Book Review: ‘Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs! : My Adventures in the Alice Cooper Group’ by Dennis Dunaway & Chris Hodenfield (Thomas Dunne Books)
Written by Andy P
Sunday, 16 August 2015 03:00
I absolutely love Alice Cooper, I’ll admit it upfront. I have a special affinity to everything from ’Pretties For You’ to ‘Special Forces’. The material from ‘Zipper Catches Skin’ till the present has its moments but, if you held a gallows over my head for that quintessential sound, the crème de la crème as they say, it would be those albums when the AC moniker represented a group, from 1969 till 1973. Five guys who laid down some of the greatest musical ideas onto vinyl in the 1970s.
My first introduction to hard hearted Alice came from an impulse purchase of ‘From The Inside’ in 1978. The close up of Alice’s face with the purple twisted-clown makeup just drew me in. I knew nothing of his history but knew I had to buy this album. From then on every time I got my pocket money I spent it delving further and further back into the Cooper archives….and then I hit the motherlode from ‘Muscle Of Love’ to their debut album, a discovery in reverse.
Over the last 30 years, from my initial ‘discovery’, this era of ‘Alice Cooper’ THE GROUP remains as vital as it did when I first heard the albums. And over those years Alice has pretty much exhausted the same stories of the band’s infamous history over and over, albeit for newer generations. So is there anything left to say?
‘Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs!’ is a front row ticket into the band’s history from the viewpoint of Dennis Dunaway the original bass player, conceptualist, founder, songwriter, member of Blue Coupe and coolest sequinned long haired 4 stringer ever. It’s a book that transports me back to being a giddy teenager jumping on the sofa and believing I’d witnessed genius in hearing ‘Halo Of Flies’.
For the first few pages of the book I was sceptical, expecting the same road-worn stories I’d heard a million times before and expected to plod through the book with forced enthusiasm. Oh…I was wrong…I damn near devoured the book in one sitting. And yes there’s plenty left to say.
Dennis paints a vivid picture of boyhood friends who bonded over surrealism, music and track! (cross-country to us Brits) and from a musical parody of The Beatles that would signal one of the most inauspicious starts to a rock phenomenon.
It’s interesting how the band inculcate the concepts of theatre and of Alice’s stage character from very early on, encouraging Vince to use a persona while singing the songs, because they saw the confidence it imbued in him, something he’d already discovered while covering other bands’ songs but was also needed for their original material. Along with their anything-is-up-for-grabs as a stage prop attitude, the seeds were sown.
The band rubbed shoulders with contemporaries like Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Iggy Pop and Jim Morrison. They worked hard and, with a resolute belief, slowly climbed the ladder of fame and infamy with their first big recording break coming via an early morning audition for a sleepy and uncaffeinated Frank Zappa.
Personal highlights for me are his thoughts on ‘Muscle Of Love’ which had an uneven critical reception, along with the concept of the album carton which didn’t go down well with retailers (I bought the album shortly after a local flood in 1979 and yes I thought the stain was flood damage…Doh!) And also the mention of the “cascading bass line” on ‘Elected’ because I’ve always thought it was magnificent and the memories and anecdotes on the songwriting process are priceless.
As a side note I saw the musical ‘Dreamgirls’ in New York in 1987, which was a Michael Bennett production (he died that year aged 44). Coincidentally Bennett plays a role in the book during the pages of ’Inspiration No. 3’ as the ‘manhandling choreographer’ when the group appeared in a theatre production.
Dunaway’s solicitude for Vince and Glen Buxton over their heavy drinking is touching and the credit he affords to the people behind the scenes and out of the spotlight, who helped keep the Alice Cooper train a-rollin’, is a treat to read.
The honesty of living, partying and working hard for the Rock ’n’ Roll dream is kinda dizzying. And even though you know the band’s demise is coming you’re thinking, ”Nooooooooooo, don’t say it’s so, work it out!”
If you’re a fan of Alice Cooper buy this book, if not beg, borrow or steal (or even, legitimately buy) the album ‘Love It To Death’ and listen to it, then buy the book. Or quite simply if you’re into the 60s and 70s era of rock music then treat yourself with this portrait of the music scene at that time.
Hello, Hooray for a generous, heartfelt and compassionate book about a band many of us can only wish that we’d seen in their original incarnation. I’m off now, for some ‘Black Juju’.
