A rare poor review of the Wembley show from the Financial Times

"The singer’s show at the SSE Wembley Arena was almost redeemed by a late flurry of hits"

Alice Cooper in London — a museum piece

Alice and Cheryl

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This is hidden behind a 'subscribe to view' thing, but here is the full review:

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"It’s 45 years since Alice Cooper first headlined Wembley Arena, back when Alice Cooper was still a band fronted by Vincent Furnier, before Furnier took the name all for himself and the group split in 1974. The selling point of this return to the old arena was Cooper reuniting with that band, minus guitarist Glen Buxton — who died 20 years ago — albeit only for a handful of songs at the end of the evening. It’s a good job they did, because it almost redeemed a show that seemed like a museum piece even with his current, much younger group.

Arena shows depend on two things: great production and great songs. It’s possible to succeed with only one, but to be short on both fronts is disastrous. Cooper’s production was way ahead of its time in 1972, prompting moral outrage on both sides of the Atlantic, but it is almost unchanged in spirit, and sometimes in practice: he was still guillotined at the end of “The Ballad of Dwight Fry”, from the 1971 album Love It To Death; in the more recent “Feed My Frankenstein”, he was strapped to a metal table and “electrocuted” before a giant monster — more closely resembling a Mr Blobby left in the garden shed too long than Boris Karloff — pursued the musicians around the stage. It all looked cheap.

There’s nothing wrong with panto, per se, but the problem from the seats at the back of the arena was that it was all but impossible to see the panto: the production budget had not even stretched to the big screens that are now de rigueur at arena shows, let alone any pyrotechnics more memorable than a waterfall of sparklers at the opening, and occasional smoke pots. It’s hard even to be amused, let alone shocked, when you can barely make out what’s going on the best part of 100 yards away.

The music could have saved it — the original Alice Cooper band were capable of both thrilling brutishness and surprisingly supple, inventive arrangements — but too much of the set was third-rate songs from second-rate albums made after Cooper’s mid-1980s revival, proving only that he could do bad hair-metal every bit as badly as much younger bad hair-metal bands. Even before the original band came on, it was notable that songs from 1975 and before — “Under My Wheels”, “Only Women Bleed”, “Halo of Flies”, “Department of Youth”, “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” — were just more inventive and, crucially, much more tuneful than the rest of the set.

At last, the remainder of the old band came on, and into a run of solid gold — “I’m Eighteen” (in 11 years, if he’s still at it, Cooper will be able to rename it “I’m Eighty”), “Billion Dollar Babies”, “No More Nice Guy”, “Muscle of Love” — that concluded, inevitably, with “School’s Out” with old band and new band sharing the stage. But it was 20 minutes or so that did not redeem the 80 that preceded it.

★★☆☆☆"

What a misery guts :lol:

Alice Cooper launches creepy video for 50-year-old song The Sound Of A - Classic Rock

"The first song Alice Cooper ever wrote was mislaid for half a century. Revived earlier this year, it's now the subject of a typically creepy video

Rock legend Alice Cooper has released a video for The Sound Of A, his upcoming single, which will be released on February 23. The track comes from Alice's Paranormal album, which was released in July, but was actually written by Alice for the original Alice Cooper band in 1967. The song was lost for decades, until bassist Dennis Dunaway rediscovered it and brought it to the singer's attention.

"Dennis brought in the song and he played it for me and I said, 'wow Dennis, I remember when you wrote this song in 1967,'" says Cooper. "He goes, 'you’re right about the year, but you wrote it!' He says, 'this was the first song you ever wrote.'

"So, he brought it in and Bob Ezrin says ‘I love this, we gotta do this song.' In the end, it became the most psychedelic track because during the recording of it, everybody just went off on these guitar parts and it just swirled at the end. It really ended up being one of the most interesting songs on the album - with a great story behind it. I totally forgot that I wrote it!"

The single will be released on limited edition CD single and 10” white vinyl, and will be backed by four previously unreleased live songs recorded in Columbus, Ohio, on May 6.

A week ago, Cooper was the recipient of the Best International Artist prize at the 2017 SSE Scottish Music Awards.

Speaking in a video statement, he said, "You have to survive this business long enough and rock'n'roll business is not the easiest thing. We've been doing it 50 years, and keeping the quality of the show and music up really is the whole trick to doing it. In my case though, they do cut my head off every night, so it's a matter of survival! Thanks very much!"

The Sound of A CD Tracklist

The Sound Of A
The Black Widow (Live)
Public Animal #9 (Live)
Is It My Body (Live)
Cold Ethyl (Live)

The Sound Of A 10" vinyl Tracklist

Side A
1. The Sound Of A
2. The Black Widow (Live)

Side B
1. Public Animal #9 (Live)
2. Is It My Body (Live)
3. Cold Ethyl (Live)"

Love the song. The video is poor though.

pop master
 

One of the questions on Championship Pop Master with Ken Bruce was, what is Alice Cooper's real name....which was worth 6 points, although I did not know the answer...but I do now.

I'm not sure what he's actually called but it might be one of these - Susan Foreman, Keith Moon, Vincent Furnier, Doctor Who.

I remember I was at a pub quiz about 8 years ago, and the question 'Who is Vincent Furnier better known as?' came up. No-one else on the team listened to me, and gave the answer 'Slash'

We lost!

BUT...his real name is actually Alice Cooper - he legally changed it in the 70's

December 14th 1972. Alexander's Department store in New York City, which closed its doors early so that Alice could do some Christmas shopping and play some table tennis with Santa!

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