Friday, February 28, 2014

1983, apr-may, CREEM CLOSE-UP, METAL MUSIC

April - May 1983

Creem Close-Up
Metal Music

This magazine is pretty beat but it included a lot 
of good metal bands.


Cover



Pg 14,
Rock N' Roll Heavy Heroes - From A To Z




Pg 23


1978, nov, CREEM, Stars Cars No. 43

November 1978

Creem


Pg 54, Stars Cars No. 43



Pg 64, Consumer Guide
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band review




Thursday, February 27, 2014

1975, oct, CREEM, Reflections In A Cyclops Eye Or Alice Off The Road

October 1975

Creem


Pg 5, Content




Pg 15 - 16, Rock N' Roll News
This first news brief sounds like the
making of Kiss Destroyer album





Pg 36




Pg 50 - 51, 73




Wednesday, February 26, 2014

1973, sept, CREEM

September 1973

Creem

Alice Cooper appears in a number of articles in this issue



Pg 18




Pg 8, Letters



Pg 15, Rock N' Roll News




Pg 50
"Get On The High Foot....
While It Lasts"
Fashion article on foot wear
Alice Cooper is mentioned
on his thigh high leopard skin boots



Pg 51



Pg 79


Pg 80


Tuesday, February 25, 2014

2005, dec, MOJO, American Excess / '73 DVD review

December 2005

MOJO

This issue gives the history of Alice Cooper
from early days up to "Dirty Diamonds" release.

Last page is DVD review of
Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper


Pg 46
Pg 46 & 47 is a spread
I like how they used Alice's face as stars of
the American flag


Pg 47


Pg 48


Pg 49


Pg 50


Pg 52



Pg 54
This last page Dennis Dunaway gives his take on the break up 




Pg 146
Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper
DVD review




Monday, February 24, 2014

1982, Rock 'N' Roll Babylon by Gary Herman, softcover

I found this book at a local record shop.
This book is the size of a magazine 8.25x11 inches.
It covers rock n roll from Elvis Presley to The Sex Pistols.
A lot on The Rolling Stones group and certain individuals like Mick Jagger.
Includes two pics of Alice Cooper one is a 2 page spread the other is a full page.
The total text on Alice Cooper is about one and a half columns long.


1982

Rock 'N' Roll Babylon by Gary Herman

Cover (softcover)
Mick Jagger on cover



Pg 68 - 69



Page 70 - 71

Throughout, the seventies the idea of rock’ n’ roll
representing images from the sexual sub-culture held
sway. Former Zappa associate, Alice Cooper, built an
entire career on a couple of good hard-rock songs and
an act that even as early as 1971 he admitted was ‘60
per cent contrived’‚ Among Cooper’s contrivances
were the name itself (the band was all-male and Alice’s
real name is Vincent Furnier), whips, leather gear,
dolls that were mutilated in the course of the act, a
chicken that was, ‘killed’ during the show amid a flurry
of prepared feathers, a mock guillotining, even - at
one point‚ the bizarre apparition of Alice dressed in
his torn leotard and high boots brandishing a giant
toothbrush and chasing a scantily-dressed woman
disguised as a tube of toothpaste.
Alice, who had clearly made a study of his mentor,
Frank Zappa, was hugely successful and inspired
many a later punk rocker with his stage image of
decadence refined to complete negativity. Zappa may
have been a nihilist, but his sense of morality and
humour cannot be doubted. The Alice persona was no
more than a hollow shell which enabled the real Vin-
cent Furnier to indulge his favourite activities of golf
and drinking. This son of an Arizona preacher hit the
green with the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Bing Crosby
and hit the bottle with a will. In late 1977, he
committed himself to a sanatorium to dry out and later
recorded an album, From The Inside, based on his
experiences. ‘I was drinking two quarts of whisky a
day,’ said Alice after his three month treatment, ‘just
to keep going! I was living at 100 miles an hour with
alcohol for fuel.’ In two-and-a-half-years, said Alice,
he had never been sober. Even early on, the group used
to boast of spending $250,000 a year on booze and
Alice himself would regularly put away 40 cans of beer
in one day. ‘In the end,’ said Alice, ‘I was throwing up
blood.’ Alice’s sado-masochistic stage twilight stood
in evident contrast to Vincent Furnier’s more straight-
forward reality. After splitting with his lover, Cindy
Lang, Vince married Sherryl Goddard in 1976. ‘In two
years of marriage,’ he later said, ‘she never saw me
sober.’ After committing himself to the sanatorium,
Vince expected the worst. But Sherryl came through
with flying colours. She declared that she always
knew that her husband would straighten himself out
one day, and she damn well intended to stay with him!


