I was just recalling how I had seen Alice Cooper (the band) at the very beginning when their first album came out. It was at an Army National Guard facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I saw a very young Bob Seger at the same venue. Anyways I also recall having met Alice Cooper (the man) back in the mid-90's as I recall. He lives in the Phoenix area and both of us were participating in a charity golf event. He and I happen to be in line together at the registration table for the tournament and exchanged a few words...
I don't quite remember my source, but I do remember Alice making some remarks about the Nixon administration that I believe were firmly tongue-in-cheek. It was something along the lines of, "Any politician who can be as sneaky and deceitful as that surely has my vote." This is along the lines of an interview he did with Neal Smith in 1969, where he made an side remark of, "I'm not knocking the bomb, we think the bomb's a gas." Alice and the rest of the band carefully cultivated an image of themselves as the depraved ringmasters of a nation descending into chaos and that's where his "support" for Nixon came from. Also, the song "Mary-Ann" from B$B was originally called "Uncle Sam", and Michael Bruce's original lyrics were a subtle critique of U.S. policy in Vietnam. Alice and Shep presumably vetoed this and Alice re-wrote the lyrics as a throwaway gender-bending thing. As Michael once said, "I write the hit songs and Alice ruins them." Not that "Uncle Sam" was destined to be a hit, necessarily, but it's just an example of how Michael intended one thing and Alice transformed it into another. Lastly, it needs mentioning that Alice can hardly be expected to endorse any Presidential candidate since he himself has run in every race since 1973. AliceForPresident.com
Jeez, I keep changing my mind on an answer. I was a huge Cooper fan from 70 to 75. Saw them at MSG in 73. Need to give this one some thought. EDIT TO ADD: Since the OP is talking about 72-74, I'll say yes. Once Alice dismissed the band, I lost interest.
"Alice" is a fascinating persona, an American "Ziggy Stardust". David hopped of the train, but Vincent decided to stick with the girl he came to the dance with. Having himself hung or guillotined onstage, the theatrical make-up and costumes, and the next day playing a round of golf with some of the "straightest" people you could imagine before hopping a plan for the next gig. A true "song-and-dance" man. Show Biz, with great music. He had his problems of course.. a weird way to live for sure. But so many great songs (mostly earlier career-wise).
To answer the OP's question, yes, for a brief moment, Alice Cooper was one of the "big boys" of 70's rock. From 1971 to 1975, Alice Cooper was a genuine phenomenon in rock'n'roll, earning a string of gold records when gold records was still serious business, staging successful tours, and having hit singles. And yes, for a brief moment in 1973 they were the biggest band in the world. They effortlessly grabbed headlines with controversy and conspicuous success. The dissolution of the original band was a genuine tragedy, and one that I think could and should have been avoided. Alice as a solo artist had one great breakout album and then drifted into a kind of mediocrity for several years, although the albums he released during this period were still quite good. But he was never the phenomenon as a solo artist that the original band was. If they had patched things up and continued, even sans Glen Buxton whose departure seems inevitable and un-fixable, I think there would be no question about whether they were among the "big boys" of rock.
That band was classic... Alice solo was well, a guy making a living, no problem, but it lacked the "band" spark. I remember an old Jagger quote (paraphrased) "We were more like gang really, than a band". Sure some good music happens, but the magic is gone.
I think that in a way, the fact that Alice Cooper was really a band of high school buddies contributed to their downfall. In reading their remarks over the years, it seems to me that there was a real resistance to replacing anyone, especially Glen, because it really was a "gang" and not a band assembled out of professional opportunity. I think that when it became obvious that Glen could not continue, Alice was more ready to jettison the entire band rather than dump Glen and continue with another guitar player. Although it's never been said in so many words, I think Shep was the one who really wanted to ditch the original band because Alice, despite his obvious alcoholism, was more reliable and eager to work. Unfortunately once Cooper/Bruce/Buxton/Dunaway/Smith was reduced to Cooper/Ezrin/Gordon (!), there was nobody left in the loop to temper the more commercial aspirations and keep the whole thing grounded in rock'n'roll. After "Only Women Bleed" became a hit single, Alice Cooper albums became super-slick vehicles of MOR rock featuring singles clearly constructed to be AM radio hits. Then the 80's brought cocaine and weird wannabe New Wave albums, and eventually sobriety and the embrace of hair-metal. I do think that with The Last Temptation, Alice finally delivered an album worthy of the original band, and there have been many great albums since then, bit it's true, the magic and integrity of the first 5-6 years have never completely returned.
