From My Collection #102: Alice Cooper – Love It to Death

Happy 77th birthday Alice Cooper! Admittedly, the Godfather of Shock’s birthday was yesterday, but I don’t think he’ll get mad at us for celebrating a day late. Now the Coop is no stranger to this here series, having already been tackled not once, but twice. Yet with a career as vast as his, the amount of material there is to be revisited is endless. That’s why today, we’re going back in time 54 years to explore the album that put Good Ol’ Black Eyes and the little band he fronted on the map, Love It to Death. It would be a make or break album for all involved, from the band themselves to the then unknown producer at the helm. Do you dare Love It to Death? If so, join us for this crazed trip down memory lane.

Since 1969, Alice Cooper had been lurking about the rock n’ roll underground, terrorizing audiences with their transgressive live shows and assaulting the eardrums of those with the misfortune of picking up their first two albums, Pretties for You (1969) and Easy Action (1970). Now by no means are these albums “bad” per se. They’re also far from what one would consider “accessible”, making even the heaviest acts of the day sound tame by comparison. Lying at the crossroads of horrific psychedelia and pure noise, Alice Cooper’s earliest output was the musical equivalent of an acid trip from hell. It was fitting that such a racket was being released via Frank Zappa’s Straight Records.

Come the latter half of 1970, and still riding a wave of controversy involving a show in which a chicken met its fate, Alice Cooper retreated to the RCA Mid-American Recording Center in Chicago to record their third album. Since the release of Easy Action earlier that year, Straight was sold to Warner Bros., which meant the band were now officially major label artists. And being a major label artist requires major label things, like something resembling a radio-friendly single. To aid Alice Cooper in their newfound quest of condensing their sound from avant-psych soundscapes to riff-based rockers was a young 21 year old producer by the name of Bob Ezrin.

Now we all know what would become of both Alice Cooper and Ezrin, how they’d change the course of rock history, both together and apart. However, back in 1970, Alice Cooper existed solely outside of the orbit of mainstream rock and Ezrin was virtually unknown, having never produced an album in his life up until that point. In other words, all parties were on the same boat. They just never could’ve anticipated the impact the fruits of their labor would have, crafting an album that’d become crucial to the evolution of metal, punk, and beyond.

Love It to Death opens with the straightforward “Caught in a Dream”, which couples Beatles-esque power pop maneuvers to a hard rocking barrage of four on the floor drumming and gritty guitarwork. It utilizes the short, sharp, shock ethos that will dominate the majority of the album, and set the stage for Alice Cooper’s musical output to follow. The song isn’t over the top, but the sure lyrics are, as our narrator laments needing “a houseboat and a plane”, “a butler and a trip to Spain”. Little did this band know in just two years’ time, they’d be “Billion Dollar Babies”.

“I’m Eighteen” continues the no nonsense barrage, saying all that it needs to in just under 3 minutes. While “I’m Eighteen” adheres to the “hit single” formula in terms of song structure and length, it is rather out of the ordinary for Top 40 radio circa 1971. Even post-Beatles and flower power experimentalism, the idea of a song this dismal, with its doomy guitars and existential lyricism, becoming a hit was rather a longshot. Against all odds, not only did “I’m Eighteen” become a smash hit, but it singlehandedly put Alice Cooper on the map. Its defiant attitude would become crucial to punk, and prove influential in the genre’s boom, serving as the basis for the Ramones’ first song, “I Don’t Care”, and being sung by Johnny Rotten in his Sex Pistols audition.

Speaking of punk rock, Love It to Death‘s punkiest moment comes in the form of the upbeat and frantic “Long Way to Go”. It’s a wild, rowdy headbanger of a cut for ’71, owing more to the savage early punk of The Stooges and MC5 as opposed to the metallic ways of Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. The older I get, the more I buy into the narrative of Alice Cooper being punk rock pioneers, if not a punk band outright on certain songs, “Long Way to Go” being one such example. And yet again, 3 minutes and 4 seconds. Talk about short and sweet…unlike side A’s closer.

