Led by a minister’s son born Vincent Damon Furnier, the Alice Cooper Group’s first two albums for Frank Zappa's Straight Records -- Pretties for You and Easy Action -- earned them nothing but scorn.
The band's luck began to turn when they met Canadian producer Bob Ezrin, who glossed the band’s sound up on their third album, Love it to Death (1971), which featured the hit, ‘I’m Eighteen.’ Killers was released hot on its heels, earning the band another hit with ‘Under My Wheels.’
The band garnered up a dedicated, working-class audience who expected outrageous entertainment for their money- and got it in spades. Live snakes, guillotines, angry dwarfs, electric chairs, stage magicians- anything that got a cheap thrill was fair game. Urban legends about Alice Cooper concerts exploded when someone threw a live chicken onstage. Not realizing that chickens don't fly, Cooper threw it back into the crowd only to see it be ripped to pieces by zonked-out fans.
Despite all the ghoulish imagery, Alice Cooper’s music was no-frills party rock, with only the odd morbid track like ‘Dead Babies’ or ‘I Love the Dead’ added for seasoning. But with tensions and egos flaring, Cooper and Ezrin relaunched the brand with Cooper as a solo artist.
After Muscle of Love (1974), the last record to feature the original Alice Cooper Group, Ezrin enlisted top-flight session players, including guitar heroes Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, fresh off a stint with Lou Reed.
The first fruit of this new regime was Welcome to My Nightmare, both an LP and a 1975 TV special. Along with the slick hard rock, Ezrin ensured that Nightmare and subsequent Cooper albums had a least one radio-ready love ballad.
Nightmare had ‘Only Woman Bleed’ which reached #12 and the LP broke the Top 5. The formula was repeated for Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (1976). ‘I Never Cry’ was the MOR hit, though the album didn’t perform as well as Nightmare.
The story goes like all the rest; Cooper’s drinking got out of control, and his limited singing range got lost in the ornate, orchestral productions being assembled for him. 1978’s From the Inside produced the obligatory hit ballad ("How You Gonna See Me Now"), but the album fizzled.
Cooper's attempt at New Wave -- 1980’s Flush the Fashion -- didn’t do much either, and Cooper’s chart prospects dimmed until his all-star 1989 comeback, Trash.
Though universally loved in the hard rock community, all of Cooper’s syrupy ballads and celebrity golf show appearances erased the bad-boy image he once worked so hard to maintain. No matter how much good will Alice built up with his audience, they knew he wasn't one of them. Alice's heirs would not repeat his mistakes...
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As Cooper’s notoriety began to wane, New York’s KISS were there to pick up the slack. Comprised of singer/guitarist Paul Stanley, singer/bassist Gene Simmons, guitarist Ace Frehley, and drummer Peter Criss, KISS mined the same vein Alice did: meat-and-potatoes hard rock with comic book visuals and an elaborate, theatrical stage show.
New York Dolls guitarist Syl Sylvain put it best when he described KISS as “truck drivers who decided to do something for Halloween.”
Earning a dedicated following through relentless gigging, KISS were signed to Neil Bogart’s Casablanca Records, a label better known for its disco acts. But costumery and fantasy were ånothing new to Bogart; KISS' label mates included funk-freaks Parliament and the similarly-outrageous Village People.
But KISS’ live shows were their main boast, and a somewhat premature live album Alive (1975) that made them superstars. A (more or less) live take of the Dionysian anthem, ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ earned KISS their first chart hit.
KISS then nicked Bob Ezrin for their next album Destroyer (1976). The anthemic ‘Shout it Out Loud’ was a hit, but the Cooper-like ballad ‘Beth’ (sung by Peter Criss) was a smash, winning over the teenaged girls who’d been previously resistant to KISS’ charms. Hedging their bets, KISS had Criss sing their next single, ‘Hard Luck Woman,’ a Rod Stewart soundalike/knockoff.
KISS’ outrageous makeup and horror movie costumes provided perfect fodder for a merchandizing blitzkrieg, and their logo and likenesses where slapped on everything from comic books to t-shirts to toys. But the creative juices were running dry - a second live album (Alive II) was followed by Double Platinum (1978) a greatest hits set, signalling premature creative exhaustion within the group.
KISS then undertook an unprecedented gamble in 1978; each member released solo albums simultaneously. Preorders were high but only Frehley’s produced a hit (a cover of ‘New York Groove’) and Casablanca were inundated with returns. The band’s relentless overexposure was beginning to backfire and older kids got scared away.
KISS then signed on for a TV movie, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, aired just before Halloween of 1978. The low-budget film featured poor special effects and random voice actors dubbing KISS’ speaking parts, neither of which shored up the band’s cred. They scored a major hit with the disco-tinged ‘I Was Made for Loving You’ in ‘79, but album sales and concert attendance began to slip, and both Criss and Frehley soon left the band.
KISS dropped the makeup for its Eighties incarnation, but returns continued to diminish. After a long period of commercial decline, Criss and Frehley rejoined in 1996 for a smash-hit world tour, but it turned out that they were just hired hands, and both eventually quit again. Simmons and Stanley bought the rights to their characters, and continue to tour with other players filling their roles.
Both Cooper and KISS toyed macabre imagery in their live shows, but Seventies output was standard-issue hard rock with little discernible devilry. A generation of kids absorbing that devilish imagery- as well as the various urban legends and hysterical Fundamentalist propaganda about the rockers - would put it all of it together and marry it to truly satanic music in the Eighties.