I saw Alice’s Welcome to my nightmare concert in 75 at the LA Forum. Phenomenal show! Nothing like it at the time. I saw Zeppelin, Queen, the Stones, the Who etc at the Forum in that era also. Alice was definitely up with the big boys then.
I never knew a lot of that back story, thanks. When an artist/band have so much history, the old "sell-out" tag always comes up, and some fans embrace, others vilify the new direction as adapting, or "everyone is doing it". Toss in the cocaine.. all bets are off.. LOL
After posting that, I recalled that in the Bob Greene book, one of the band members (Michael I think) spoke about approaching Shep Gordon about replacing Glen, but Shep refused saying that "Glen gets the most fan mail" and therefore replacing him would be disastrous. Michael confided that he thought this was a bunch of crap and that Glen wasn't more popular than anyone else, but rather Shep just didn't want to mess with the formula. So I may have been a little off in saying that the band wouldn't change members for the sake of camaraderie, but in the end it proved easier to ditch all of them than one of them.
Sounds like a bloody soap opera. The magic had gone. Almost like another band that seem to be popular here..
I think it was Shep's plan to break them up, especially when the others started to exhibit their jealousy and displeasure at the lack of a spotlight on the band. Bob Greene's book certainly didn't help.
Yes, I somehow doubt Nixon would have wanted the endorsement of Alice Cooper in 1972 (though he would have been delighted with the endorsement of Richard and Karen Carpenter).
I just looked at the "Welcome to my Nightmare" LP, Tony Levin plays bass on the title track! I never knew that.
We saw Alice Cooper at the Hollywood Bowl in July 1972 and it was big. We saw the Rolling Stones around a month before at the Forum and the demand for tickets dwarfed Alice Cooper. We saw Led Zeppelin between the Stones and Alice and the excitement and demand for tickets again dwarfed Alice Cooper. (By the way, Captain Beyond were great) The Rolling Stones were the biggest thing going that summer by a country mile. We also saw the Grateful Dead at the Hollywood Bowl that June. They were the easiest to get tickets for. Much better vibe and crowd than any of those other shows.
I agree with this. Killer and Love It To Death were big influences on punk rock, especially on Ramones and The Sex Pistols. In the case of Ramones, you can draw the straight line from Alice Cooper in terms of referencing popular culture and "sick" subject matter in the songs.
Dennis Dunaway's bass playing on things like "Dead Babies", the School's Out album and "Sick Things" in retrospect to me sounds like the template for quite a few goth rock bassists. The Cooper rhythm section were incredible, weren't they?
I've always thought that Dennis Dunaway was obviously one of the very best bass players of the 70's. He's not quite like anyone else, and he's doing some stuff on those songs that I cannot imagine how he did it. And Neal Smith is just 100% rock star. The talent, the look, the ego, the lifestyle, he had it all.
One sad thing about Cooper breaking up and Furnier going solo (as well as cleverly taking the Cooper name with him, ensuring that I often still find myself having to point out that Alice Cooper were the name of the band) is that that great Dunaway/Smith rhythm section was seldom heard on record again for years. I say this as someone who loves Welcome to My Nightmare and DaDa, too.
Listening to Alice Cooper as a 9-10 year old, I found it all a bit scary, but not too much. I think I was more fascinated than scared, because I realized it was just show. Of course, my English in those days was very basic (we used to look up the lyrics with a dictionary to see what they meant), so a lot of the stuff went straight over my head. For example, only much later I realized what "I Love the Dead" was REALLY about. And I guess it was a good thing I had no clue at the time. Also (and I've told this story before), when I bought the album School's Out, I thought the sleeve design was really cool. I showed my mom how the sleeve opened like a vintage school desk (not that vintage, as we had desks like that in primary school still in 1970!). And then she saw the panty, quickly removed it and put it away. I had no idea why she was doing that. It was all so exciting to me.
Hey, my Mom stole the panties, too! Speaking for the NY/NJ area, Alice Cooper (band and Alice solo ) was hugely popular, from Love It To Death thru Welcome to my Nightmare. Sadly, only saw him twice during that period, a Killer show and a Welcome/Nightmare show, but both were terrific.
