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Alice Cooper: DaDa

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Alice Cooper’s last album for Warner Brothers

By 1983 Alice Cooper had fallen back off the wagon and was recording albums that he’d later claim he couldn’t remember. 1981’s Special Forces had brought him back to a stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll sound that recalled his earlier peaks, and 1982’s Zipper Catches Skin retained the same direction while sounding more labored. 1983’s DaDa, his last album for Warner Brothers (and his last album before a three-year hiatus) reunited him with Bob Ezrin, who’d produced Cooper in his glory years. The album opens promisingly with the menacing “Da,” a looming synthesizer instrumental punctured by thumps of percussion and a spooky doll’s voice. The spoken word lyrics sound as if they’re snippets of confessional dialog lifted from a 1940s psychological thriller.

The doll’s eerie “da-da” vocalizations point to the album’s family themes, with a teenage son calling out his abusive father on “Enough’s Enough,” and the family’s dark human secret essayed in “Former Lee Warmer.” There’s a not-quite-heartwarming story of a shopping mall Santa, the Devo-esque dizziness of “Dyslexia,” and the over-the-top patriotism of “I Love America.” Whatever else Alice Cooper was doing (or drinking) his sense of humor never left him. On the darker theatrical side are the dominatrix sister duo and middle-eastern flourishes of “Scarlet and Sheba,” the vampire horror of “Fresh Blood,” and the alcoholic nightmare “Pass the Gun Around” that closes a chapter in Cooper’s career. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic reissue includes a four-panel booklet that features new liner notes by Gene Sculatti, but no bonus tracks. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Alice Cooper: Zipper Catches Skin

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Alice Cooper sounding a bit labored in 1982

A year after the stripped-down attack of Special Forces, Alice Cooper produced another album in the same vein; though this time with added theatrical flair and the return of guitarist Dick Wagner. Cooper continued to assume new identities, such as the famed swordsman of “Zorro’s Ascent” and the put-upon son of “Make That Money (Scrooge’s Song).” Some of the performances seem labored, and Wagner’s distinctive guitar riffs feel as if they were grafted onto the songs to add flash. The stagey ballad “I Am the Future” might have worked well as a production number, but with Cooper descending back into alcohol addiction there was no tour. What works well is Cooper’s humor on “No Baloney Homosapiens,” “I Like Girls” and “Remarkably Insincere.” And on “Tag, You’re It” he indulges his longtime love of cheesy cinema with a song full of slasher-film clichés. If there was no 1970s legacy with which to compare this, one might stumble upon this and think it’s a long-lost power-pop album from a surprisingly talented lyricist. It’s all quite listenable, and even fun as it passes by, but it’s not nearly as memorable as his earlier (and some of his later) works. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic reissue adds the UK-only 1982 single “For Britain Only,” and its four-panel booklet includes new liner notes by Gene Sculatti. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Alice Cooper: Special Forces

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Alice Cooper stripped of his late-70s bombast

Nearly a decade after the original Alice Cooper band broke through with School’s Out, and five years after the solo Alice Cooper re-emerged with Welcome to My Nightmare and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell some retooling was in order. Cooper’s albums of the late 70s had become bombastic, and his 1980 release Flush the Fashion mistakenly embraced a modern-rock sound that failed him. By 1981 he was ready to recapture his earlier glory. Gone were the new wave synthesizers brought by Roy Thomas Baker and back were guitar, bass and drums to give punch to Cooper’s tough singing. What synths remain were slithering and insinuating, or in the case of those which introduce “Seven and Seven Is,” quickly pushed aside by slashing rhythm guitars. Covering this Love song was a canny tip of the hat to punk-rock’s mid-60s garage-rock roots.

This isn’t a full one-eighty from Flush the Fashion, but in the punk rock movement Cooper had clearly found kindred confrontational spirits. His then-current preoccupation with military and police matters provides the album’s major lyrical strand, though it’s set to the sort of clever wordplay that had made his earlier hits and stage show so alluring. The accoutrements of power and forces – guns, ammo, holsters – are dressed-up in suggestive sexual double-entendres that leave their meaning to the listener’s imagination. Cooper revisits “Generation Landslide” (from 1973’s Billion Dollar Babies) without the finesse of the original, and at times, such as on “Don’t Talk Old to Me,” Cooper sounds like a ranting alcoholic, which was apparently a real-life role into which he was about to lapse. Cooper’s secondary fascination with horror films is highlighted in the ornate “Skeletons in the Closet,” on which trades the raw rock ‘n’ roll for synthesizers and spooky imagery.

None of this content generated a social shock or commercial reaction in 1981, but either did it sound out of time. The staccato rhythm of “You’re a Movie” may be tied to the new wave sounds of early MTV, but there’s enough muscle in the band’s playing to keep this from being completely dated. Collectors’ Choice’s domestic CD reissue adds “Look at You Over There, Ripping the Sawdust From My Teddybear,” a song Cooper trimmed from the original vinyl release. Its electric piano and funky rhythm do indeed sound out of context, but it fits lyrically and fans will be happy to get this extra period track. The disc is delivered in a standard jewel case with a four panel insert that includes new liner notes by Gene Sculatti. This isn’t Alice Cooper at his pinnacle, but neither is it the sound of a one-time enfant terrible simply hanging on. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]