Shindig! Issue #165 – Alice Cooper

As the original ALICE COOPER band return with their first full album in 52 years, KRIS NEEDS revisits Love It To Death, the record that changed everything and ignited the infamous legend

“I consider Love It To Death the first Alice Cooper album only because songs on Pretties For You and Easy Action were written during the Nazz days and even during the Spiders,” says Alice. “Love It To Death was the first one conceived as a real Alice Cooper album. Ezrin said, ‘Look, the stage show is great, these songs are great but when you listen to The Doors, you know it’s The Doors and when you listen to the Stones, you know it’s the Stones. When I hear Alice Cooper it could be anybody. Love It To Death is going to be your signature album.’ That’s why we never worked harder on any other album than that one. It gave Dennis a bass sound, Neal a drum sound, Glen and Michael a guitar sound and even the voice. When we heard it all back it sounded like our band. This was the first time we had a signature.”

 “Love It To Death made my name,” says Ezrin. “It was the first album where I was actually producing. Alice says to this day he has no idea why they listened to me and I have no idea either but I’m very thankful they did. Obviously, there was some kind of kismet here. We were all meant to meet and our combination turned into that record and sound that launched their career and started them off on becoming the biggest band in the world. By Billion Dollar Babies they were the biggest band in the world, which is really remarkable. They didn’t sound like anybody else and the minute you heard it you went ‘That’s Alice Cooper.’ We were perfectly suited to each other for some unknown reason.”

Alice credits unexpected “left turns” slipped into the music by Dunaway that gave Love It To Death “that edge that becomes Alice Cooper”. Ezrin agrees; “Totally. He always did. Alice likes to tell the story that I was just saying ‘Dumb it down, dumb it down,’ which I never did. I was just trying to tighten it up, get those bass and drums to agree. Not always though; I liked it when they went off but in key parts like the chorus it was important to have a really tight and fundamental rhythm section to let the song really breathe. But I loved it when we went off on ‘Halo Of Flies’ and things like that – the whole thing was a left turn but that experimental kind of stuff was cinematic and also psychedelic. That was very important then.”

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To read the full Alice Cooper article order Shindig! #165 here