ALICE IN SUMMERLAND: LOVE IT TO DEATH BY JOHN BODEN

22/6/2018

BY JOHN BODEN

"I've got a baby's brain and an old man's heart..."

In March of 1971, Alice Cooper released their third album, Love it To Death."

Now, before this they had released a pair of sprawling psychedelic monstrosities through Frank Zappa's Straight Records imprint. With neither one doing much in the way of sales of breaking the band bigger as they had hoped. Zappa ended up selling his imprint to Warner Brothers and newly appointed band manager, Shep Gordon and the boys approached Jack Richardson to produce their next album and he told them no dice but sent his apprentice producer, a kid named Bob Ezrin their way.

Ezrin took his newly acquired band of weirdoes and holed them up in a barn for twelve hours a day for a few weeks. They attempted and I'd say succeeded in harnessing that beast that was lurking in those long meandering weird opuses of the earlier albums. Ezrin had them work and whittle until that had an album full of hard rock songs with little of the psychedelic freak-rock aesthetic of the first two albums.

They recorded and released the single for "I'm Eighteen" first, to test the waters as they say. It quickly became a hit. A fan of all of the Cooper discography, I really think of this album as the "debut" of the Alice Cooper Band. They really coagulated into a pummeling and brooding force, one of the best musical rock combos the world has seen and often criminally underrated.

Now, that the little bit of a history lesson is out of the way, let's dish on this album:

The opening cut is "Caught In A Dream" a simple straight-ahead rocker with razorwire riffs and a solo that's as much Rolling Stones skronk as it is pre-punk. And the patented Alice sneering vocals. This is blissful.

"I'm Eighteen" is next. Has there ever been a more accurate boil down of how fucking awkward it feels at that age? Expected to be an adult but after seventeen years suddenly having the training wheels yanked away--handle bars too--it's terrifying and exhilarating at the same time.

Third up is "Long Way To Go" another hard rocker with a bit of jaunty keyboard work. The album's title comes from a line in this song.

"The silence is speaking, so why am I weeping? I guess I love it, I love it to Death!"

The next track closed out side one (for those who listen on cassette or record format) "Black Juju" and heady and creepy track, influenced by numerous gigs with The Doors, featuring a slow building tribal drum beat accompanied with blossoming organ that gives sway to a bizarre voodoo-fueled nightmare to music.

Side two opens with "Is It My Body" a song that is the best Rolling Stones song the band never wrote. I mean, seriously. It has Jagger and Richards drug-smudged fingerprints all over it but is drenched in enough spider web and ash to let you know it's all Cooper. Sexy and sarcastic.

"Hallowed be My Name" and the following song, "Second Coming" are a thrilling one-two punch of songs that deal with religion. Most likely coming from Cooper's upbringing steeped in the church. "Second Coming" is a beautiful meditation. These two pave the way for the album's heavy hitter. A near seven minute opus titled "Ballad Of Dwight Frye." a theatrical rock opera in one song about a man confined to an asylum. It opens with a little girl asking about her father who has been committed and then shifts to the POV of the father, calmly explaining how he came to be in his position. Over the lush acoustic guitar work which gives way to some nice rock guitar later. As the vocal voice grows from calm to more and more agitated the music reflects this so that by the time we're to the creepily subdued pleas of "Let me out of here. I've got to get out of here" which grow more and more frenzied until we get Alice's ragged howls of "Gotta let me outta here." we're at a near cacophonous level of musical assault. This is a masterpiece and a benchmark for the style of thing we'd come to expect from the band.

The song barely fades out until it segues into the sunny disposition of the closing song, "Sun Arise." It's a cover of a Rolf Harris tune and was included as a means to contrast the dark and heavy album material that preceded it. This album is among my very favorites. As I said earlier, I consider it a debut of the band. The Alice Cooper I grew to love was born on this album. I like the earlier work but give me the leather and lace, smeared make-up sneers and songs about lunatics any day. Any Day.

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