“Black Juju” was not Alice Cooper’s first lengthy freakout of a song. It also wouldn’t be their last. It was, however, arguably their first in this category to be a refined, cohesive suite, showcasing the band as more than a one-trick, 3 minute rocker pony, without sacrificing the rawness of their sonic attack. Clocking in at a little over 9 minutes, “Black Juju” is truly horrific, both musically and lyrically, weaving a tale of occultism and death over a proto-black metal bacchanal of demonic riffs, tribal drums, and ritualistic organs. If the name Alice Cooper didn’t stoke the fires of controversy already, it sure would now.

As we flip over to side B, we’re greeted by a sleazy rocker in “Is It My Body”. It’s a song like this one where the band’s garage rock roots really show, almost sounding like a throwback to that original DIY scene circa ’66 before Timothy Leary’s acid-soaked hands got its chokehold around America. If I were to curate a “Garage Metal” playlist (and I just might), “Is It My Body” would sit comfortably alongside the likes of The Stooges and demo/single era Pentagram, who ironically we were just talking about yesterday.

Although not as lyrically explicit as “Black Juju”, “Hallowed Be My Name” further pushed Alice Cooper’s edgy image, especially with lyrics about “sluts and the hookers” and dancing “queens” (not the ABBA kind) “cursing the bible”. The presence of that organ further emphasizes the sinister nature of the music. Unlike Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, who used his Hammond B3 to duel against Ritchie Blackmore, Alice Cooper’s use of keys were purely atmospheric, proving to be far more influential on metal subgenres down the line than anyone could’ve imagined.

Closing out side B are three songs that segue together to create one giant epic, the first being “Second Coming”. Although penned satirically to poke fun at The Beatles, who many had hailed as the “second coming” of Mozart or Beethoven with their last hit single, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Second Coming” is unironically a brilliant piano rocker, conveying emotion and depth in its brief 3 minute runtime. It stands on its own, while also setting the stage for the album’s coup de grace, “Ballad of Dwight Fry”.

Themes of isolation, mental illness, and flat out insanity would become a regular trope of Alice Cooper’s output, starting with “Ballad of Dwight Fry”. Foreshadowing the more ambitious direction the band would follow come Killer later that same year, “Ballad” is an absolute masterpiece in all its dark, eerie glory. For those unaware, Dwight Frye was a real life movie actor who depicted characters not far from the one described in this here ballad: Disturbed and psychotic, usually resulting in murder. The song would become a staple of the band’s live sets, during which they introduced the now infamous guillotine act.

On an album of oddities and extremities, a happy go lucky cover of Rolf Harris’ “Sun Arise” is perhaps the oddest moment of all, and for sure an unusual way to close an album of this nature. Who would’ve thought hearing Alice Cooper do a cheerful song would be more disturbing than hearing them do an evil song?! Even stranger is that it’s a rather dead-on cover, albeit with more distorted guitars. Of course, knowing what we know now about Harris, one could argue that “Sun Arise”, despite its cheery disposition, does indeed add to the fear factor of Love It to Death.

While Love It to Death wasn’t as heavy musically as the fare Sabbath, Purple, Uriah Heep, or Sir Lord Baltimore were putting out at the time, it proved to be formative on heavy metal aesthetically with its taboo lyrics and accompanying shocking visuals. Could you imagine bands like Venom, Mercyful Fate, and Death SS without Alice Cooper? Me either. Punk too owed A TON to this album. Besides the aforementioned Ramones and Sex Pistols connection, even alt bands like Melvins, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana looked to Love It to Death as a sort of template for their own primal rock attacks.

Love It to Death would catapult Alice Cooper to infamy, making the band and their eponymous frontman household names overnight. “I’m Eighteen” lit the charts ablaze, and the album would sell in excess of a million copies in the United States alone. The stage was set for pure shock rock domination, but we’ll touch on that more another time. Until then, our bodies need rest. Bodies need rest. Bodies…need…rest. You get the idea.