Alice Cooper Goes to Hell

I was listening to the radio yesterday and heard a snippet of a song I hadn't heard probably in over thirty years--"I'm Guilty," by Alice Cooper. That prompted a rush of memories, as back in the day I was a big Alice Cooper fan, and the album that contained that song, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money.

Alice Cooper started as a collective name for a band, that released their debut album in 1969. They fumbled about for a style, but it soon became apparent that when their lead singer, Vincent Furnier, adopted the name Alice Cooper for himself, and presented himself as an androgynous Gothic glam figure, their popularity soared. This was true especially when their music took on a Grand Guignol quality, a tongue-in-cheek representation of horror-film tropes. Songs about dead babies and necrophilia did two things--made parents denounce them, and kids to buy their records.

When I was a kid I was a little afraid of the persona. I would look at his records in the store--Killer (which had the song "Dead Babies") had a menacing cover featuring a snake. "School's Out" became a huge hit--every kid knew it by heart. And he had a big hit with a ballad, "Only Women Bleed." But I still had no Alice Cooper records in my possession.

But when I was fifteen and had a little pocket money I started buying my own albums (I never would have dreamt of asking my parents to buy me an Alice Cooper record). Mostly I bought Beatles albums, or similarly safe material like Simon and Garfunkel. But in the summer of '76 Cooper released Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, a concept album that saw our hero descend into the underworld. I bought the record and played it incessantly.

I still own the album, but I learned last night that my turntable doesn't work anymore, making the hundreds of vinyl records I own obsolete. No matter, I know Alice Cooper Goes to Hell so well I can look at the song list and recall them all sharply. The opening number, "Go to Hell," sets the stage: "For criminal acts and violence on the stage/For being a brat, refusing to act your age/For all of the decent citizens you've enraged/You can go to Hell." Cooper, winking at his audience, takes us on a trip to Hades. We get a song from Satan's point of view called "I'm the Coolest," a plea for mercy called "Give the Kid a Break," and the aforementioned "I'm Guilty." My favorite song on the record was the sinister, "Wish You Were Here." There's also a version of the old standard "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," but I didn't know that it wasn't an original song. I remember watching a figure-skating competition, and one of the skaters twirled to that tune. I was amazed that a figure skater would choose an Alice Cooper song! Of course, I learned that the song was actually written in 1918, and in turn is based on a theme by Chopin. From Chopin to Alice Cooper--the mind boggles.

That may have been the last time Alice Cooper was relevant as a musician. He managed to walk both sides of the street--he was a ghoulish rock singer, but also turned up on bland entertainment shows like Hollywood Squares. He would go on making albums, but they wouldn't sell well and his legacy had already been written, focused on his elaborate stage shows and macabre lyrics. Some of his records, most specifically Billion Dollar Babies, were very good musically speaking, but today he's best known as a footnote in rock history, albeit a very fun footnote.