BY JAYAPRAKASH SATYAMURTHY The cover of Alice Cooper Goes To Hell is ugly. It’s crude and simple. It’s just Alice’s face, equipped with a dazed, crazed leer, colour-shifted a sickly green, gazing out at the viewer from a vague red-orange transition that might be meant to represent hell or just the lack of imagination and/or budget in the design department. Compared to the stylish, suave cover of its predecessor, Alice’s solo debut and smash hit, Welcome To My Nightmare, it seems like Goes To Hell has decided to embrace its destiny as the ugly stepchild, the less successful follow-up to a breakthrough album, right from the cover. Which goes to show that you shouldn’t always judge a rock album by its cover, because Goes To Hell is as potent, madcap, haywire and enjoyable as the album to whose storyline it offers a continuation. Primarily composed by axeman Dick Wagner and producer Bob Ezrin, the music is groovy, funky, prime arena rock with more than a touch of vaudevillian tinsel and swagger. The musical muscle of the album is further reinforced with returning second axe, Steve Hunter - find him playing an essential role on albums by everyone from Lou Reed to David Lee Roth - and bass wizard Tony Levin replacing my partial-namesake, Prakash John (who would also do a stint with Reed - funny how you find some of the same players on records by artists who seemingly occupy different ends of the spectrum of rock). Allan Schwartzberg, another returning player, mans the drums for the most part with Jim Gordon pinch-hitting at one point. But Cooper has always surrounded himself with ace musicians, in tune with both his vision and the changing zeitgeist - down to the sometimes embarrassingly hair-metal vibe of his comeback albums of the late 80s and early 90s. What has always mattered most is the form our master of revels finds himself in, and despite roaring alcoholism and a case of anaemia that would put paid to plans of a tour behind this album, Alice Cooper is ready to rock and roll and lose his soul on this album. Track by track descriptions are a poor second place to listening to the real thing - never more than a click away today- so I’ll pick out some highlights. The album opener, and title track, is a fine rocking stomp with a primo hook, as Cooper indicts himself for crimes against decency and taste. A lovely, ghoulish piece of self-incrimination and a cheeky rejoinder to the moral panic that has always graced reactions to his career. I’m The Coolest is a fine, loping piece of braggadocio, carried by a stand-out groove by Levin. I Never Cry mines the balladeer vein of Only Women Bleed, while the trilogy of Guilty, Wake Me Gently and Wish You Were Hear carry the infernal journey of Steven forward. Schmaltz - never too far from Coop’s methods and desecrations - gets an outing in a cover of the 1917 Carroll-McCarthy joint, I’m Always Chasing Rainbows, also made famous by everyone from Bing Crosby to Barbra Streisand. Never let Cooper be accused of shying away from strange bedmates. By turns bombastic, crazed, sentimental, sniggering, snivelling and even kind of elegiac by the end, this is an unjustly overlooked entry in the Alice Cooper catalog. It may not have the hit-machine firepower of Nightmare, or the burly rock stomp of the early group albums. It also comes in at the beginning of years of drinking and mental and physical health problems that would fuel albums like the loony-bin memoir, On The Inside, and the one Alice Cooper doesn’t even remember recording - DaDa. But none of that lessens the impact and integrity of what is on record here. Something that separates the some-hit-wonders from the real rock aristocrats is a discography that rewards delving into deep cuts and lesser known albums. I actually found this album in a bargain bin over a decade ago. And what a bargain it was, for a package of such catchy, well-crafted songs that add up to as harrowing and layered a narrative as Alice Cooper has ever created for us. And maybe the cover art is actually kind of brilliant. Because who wouldn’t feel a bit green confronting the criminal career and hellish destiny painted for us here by an ailing Alice Cooper and his crack squad of musical collaborators?
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