As it invariably happens, the shop had filed Alice Cooper at
C. Will they
ever learn that they're a group and that there's no-one with the name
Cooper,
Alice?
Strike that, there probably
is a person named Alice Cooper somewhere that curses the band for dragging her name through the mud - but she is otherwise unconnected to the group. It's true that, as years went by, the public began to identify singer Vincent Furnier with a
character called Alice Cooper, but in 1971 that was
yet to happen. The band had released a couple of commercial flops under the tutelage of Frank Zappa and made a last attempt for success with young Bob Ezrin as producer. He kept the humour and craziness of their early songs but sensibly steered the music away from freaky psychedelia towards glam and hard rock. Helped by the inclusion of the
ultimate teen anthem "I'm 18", the record was a resounding success that propelled the band to a world of notorious onstage antics and backstage excess. The album opens with excellent boogie rocker "
Caught in a Dream" and then, after a short harmonica intro, come the immortal lines describing
teenage alienation in a few simple words "Lines form on my face and hands/Lines form from the ups and downs/I'm in the middle without any plans/I'm a boy and I'm a man/I'm eighteen/And I don't know what I want...I'm eighteen and I like it!". Kudos also to guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce, hitting all the right notes without hijacking the song as it so often happens in heavy metal.
"Long Way to Go" is a fast Yardbirds-style garage rocker and "Black Juju" is...filler? Many tend to think so, because of its length. It's certainly a loose and semi-improvised 9 minutes of psychedelia, dominated by tribal drumming and creepy organ. Early Pink Floyd and Doors seem to be musical influences, while the lyrics draw on classic horror films as Alice would increasingly do in the future. Onstage it would be the highlight of his show, featuring a theatrical mock-execution on a prop electric chair. "Is It My Body?" is one of the harder rocking songs here, with funky bass and sexual lyrics, although it eschews macho chest beating by adding
that insecure question mark. "
Hallowed Be My Name" has a garagey 60's feel and touches on the theme of religion and hell "You're fighting to go up 'cause you're on your way down/ cursing their lovers/ cursing the bible", similarly to the theatrical "
Second Coming" "I only know hell is getting hotter/ the devil's getting smarter all the time". The latter song starts off ballad-like with a bit of piano, gradually attaining a pounding military rhythm for a while and segueing into "
Ballad of Dwight Fry", another piece of rock theatre about madness which Alice performs to this day tied up in a straightjacket. Closer "Sun Arise" is an upbeat pop number, probably aiming to dispel the darkness and end the album on a hopeful note. There is no denying that, lyrically at least, "Love It To Death" is as much a part of heavy metal's DNA as Black Sabbath's debut or Deep Purple's "In Rock". Without them, there probably wouldn't have been any Judas Priest, Iron Maiden... or Venom.
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