{"id":24904,"date":"2023-04-05T05:30:47","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T09:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24904"},"modified":"2023-02-08T15:49:20","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T20:49:20","slug":"take-5-alice-cooper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/05\/take-5-alice-cooper\/","title":{"rendered":"Take 5: Alice Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the most part across his more than five decades as a professional musician, Detroit-born Vincent Furnier has focused on making music under his own (stage) name, originally with the group called Alice Cooper, and then as a solo artist. But along the way, the godfather of shock rock has guested on quite a few outside projects. Fittingly for an artist who made his name getting his head chopped off by an onstage guillotine, here are five of the more unlikely\/unusual Alice Cooper tracks not originally featured on his official releases.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cSpace Pirates\u201d from <em>Flash Fearless Versus the Zorg Women Parts 5 &amp; 6<\/em> (1975)<\/strong><br \/>\nIn the mid 1970s, the carousing, hard-partying members of the so-called Hollywood Vampires \u2013 a gallery of rockers including Harry Nilsson, Micky Dolenz, Keith Moon and other legendary bad boys \u2013 embarked upon all-star solo projects. <em>Flash Fearless<\/em> was one of those, a comic book concept set to music. This track features Cooper on lead vocals, backed by Moon and Who bandmate John Entwistle plus Justin Hayward (The Moody Blues), Bill Bruford (King Crimson) and others.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6Hri8czetvg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cBecause\u201d from <em>Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em> (1978)<\/strong><br \/>\nThough it would come in for a critical shellacking \u2013 and is remembered today as an overindulgent, ill-advised vanity project for everyone involved \u2013 the 1978 film had its occasional moments. The film and soundtrack were built around musical performances by Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, but other stars took their turn as well, covering (some would say desecrating) classic Beatles songs: Aerosmith and Earth Wind &amp; Fire were among the most notable. Alice Cooper weighed in \u2013 backed by the brothers Gibb \u2013 with a reading of this classic from<em> Abbey Road<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9YxMYWGhWls\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cRoad Rats\u201d from <em>Roadie<\/em> soundtrack (1980)<\/strong><br \/>\nPerhaps bitten by the acting bug during the cocaine-fueled filming of <em>Sgt. Pepper<\/em>, Cooper signed on to appear in another all-star rock movie. Roadie starred veteran actor Art Carney (The Honeymooners) alongside Meatloaf, the latter then riding high on the success of his blockbuster <em>Bat Out of Hell<\/em>. Backed by the ace quartet Utopia (featuring Todd Rundgren), Cooper turns in a remake of \u201cRoad Rats,\u201d a song that first appeared on his 1977 LP <em>Lace and Whiskey<\/em>. This self-cover version is a bit more stripped down and proto-new wave in character.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yJBQSwbT1cY\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cI Got a Line On You\u201d from <em>Iron Eagle II<\/em> soundtrack (1989)<\/strong><br \/>\nWest coast progressive-psychedelic band Spirit scored a number of hits during their years in the spotlight; 1968\u2019s \u201cI Got a Line On You\u201d was one of their biggest singles, peaking at #25. The song has been covered by a myriad of artists, including Cooper\u2019s all-star aggregation Hollywood Vampires (only tangentially related to his drinking club of the sane name) on their 2015 debut. But Cooper first cut a version of the classic for the soundtrack of a derivative, <em>Top Gun<\/em>-styled 1989 action film. With the gunshot snare sound and pig-squeal lead guitar, this recording could have only come from the \u201880s.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ayK2ZY8sQRw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cCelebration Suite\u201d from <em>British Rock Symphony<\/em> (1999)<\/strong><br \/>\nA universally well-liked artist, Alice Cooper always seems to be on hand when a collection of rock\u2019n\u2019roll pals embark on a superstar busman\u2019s holiday. While\u2019s he\u2019s a quintessentially American artist, Coop was somehow roped in to be a part of a project called British Rock Symphony, alongside fellow yanks Tommy Shaw (Styx), Ann Wilson (Heart) and Grammy-winning r&amp;b star Thelma Houston. They all took part in this tribute to some of England\u2019s biggest stars. And the project gave listeners the opportunity \u2013 whether they asked for it or not \u2013 to hear Alice Cooper help re-interpret the songs of the Rolling Stones, Beatles and The Who.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4_NzZakYnPc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the most part across his more than five decades as a professional musician, Detroit-born Vincent Furnier has focused on making music under his own (stage) name, originally with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[161],"class_list":["post-24904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-alice-cooper","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24905,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24904\/revisions\/24905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}