Page 137

Often the mimicking can be dangerous - especially when the act mimicked makes 
use of potentially dangerous props. In June 1974, at the height of Alice Cooper’s 
mock-hanging act, a thirteen-year-old boy from Calgary, Canada, hung himself by 
the neck until he was dead at a copy-cat ‘hanging party. (Alice dropped the item from 
his act after this tragedy.)


Page 145

Alice Cooper even organized his own Alice lookalike competition 
(won by a Vietnam veteran on day release from a mental hospital).


Pg 103 with caption






Back Cover


Sunday, February 23, 2014

2011, No Regrets, Ace Frehley autobiography, Alice mention

2011 (hardcover)

No Regrets, A Rock n' Roll Memoir
by Ace Frehley, Joe Layden and John Ostrosky

KISS's Ace Frehley autobiography gives a few nods to
Alice Cooper and even talks about producer Bob Ezrin.

The book had some photos but none w/ Alice.

I found this book in the over stocked section
of the book store it was around $6.
Ace is talking about doing a sequel.


Cover



Pg 74 - 75

By any reasonable standard, we were destitute. 
A few of us had part-time jobs - Paul and I drove cabs, Gene worked at a
magazine - but there was never much money. It didn’t seem to matter.
We all believed that soon enough we’ d be supporting ourselves solely as
musicians. We had good songs, solid musicianship, and confidence that
there was a market for theatrical rock. We wanted to take it further than
any of the acts that inspired and influenced us, like the Who, Hendrix,
the Move, Alice Cooper, and the New York Dolls.

The Dolls were a gender-bending, pre-punk group fronted by David
Johansen and Johnny Thunders. They wore high heels and makeup
and generally favored androgynous clothing. They influenced a lot
of other musicians on the New York scene, and they had an effect on
KISS, both musically and stylistically.

So did Alice, probably even to a greater degree, because Alice’s
sound was more polished and commercial, and his show revolved
around theatrics. Alice Cooper in the 1970’s brought blood and guts to
the stage, combining rock and performance art in a way that had never
been attempted. He wasn’t just a singer; he was a character in his own
band, and that character did crazy, repulsive things in the name of art.
Alice, like the Dolls, wore androgynous fashion, only with a sadomas-
ochistic flavor. He utilized guillotines and snakes and buckets of blood
in his shows. And people loved it.

Well, not all of the people, obviously. Conservative groups (and
more than a few parents) thought Alice was doing the devil’s work, cor-
rupting kids and peddling sex and violence. They hated him, a response
that predictably helped fuel sales of record albums and concert tickets.

Alice knew exactly what he was doing. He made melodic but hard
commercial rock, and he sold it with a grisly flourish (as well as a
wink and a nod, l might add, though not everyone noticed), promis-
ing to make every night Halloween. It was nothing short of brilliant.

He’s now one of the most recognizable icons in rock ‘n’ roll. (Little
did I know Alice and I would become good friends later on down the road.)


Pg 80

For all my disagreements with Gene over the years, I have to give
him credit for being a tireless worker and self-promoter. I never had all
that much interest in the financial side of the business; Gene was ob-
sessed with it. From the first time I met him, he seemed like a guy who
put as much value on the marketing and promotional end of KISS as
he did on the music we produced. Don’t get me wrong. Gene was a de-
cent songwriter and bass player, and I respected him on that level. But
it was clear to me that he considered the music to be only one piece of
the puzzle. I was like that, too, but to a much lesser degree. I saw Alice
Cooper wrap himself in boa constrictors and fake executions onstage,
and I thought, Wow, . . cool.

