Sunday, March 2, 2014

Alice Cooper - From The Inside

I like Alice Cooper. If you've ever read any of my past reviews you will know that. I'm sure in one or two different reviews I've said he's my ultimate "Rock God". Now mix that with Elton John's lyricist for all the great classic songs, Bernie Taupin, and you get one hell of a combo, then top that off with Dick Wagner also co-writing over half the songs, and a couple of other top notch musicians helping round out the mix, and it's all very exciting. Oh yeah, let's make the concept album about a bunch of people in a psych ward and I'm totally in heaven. This is Rock Opera that never had the chance to be the spectacle it should have been.

Let me start by saying that I love this album for the same reason I love Alice In Wonderland. I love when people are mad. I mean truly mad in the most pure sense of the word. It's the same reason I enjoy such pleasure from Salvador Dali and Dr. Suess. Life is so much more interesting when you make it just a bit madder.

The album opens with the title track. This song sets up the story for the album and let's you know why Alice is in the insane asylum. "I got lost on the road somewhere / Was it Texas or was it Canada / Drinking whiskey in the morning light / I work the stage all night long / At first we laughed about it / My long haired drunken friends / Proposed a toast to Jimmy's ghost / I never dreamed that I would wind up on the losing end / I'm stuck here on the inside looking out / I'm just another case / Where's my makeup where's my face on the inside / All got your kicks from what you saw up there / Eight bucks even buys a folding chair / I was downing seagrams on another flight / And I worked that stage all night long / You were screaming for the villain up there / And I was much obliged / The old road sure screwed me good this time / It's hard to see where the vicious circle ends / I'm stuck here on the inside looking out / That's no big disgrace / Where's my makeup where's my face on the inside". That last bit repeats for effect. Over all it's a really good set up for an album that only keeps getting wilder and weirder, and clearly a lot crazier.

Then it's on to Wish I Was Born In Beverly Hills. This song is just as relevant today as it was 35 years ago. I mean when you read the lyrical content you can picture Paris Hilton, or Britney Spears, or any other little lost drunken soul that was broken because they want to be, for the fun of it. "She looked so sleek and sassy / Rolling down Rodeo Drive / She got her daddy's black Corniche / And her tennis pro by her side / And she wants her mother's lover / To exercise her skill / And if she don't score him fast / She knows that her brother will / Oh I wish I were born in Beverly Hills / I swear I couldn't drink half as much as she spills / I want to live it up get my kicks and thrills / Be a gigolo lover and send her the bills / She says that she's an actress / Just never got a part / Now she's a teenage mess / With a burned out Gucci heart / She cracked one day at Cartier / When things came to a head / They put her trinkets away / And wrapped her up instead / Oh I wish I were born in Beverly Hills / I swear I couldn't drink half as much as she spills / I want to live it up get my kicks and thrills / Be a gigolo lover and send her the bills / She bit like a dog and she screamed like hell / "You ain't taking me to no padded cell / You better take all your hands off my high priced tail" / Oh I wish I were born in Beverly Hills / I swear I couldn't drink half as much as she spills / I want to live it up get my kicks and thrills / Be a gigolo lover and send her the bills".

The album takes a softer twist when it get's to The Quiet Room. Andria comes into the room as I'm working on the review and says, "Hey, this could pass for Barry Manilow." She's not wrong, but she's sure as fuck not right either. Damn Barry Manilow, being a talented writer that is able to mimic Alice Cooper's styles so easy. (I'm not going to defend or support any part of that last sentence and claim it's all bullshit the whole way around.)

Next up is one of the sexiest songs I have ever heard. I mean musically it's all kinds of naughty, but then it's the lyrics that really grab you. "I'm a shepherd for the pentecost / I got my scriptures and my wires crossed / I got no kids and I got no home / They want us holy men to live alone / Since I've been here for a little stay / I see Rozetta day by day / She turns my head makes me cough / I want to tear my collar off / I just can't sleep at night / Rozetta dressed in white / She's got the Devil's light / Shining in her eyes / Screamed my sermon damning sin and vice / When underneath I was a regular guy / My pulpit melted like a block of ice / When a bolt of lightning hit me from the sky / From my stretcher when they wheeled me in / I stared directly in the eyes of sin / Nurse Rozetta standing over me / And I was helpless as a man of God could be / Nurse Rozetta I won't let her / Catch me peering down her sweater / Fantasizing silk suspender on her thighs / Nurse Rozetta make me better / Secretly my eyes undress her / Let me feel your tongue depressor / I'm suddenly twice my size / My pants are all wet inside / She's so creative with a bar of soap / And so inventive with a stethoscope / To check my pulse she gotta hold my hand / I blow the fuse on the encephalogram / Satan sent her from the bowels of hell / I should have recognized old Jezbel / I surrendered to the urges felt / She popped the buckle on my bible belt / I just can't sleep at night / Rozetta dressed in white / She's got the Devil's light / Shining in her eyes / I'd lick her nylon seams / Like a hungry cat with cream / Oh what a vivid scene / And I can't hold back no more ". Was it wise for my parents to let this song be my introduction into sexual fantasy? Sure why not. Really the song is honest, true, and only a little dirty. This is the type of song that reminds you why Alice was the master of the concept album. It's a madman's fantasy that any sane man and some women could totally appreciate.

Normally I'm not into duets, and especially if they are ballads. I mean there's the odd one I don't mind, but there's only ever been two that come to mind, and only one of them is an Alice track. Millie and Billie is one of the best sick and twisted stories of love you can imagine. I mean a ballad of two lunatics singing to each other about the violence they committed against their respective partners so they could be together. It's wonderfly deranged. Also a great way to finish the first side of the original album.

