagues the entire album. The last song to make the longer mix is “Catch Me If You Can” which is just a good album track that deserves inclusion on a mix that is not under a tight constraint for time.
The latest Alice Cooper album is yet another attempt to leach off of the success of “Welcome To My Nightmare.” Despite this blatant attempt at self plagiarism, “Welcome 2 My Nightmare” is not a bad album by any standard whatsoever. It has some great songs that merit inclusion on any Alice Cooper mix and has a good measure of both story and humour. The best songs on the album are “Ghouls Gone Wild”, “The Congregation”, and “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever” all of which are excellent and must be on any mix that covers this era. The album features the return of Bob Ezrin to the production board and it shows. The quality of the song writing for this album is as good as anything Alice Cooper has ever produced. The first single from the album is a song called “I’ll Bite Your Face Off.” Although it is less good than some of the other songs on the album, it still is a strong song that should be included on any version of a mix from this era. There are two more songs that are worthy of inclusion on even a short compilation. “Caffeine” is a very good song that, despite actually being the second song on the album, makes for an excellent end of the mix song due to it’s slowing down ending; while “Under the Bed” is a song that is only available on the special edition of the album, but is good enough that should be included on even the 80 minutes version of the mix. All of the songs that are taken from this album warrant making the shorter mix; therefore even though on the longer mix “Brutal Planet” delivers more songs (8) in total in this era, on the CD version “Welcome 2 My Nightmare” songs outnumber “Brutal Planet” songs six to five. The one glaring failure of this album is the fact that Alice Cooper once again tried to replicate the success of “Only Women Bleed” with yet another subpar mellow ballad. “When Hell Comes Home” is as trite and unlistenable as any of the “Only Women Bleed” clones.
There is one more song from this era included on the mix that is not on any album. The song “Keepin' Halloween Alive” was released as a non-album 7” single in 2009 in conjunction with the record store day initiative. The song is a short little Halloween themed romp that is much more fun than anything off of “Along Came a Spider” and would fit in nicely on “Welcome 2 My Nightmare.” Unfortunately, while it does sonically fit in with the latter album, it is not as strong of a song as any of the six from that album that are on the mix. Still, because the song is not available on any album it is a good idea to feature it on the CD mix.
This era of Alice Cooper is possibly the most difficult to gauge due in part to the fact that the music industry changed beyond recognition in the time period. There are only two singles released commercially for the entire decade plus and only two further singles that were released for promotion. One of the singles is a non album track, so there is precious little outside guidance when choosing what album tracks to include on a compilation. All four of the singles are included on the CD mix as well as any song off the albums without singles that received single-like attention. Musically there is a change in sound between the first two albums, that have industrial metal influences, to the latter four; but this is not as severe of a change as between the first two albums and the rest of Part I or the difference between the 70s and 80s material on Part II. Interestingly, because “Brutal Planet” features so heavily on the full length version of the mix, there is quite an equitable distribution of styles in that version. The CD version tends to lean a little more heavily on latter albums. In regards to the albums themselves, the era starts off in spectacular fashion and ends on a very high note, but the albums in between deliver mixed results. Of the middle of the era albums, arguably the most interesting is “Dirty Diamonds” because even though it has few good songs, the ones that are good are spectacular. The album that follows has some very good songs, but is fatally wounded by a terrible concept that makes it difficult to use individual songs for a mix. Easily the most balance album in the era is “Welcome 2 My Nightmare” which manages to rise above its premise and not just be a clone of its namesake. Unfortunately both that album and “Brutal Planet” are mired by yet another couple of “Only Women Bleed” clones. Alice Cooper would be served well in the future to stop trying recapture the success of that single and instead write high quality ballads like those found on other albums in this era.
Over the course of 26 studio albums, 2 live albums and 1 box set Alice Cooper covers enough material to warrant four full length mixes. Each of the longer mixes contains six more songs than can fit on the time constrained CD version except for Part IV which contains seven bonus songs. Even with four parts it is still worth arguing that some key songs were left off, but by adhering to limits all of the mixes are beyond any doubt highly enjoyable and without any letdowns. Part I feature be the best era and contains more songs than any other part due to the different style of the Alice Cooper band from the solo artist. Part II required the harshest decisions due to the fact that it contained the most albums and a period where undesirable songs were released as singles. Part III could possibly be the weakest, but has the most songs that are familiar to younger fans. And Part IV explores some new sounds while revamping concepts from the past. In concert these four mixes work beautifully together to showcase the career of a superior artist.