Gene saw the same thing and thought, How can we expand on that,
and how do we put together a business model to ensure its success?


Pg 143

Our next album, Destroyer, represented a departure for KISS, and
not merely because of the cocaine and Courvoisier on the mixing con-
sole. The producer on Destroyer was Bob Ezrin, a studio wizard best
known for his work with Alice Cooper, and a guy so widely acknowl-
edged as being a production genius that everyone was basically willing
to look the other way when it became apparent that he had a few vices
of his own.

That was one of the things that bothered me most about Paul and
Gene - they were very selective in their moral indignation. Bob was a
brilliant producer, so they gave him a free pass, much the same way
they did with Neil Bogart during the production of Dressed to Kill.
I think the word hypocritical might be apropos at this point.

I remember the very first time I tried coke. It was during the record-
ing of the Destroyer album, in December 1975. Watching Bob and oth-
ers partake of the glittery crystalline powder during the recording and
mixing process intrigued me and brought out my curiosity. I figured
that if a genius like Bob did it, and he was very successful at what he did,
then maybe it was the missing link I had been looking for in my life. 


Pg 148

Around the time we hooked up with Bob, he was among the hottest 
producers in the business, having worked with Dr. John, Alice Cooper, 
and Lou Reed. Going strictly by his reputation and resume, I was
looking forward to working with Bob, and while I think Destroyer is an
interesting and even innovative KISS record, the recording process isn’t
something I recall with great affection. Part of that is due to the fact that
sometimes I was intimidated by Bob, especially when I couldn’t come
up with a guitar-solo idea fast enough to suit his needs.

You have to understand where Bob was coming from. I had heard
that when he worked with Alice Cooper’s band he had brought in a ses-
sion guitar player to do a lot of the solos, and I got the feeling that there
was a chance he was going to follow the same plan with KISS if I didn’t
produce quickly enough. The pressure was on and with a hangover as
a frequent distraction, I hit a brick wall occasionally.

But part of it was also due to the fact that Bob wasn’t very patient
with me; I got the feeling that Paul and Gene might have told Bob
about my drinking problem, and he may have put me in the same cat-
egory as the guys in Alice’s band. The difference is that I had the chops;
those just needed to be finessed.

Bob was an interesting guy with a great mind for music and produc-
tion, but at times he had the demanding, volatile demeanor of a football
coach or drill instructor. I guess you’d say he was a high-strung artistic
type, which didn’t always mesh well with my laid-back personality.

Bob used to bring a whistle to the studio, and while cutting basic
tracks he really intimidated Peter by putting a small box over a micro-
phone and hitting it with a drumstick, as if Peter couldn’t keep proper
time! I really felt for Peter during those sessions. It was at times a very
demoralizing experience for all of us, and no matter what any of us said,
Bob’s word was the law.


Pg 155

I think we all kind of felt locked into our characters, like we couldn’t
break loose. The Spaceman was my deal with the devil. When you’re
generating hundreds of millions of dollars, your work tends to have an
impact on other people. Walking away is complicated and messy. The
thing is, for me it was never about the money. It was always about the
music. I really believed in theatrical rock; from the moment I saw Pete
Townshend smash that First guitar, I knew it was the right way to go.
But Townshend never put on makeup. Even Alice Cooper stopped well
short of what we were doing in KISS. We pushed the envelope so much
that in the beginning it seemed crazy.
Then it was accepted.
And finally it was expected.