I think listening to this record on compact disc loses some of the appeal, and not because of the vinyl versus digital argument. I think it suffers from the loss of that small break that creates a sensation of Act I and Act II.

The second half of the album opens with Serious. This is a great upbeat number and the perfect way to kick off the second half of the album. Other than that, there's not too much to say about the song. It helps keep the flow of reminding you why Alice is in the asylum.

The Quiet Room was a softer song, which I've covered already. It's not bad. Millie And Billie is a great piece of love and romance, from a lunatic's point of view. Then when you hit How You Gonna See Me Now, you are hit with a major case of serious introspection and reflection. However, from my point of view this is just another Alice Cooper ballad that's on the album purely for the ladies. This is a song meant to pull at the heart strings, in the most cliche way they can that still works within the confines of the album.

The album takes a major upswing when it moves on to For Veronica's Sake. This would be the joke song of the album, is you pay attention to the lyrics. I mean really? The guy's locked up in the "psycho ward" and all he can do is think about getting out of there for Veronica's sake, because they will gas his dog if he doesn't get there soon. It's the story of a boy and his dog, set to a great rock beat. It's the kind of song you can really get behind, and has no real bad or sick thoughts behind it.

Jackknife Johnny is a really slow number. This is a ballad in the truest sense of a ballad. This is one of those songs that when you are young you get it, but not totally. As a kid that grew up as part of a generation that saw very little of war with the exception of anything post 9/11, it was hard to imagine this really happening outside of movies. "From his army confessions of his military days / You still carry the shrapnel you're shell-shocked and dazed / Dear Johnny have you lost your way / Or like denim and leather are you faded and frayed / Institute lackies with hot bourbon breath / White coats and needles Johnny like to scare you to death / Dear Johnny do you feel your best / When you're strung out at night on your morphine and meth / Jackknife Johnny you're a floor moppin' flunkie / Tool of a dagger's drawn world / Jackknife Johnny them old vets gotta hate you / For bringing home that V.C. girl / Jackknife Johnny welcome to our world / From the tone deaf hearing of the draft board game / You were washing cars down in Dallas when the holocaust came / Dear Johnny your excuse was lame / All your friends sleep in boxes while you sleep in chains / Jackknife Johnny you're a bad jungle monkey / Tool of a dagger's drawn world / Jackknife Johnny them old vets gotta hate you / For bringing home that V.C. girl / Jackknife Johnny welcome to our world / Jackknife Johnny you're a floor moppin' flunkie / Tool of a dagger's drawn world / Jackknife Johnny them old vets gotta hate you / For bringing home that V.C. girl / Jackknife Johnny welcome to our world / Jackknife Johnny you're a bad jungle monkey / Tool of a dagger's drawn world / Jackknife Johnny them old vets gotta hate you / For bringing home that V.C. girl / Jackknife Johnny ". Now a days, it brings home images of so many shattered minds, because killing isn't easy.

When you finish an album, you are supposed to end it with a song that feels huge, massive, grandiose and epic. That song should cap off the album in a way that not only feels complete and magnificent, but it should leave you screaming and begging for more. Inmates (We're All Crazy) taught me that. This is a complex performance piece that brings this Rock Opera to a great dramatic close. "It's not like we did something wrong / We just burned down the church / While the choir within sang religious songs / And it's not like we thought we was right / We just played with the wheels of a passenger train / That cracked on the tracks one night / It's not like we ain't on the ball / We just talk to our shrinks / Huh they talk to their shrinks / No wonder we're up the wall / We're not stupid or dumb / We're the lunatic fringe who rusted the hinge / On Uncle Sam's daughters and sons / Good old boys and girls / Congregating waiting in another world / With roller coaster brains / Imagine playing with trains / Good old boys and girls / Congregating waiting in some other world / We're all crazy we're all crazy we're all crazy / Lizzy Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks / And don't think we're trying to be bad / All the innocent crime seemed alright at the time / Not necessarily mad not necessarily mad / We watch every day for the bus / And the driver would say / "That's where lunatics stay" / I wonder if he's talking about us / It's not like we're vicious or gone / We just dug up the graves where your relatives lay / In old forest lawn / And it's not like we don't know the score / We're the fragile elite they dragged off the street / I guess they just couldn't take us no more / Good old boys and girls / Congregating waiting in another world / With roller coaster brains / Imagine digging up graves / Good old boys and girls / Congregating waiting in some other world / We're all crazy we're all crazy we're all crazy we're all crazy / We're all crazy we're all crazy we're all crazy we're all crazy / We're all crazy ". This is one of those songs that helped show me that madness is haunting, scary, beautiful, and so thrilling. I love a huge chorus singing "we're all crazy." It makes the world sound honest. This song is also a great marvel or production as well.

By the time this album ends I remember why it's one of my favourites. The only song on the album I ever skip is How You Gonna See Me Now. The only other song I have little to no use for is Serious, which is still a great song all the same. Other than that, every other song on this album seems like amazingly crafted pieces about life on the inside. My only real complaint about the album is there's too much keyboard. It sounds good, but I like later live renditions that are more guitar heavy instead. Nurse Rozetta in particular comes to mind when I say that.

If you don't own this album, I think you should. It's very rare I push albums just on lyrical content, but this is one of the ones I would really stand behind for that reason. Musically, it's a Rock Opera, so it's full and lavish and lush, and has great arrangements and compositions. I really would love to hear the original master tapes totally remastered with today's technology to really bring this album new life in the modern age.

8/10 - content

8/10 - production

10/10 - personal bias

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