When I was 8, I discovered Kiss. I knew about them before then, but didn't like them because of all of the make-up and blood = it wasn't my thing. But then I found the album Unmasked in my cousin Ingrid's record collection, and for some reason, the opening chords of Is That You? flipped the switch in my brain and I was hooked. Completely hooked.
I wasn't the only one that was hooked. My best childhood friend, Geir, who lived just across the courtyard from the townhome I grew up in, had also discovered them, and we began devouring everything we could read and listen to about and by them. There was a bag of mixed candy, Stjerneposen (the star bag), that included Kiss collector cards, and boy, did we collect those cards. I actually didn't care much for the candy (but my sister did, so it all went to good use), but I wanted those cards to collect. And music magazines had pictures and posters of Kiss - and they all ended up on my wall. But the main thing for me was still the music.
Where Geir's dad worked, there was another guy whose name escapes me, who told Geir that if he liked Kiss, he should check out this other guy, a Mr. Alice Cooper. In order to help him out, he made Geir a mixtape, and that mixtape started a new musical relationship. After finding out that Alice Cooper had done the whole rock and make up and huge stage show before Kiss, we were both awestruck - and the music was awesome. I am trying to remember what was on the tape - I am thinking Billion Dollar Babies, Love It To Death, Killer was definitely there (Under My Wheels and Be My Lover, I remember that for sure), so was From The Inside, and maybe even Welcome To My Nightmare.
What I didn't yet know at this point was that there really was two Alice Cooper entities, Alice Cooper the band and Alice Cooper the solo artist. I have just started reading the book Snakes! Guillotines! Electric Chairs!:My Adventures In The Alice Cooper Group by Dennis Dunaway, who played bass in the band until Alice decided he wanted to go solo with 1975s Welcome To My Nightmare, and I am very excited about this book because I believe that for 2-3 years, from 1971-1973, they were an absolutely fabulous rock band that didn't record a single throwaway song. I wish I could include Muscle of Love in that as well - but to me, that sounds like an album of throwaways, and far from the quality of the middle four albums in their discography: Love it to Death, Killer, School's Out, and Billion Dollar Babies should all be albums in any 70s rock record collection.
So today, let's remember the band Alice Cooper, with Vincent Furnier (aka Alice Cooper) on vocals, Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce on guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Neal Smith on drums. I can't think of a better way of remembering them as a unit than the song Desperado from the fantastic Killer album, released in 1971, the year before I was born.
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