Pg 186

I hung out with most of the celebrities and rock stars who walked
through the portals of Studio 54; I drank and did drugs with them.
Danced with Lindsay Wagner, hung out with Keith Richards, Alice
Cooper, Mick Jagger, and John Belushi, to mention just a few. I saw
the giant bags of money and people doing drugs and having sex in the
bathrooms and up in the balcony. For the right price you could have
just about anything you wanted, from drugs to flesh. At that point in
time Studio 54 sometimes felt like the center of the universe. 


Pg 198

The state troopers arrived just minutes later and I eagerly listened to
the conversation from under the sheets, while pretending to be asleep.
They were ready to take me away without discussion, and who could
blame them? There was furniture flying out of my room like missiles.
But Frankie, God rest his soul, handled the whole thing like a pro.
Frankie was a crazy fuck, and had seen it all and could bullshit with the
best of them. Frankie had also road-managed Alice Cooper before coming
on board with KISS, so he knew a little something about rock star excess.


Pg 128 - 129

From time to time, I rented out my studio to friends and other artists,
simply because it was there and it was such a terrific, state-of-the-art fa-
cility. A diverse group of artists passed through its doors: the 19605 folk-
singer Melanie; Neil Smith and Dennis Dunaway from Alice Cooper’s
original band; Rolling Stones producer Chris Kimsey; and the late Bob
Mayo from Peter Frampton’s band, to name just a few.









2011, The Doors FAQ, Alice Cooper mention

2011, paperback
THE DOORS FAQ
by Rich Weidman

Of course if you are going to do a book like this
you have to have someone check the facts.
I think Weidman did a good job on The Doors
but I found a few errors. One of course is stating that
Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" is a cover by
Question Mark and the Mysterians as "8-Teen"
on pg 125 - 127.




Pg 65-66

Cheetah Club

Once known as the Aragon Ballroom (featuring Lawrence Welk and the “Champagne
Iusic Makers”), the Cheetah was a rock ‘n’ roll club located adjacent to Pacific Ocean Park at 
1 Navy Street on the Santa Monica Pier. According to Densmore, first the Doors
“played clubs, then second bill at small two-thousand-seat auditoriums like the Cheetah
. . . We were making the transition from dives to concerts.”
The Cheetah featured early performances by the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, the Seeds, the Mothers of
 Invention, Love, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper. In Light My Fire, Manzarek described the Cheetah as 
“an insane psychedelic ballroom” that was “all wooden and warm
archaic . . . inside” like “something from the movie They Shoot Horses, Don’t They ?,
a Depression-era tale of marathon dancing.”
During a gig with Jefferson Airplane on April 9, 1967, at the Cheetah (the first time
received top billing over their San Francisco rivals),
Morrison unveiled his “tightrope walk,” balancing precariously on the edge of the stage eight feet off the ground while doing a shaman Indian dance. According to Manzarek, Morrison lost his balance and fell into the audience and “stage diving was born.”
One of the Alice Cooper Band’s early incarnations, the Nazz (not to be confused with the Todd Rundgren group), opened for the Doors at the Cheetah, The Cheetah closed in 1968, and the building was completely destroyed by fire in 1979. 

Pg 106  (Roadhouse Blues)

The opening lines for “Roadhouse Blues”- Keep your eyes on the road
your hands upon the wheel” - were Morrison’s instructions to Courson as she
sometimes took the wheel for the precarious drive along Topanga Canyon
Boulevard. The “King of Shock Rock” himself, Alice Cooper, an early drinking
buddy of Morrison’s, later claimed that he uttered the line “Woke up this morning
and got myself a beer” in a conversation with Morrison that eventually ended
up as a line in “Roadhouse Blues.” As with “Love Street,” “Roadhouse Blues”
ends on a tentative note: “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.”


