he still be afraid of things under the bed?’ No, Alice’s nightmares would be disco, technology (Alice would just hate technology), working nine-to-five in a cubicle, that sort of thing. Then we took themes from the previous album and found a way for them to fit into this album. For example, at one point the guy is singing over this little piano song, and all of a sudden he says, ‘But I think I heard that song before’ and then the ‘Steven’ theme kicks in. If you’re an Alice fan, that sends a chill up your spine because all of a sudden you realize you are going to be connected to the original nightmare. It’s a scary album, but I think it may be even more clever than the first one.” The track listing alone reveals a few references from the past: “The Nightmare Returns” (the name of
Cooper’s 1986 world tour), “I Gotta Get Outta Here” (an iconic lyric from the song “Ballad of Dwight Fry”) and “The Underture” (possibly a play on “Titanic Overture,” the opening track from Cooper’s 1969 debut Pretties for You). It also reflects an approach to horror that is more in line with a Robert Rodriguez film than an Ezrin album, with grindhouse-ish titles such as “Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever” and “Ghouls Gone Wild.” As with the original, Cooper and Ezrin based their writing approach on the disjointed narratives that can characterize real nightmares. “I love the fact that on this album, one minute you’re in a disco and you’re shooting everyone
and they just keep coming out of the ground, and the next second you’re at a beach party from the ’60s, only all the girls are in bikinis and all of the guys are just sort of falling apart – that’s ‘Ghouls Gone Wild,’” Cooper notes. If the less-than-serious vibe seems worrisome, Cooper assures that it’s definitely being
done in the spirit of the original source material and that if nothing else, the album is still scary. “You could play Welcome to My Nightmare and then play this album and it would sound
like a continuation,” he says. “I honestly feel that music has not changed much in 40 years. Hard rock is still hard rock. ‘Cold Ethyl’ and a song like ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off’ could have been written right next to each other. But the thing that really holds it all together is the Alice voice and the sense of humour and the Alice style of lyric writ- ing. Then Bob Ezrin is the one that makes it scary when he comes in and starts adding the little classical pieces. It’s when he starts playing certain chords against each other and they don’t quite fit, but they do. You are expecting one
Theatre Bizarre: Alice Cooper’s 2011 redux of his famous Nightmare tux and top hat getup, and Alice tussles with a cyclops on the original Nightmare tour.
Photo © Bob Gruen
Photo © Ross Haflin
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