Pg 125 - 127

Bands That Share the Bill with the Doors During the Early Years

In this section the author screws up Alice Cooper info in misleading the reader that “I’m Eighteen” 
was a cover song from Question Mark and the Mysterians as “8-Teen”


Alice Cooper

“Welcome to my nightmare. I think you’re gonna like it . . .” Before he became
the “Godfather of Shock Rock.” Alice Cooper (real name: Vincent Damon
Furnier) was just a struggling rock musician trying to hit the big time with
his band in Los Angeles. The son of a preacher, Furnier was born in Detroit,
Michigan, on February 4, 1948. The family moved to Phoenix, Arizona, when
Furnier, a severe asthmatic, was three years old. In 1965, Furnier and some of his
high school buddies on the track team formed a band called the Earwigs, mainly
performing covers of Beatles and Rolling Stones songs. The band changed their
name to the Spiders the following year, scored a local hit with “Don’t Blow Your
Mind,“ and eventually headed to Los Angeles in 1968, morphing first into the Nazz
and later Alice Cooper. The band featured Furnier (vocals/harmonica),
Glen Buxton (lead guitar), Michael Bruce (rhythm guitar/keyboards), Dennis
Dunaway (bass), and Neal Smith (drums). Furnier soon adopted the band’s name as his own.

The Doors were one of the first bands to befriend Alice Cooper and invited
them to the recording studio. According to Cooper, Morrison would arrive
at the studio and start taking any drugs that were available, pills or acid, and
washing it all down with shots of whisky. Needless to say, Morrison and Furnier
soon became drinking buddies and often hung out on the Santa Monica Peir
chugging beer after beer. The Alice Cooper Band opened for the Doors at the
Cheetah, which was located at the end of the pier, as “Light My Fire” skyrocketed
up the charts during the summer of 1967. According to Cooper, “The thing
about Jim was it was sometimes dangerous being around him because there was
no such thing as a dare. He would jump out of cars and roll down hills.” At a big
party for the Doors at 6000 Sunset Boulevard, Morrison’s “got a bottle of whiskey in each hand, 
on top of the building balancing like a high wire act. One gust of
wind and he is over. I’m sitting there going “How come no one is pulling him off
the ledge? It’s Jim Morrison!’ and they’re like “If he falls, he falls.”

During the late 1960s, the Alice Cooper Band earned a reputation as “the
worst band in Los Angeles.” They eventually signed with Frank Zappa’s Straight
Records label and released two albums: Pretties for You (which the Rolling Stone
Album Guide called “strictly inept psychedelia”) and Easy Action in 1970. On
September 13, 1969, the Alice Cooper Band turned in an infamous performance
at the Toronto Rock n’ Roll Revival festival. The Doors headlined the event,
which also featured the Plastic Ono Band, as well as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley,
Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Gene Vincent. During the Alice Cooper
Band’s set, someone threw a live chicken onstage. Unaware that the bird could
not fly. Cooper hurled the bird off the stage, and it was torn to pieces by the audience.

Unable to gain any momentum in Los Angeles, the Alice Cooper Band
decided to head to Detroit, where they received a somewhat better reception
and befriended local bands such as the Stooges and MC5. In 1971, the band
released Love It to Death, which featured the hit single “Eighteen”- an instant
teen anthem first recorded by Question Mark and the Mysterians as “8-Teen”
that reached No. 21 on the charts. By this time, the band started indulging in
rock theatrics and incorporating elaborate stage props into their live shows
that included black makeup, fake blood, guillotines and electric chairs. live boa
constrictors, and six-foot-long, inflatable phalluses. No strangers to excess, the
Alice Cooper Band bought a 42-room mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, and
boasted of spending $300,000 a year on booze. Cooper later remarked, “We were
the National Enquirer of rock ‘n’ roll.” Lovell to Death was followed by Killer (1971)
and School’s Out (1972), which reached No. 2 on the U.S charts, and Billion Dollar
Babies (l973), which reached No. 1. ln Cooper’s 1976 autobiography, Me, Alice:
TheAutnbiography of Alice Cooper, he wrote that the song “Desperado” on his Killer
album was a tribute to Morrison.

Cooper’s first solo effort, Welcome to My Nightmare (1975), featured narration
by Vincent Price and the ballad “Only Women Bleed.” Cooper provided the
song “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)” for the Friday the 13th, Part VI

soundrack. Trash (1989) boasted the hit single, “Poison,” which hit No. 7 on
the U.S. charts. Alice Cooper has influenced such performers as Kiss, Marilyn
Manson, and Rob Zombie, among others. He was selected for induction into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2011 along with Tom Waits,
Dr. John, Neil Diamond, and Darlene Love.


Pg 158 - 159

Toronto Rock & Roll Revival Concert - September 13, 1969

This one-day, 13 1/2 hour festival was originally promoted as a tribute to ‘50’s
rockers, but tickets sold poorly, and the promoters added other groups such as
the Doors and the up-and-coming Alice Cooper Band. Even with the Doors as
headliners, only 800 tickets had been sold just a week before the concert. In
desperation, the promoters contacted john Lennon and asked him if he would
like to emcee the show. Surprisingly he offered to perform at the concert with
his newly formed Plastic Ono Band. With Lennon on the bill, ticket sales took
off, and the venue completely sold out its 22,000 seats.
It was Lennon’s first gig without the Beatles. The Plastic Ono Band consisted
of Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton on guitar, Klaus Voorman on bass. and Alan
White on drums. The band played “Blue Suede Shoes”‚ “Money‚“ “Cold Turkey,”
and “Give Peace a Chance.” Other performers included many of the Doors’
earliest musical influences such as Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley
(who later would sing a cover of  “Love Her Madly” on the Doors tribute album
Stoned lmmaculate), Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Lord Sutch. During

Alice Cooper’s set, the shock rocker launched a live chicken into the audience
(he later confessed that he thought it could fly), and the poor bird was torn to
pieces by the crowd.

The Doors‚ set list included “When the Music’s Over,” “Break on Through,”
“Back Door Man,” “The Crystal Ship,” “Light My Fire,” and “The End.” During
“Back Door Man,” Morrison inserted a line from a new song, “Roadhouse Blues,”
that he was still working on: “Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon
wheel.” During the intro to “The End,” Morrison paid tribute to the other
performers, stating that it was “a great honor to perform on the same stage with
many illustrious musical geniuses.” An album of the performance, Live Peace
Toronto, was released by Apple Records on December 15, 1969.
The Toronto Rock & Roll Revival Concert was the only time the Doors
shared a bill with any of the Beatles. However. Morrison had met Lennon once
on September 23, 1968, when he stopped by Abbey Road Studios during
one of their recording sessions. The Beatles were working on “Happiness Is a
Warm Gun.” According to an unfounded rumor, Morrison sang a chorus on
one take. Lennon was murdered at the age of forty in 1980 on December 8
(coincidentally Morrison’s birthday; he would have been thirty-seven years old).


Pg 169

How Morrison’s Alcoholism Affected the Doors’ Performances and Studio Albums

People would tell Jim he should drink less and he’d take them out and get them drunk.
- Robby Krieger

Acidhead to Boozer

When Morrison first started writing lyrics during the summer of 1965, he had
dropped down to about 135 pounds, had basically stopped eating and was
dropping acid and smoking pot frequently. However, he changed very quickly,
according to Manzarek, from a “psychedelic pothead and acidhead” to “a closing
off of consciousness, and a favoring of pills, uppers and downers. and alcohol.”
Alice Cooper, who was one of Morrison’s early drinking buddies, described him
as one of the “most self-destructive” individuals he had ever met. According to
Danny Sugerman in Wonderland Avenue, “It almost appeared Jim was intentionally
trying to ruin everything he had worked so hard to establish - hellbent on
bringing the whole house down with him.”


Pg 241 
(Iggy Pop excerpt)

ln interview with Salli Stevenson that appeared in Circus magazine (Winter 1970),
Morrison was asked what he thought of groups likes the Stooges and
Alice Cooper and he answered, “I like people who shake other people up and
kind of make them uncomfortable. A young friend of mine [presumably Danny
Sugarman] thinks Iggy is great.” Music critic Lester Bangs of CREEM magazine
called Pop the “most intense performer” he had ever seen.