Hi everyone this is Topher, one of the two original douchebags. By now you've heard Mark and myself mention a new show coming up once the sports bastards are done.
The music creeps are going to take over. One of the subjects Mark and I have discussed doing a show on is our favorite guitar solos of all time.
So we will get to that, but in the meantime I thought I would give you my favorite Alice Cooper guitar solos. And I'm going to limit myself to the first 10 years of his career, 1969 through 1979.
He had two bands during that time. One was the original Alice Cooper band and then in 75 he went solo, kept the name as Alice Cooper but then put together a backing band.
The first track is going to be Living. It's on the album Pretty's for You which came out in 1969. This album was put together really really quickly.
Frank Zappa had just signed Alice Cooper to his straight label which was a part of Warner Brothers. And they were given basically one night to make the whole album.
Because that's all the Studio Time Frank Zappa was willing to invest. He saw them more as a novelty act and he wanted to rename them Alice Cookies.
So he didn't take them very seriously but if you've listened to that first album you can't really blame anyone for not taking them seriously. They were pretty rough at that point.
So here's the first solo from Living.
Oh that's fuzzy. I like that fuzz. I know it's not the greatest solo in the world but it was pretty good for Glenn Buxton at the time and it just sounds awesome so I included it.
The second solo is at the end of the song and plays more into Glenn's love of special effects so it's a little different.
The third solo is at the end of the song and plays more into Glenn's love of special effects so it's a little different.
The fourth solo is at the end of the song and plays more into Glenn's love of special effects so it's a little different.
I love those harmonies too. They sound a lot like the birds at that point. The birds were a big influence on them this early in their career.
The song is all of 2 minutes and 15 seconds long. Perfectly designed for radio airplay. I mean they knew how to write radio hits because they'd had one in 65 or 66 called Don't Blow Your Mind.
This was intended to be the single on the album but it's happened to have released a single off it.
Moving on to the next song is called Laughing At Me. It's from Alice Cooper's second album released just 9 months later in 1970.
This solo is unusual and interesting to me and one of my favorites because it's something I never expected Glenn Buxton to play. It just seems completely out of his style but what do I know?
Okay for album number 3 we have the Ballad of Dwight Frye.
It features a solo that's designed to convey a sense of dissociation from reality. The guitar player Glenn Buxton had recorded a number of takes and none of them seemed to fit quite right.
Legend is the bass player told him before he went in to record this take, just be freaky. Play something absolutely wild and freaky. And yeah I think he nailed freaky.
Yeah that's definitely the final take. You don't need to record anymore after that. That's going on the album.
There's a short solo during the outro which kind of reminds me of the squeaky violin from Psycho so I thought I'd throw it in just for fun's sake.
And then that fades into Sun Arise which is a rare cover song by Alice Cooper. He does the occasional cover tune on his albums.
Worth noting that during the live performance at certain point during that song Alice is playing Dwight Frye and he gets strapped into an electric chair and electrocuted so that final,
tricky noise might be the time he gets electrocuted. They got tired of the electric chair and moved on to a gallows and Alice Cooper was hanged night after night and then he moved on to the guillotine.
I've seen the electric chair and I've seen the guillotine live. I have not seen the gallows live because he doesn't do that anymore. It's too risky. Don't blame him. I wouldn't do it.
For the next solo we're going to jump ahead a couple years to 1972 and the album School's Out. This is the first one that's not going to be Glenn Buxton or Michael Bruce anymore.
The original guitar player is for Alice Cooper. This is the beginning of bringing in session musicians to record the more important solos instead of Glenn who was getting a lot more unreliable and unwilling at that point.
So this is the intro solo to a song called My Stars and this is Dick Wagner on guitar who definitely has a unique style of his own. One I like really, really well. I really like this guitar sound and I think it suits Alice's music really well.
Here's the intro solo to My Stars.
He really gets buried in the mix. I don't know why. His guitar playing is awesome. The guitar sound is awesome but he gets buried in the mix.
So my advice is turn it up as loud as you can handle it in your headphones or some really awesome home speakers and listen to it that way because you really can't get the full effect if you're just listening on your phone speaker.
Another thing I really like about this song is it seems to be one of the first times that the Alice Cooper group started writing songs with intentional breaks for multiple guitar solos between vocal parts.
They really weren't that kind of band before. They'd have like one really long jam session in the middle of a song and then they'd move on or they'd have a couple of short snappy solos.
But this one they let Dick Wagner play even over the vocals and in this next clip you can hear he leads from a vocal part into the next vocal part and he settles on this high wavering note that he continues to do throughout the time Alice is singing.
And for copyright reasons I'm cutting out this middle part but Dick continues that high wavering note theme until he comes to the next guitar solo and I think he does the transition really well.
And then he takes one more solo before the song ends and this final solo if you ever want a definition of Dick Wagner's style this is it.
This is pure Dick Wagner. This is exactly how he sounds.
I gotta tell you in 1972 I thought that was a pretty stinking awesome guitar sound. I didn't really know guitars could sound like that. I believe he was playing a Gibson Les Paul through Marshall.
He later switched to B.C. Rich guitars and then on and on from there I think before he passed he wound up using PRS. But man the sound of Dick Wagner on a Gibson playing through a Marshall, that's 1970s rock to me.
Now I've got two solos from a track off of Billion Dollar Babies called Sick Things. Alice Cooper has named his fans Sick Things. So if you're a member of the fan club you already know that.
This is kind of a demented sick twisted love song from the Alice Cooper character to his equally twisted fans. The first solo I've nicknamed the Destruction Solo because it sounds like somebody is tearing apart a guitar in a slightly musical way.
There is an ending solo on the track that I have not included. It's a little more standard guitar solo kind of thing. It's very musical but yeah this first one is just pure destruction.
Sick Things.
I really have no idea which guitar player played that and exactly how it was accorded but that really fit the song though. That was exactly right for the song. Alice and whoever his musical director and producer are they have a knack for picking just the right solo for the song.
Also on Billion Dollar Babies is a track called Generation Landslide and the solo during the outro of the song just makes me happy. I just really like the way it sounds. It's associated with a very happy memory so love the solo. Here it is.
Yeah.
Alright now we're going to jump ahead another couple years to 1975. Alice has left his original group. Everyone wanted to do solo albums. Alice Cooper's solo career took off and nobody else's did. So this is his first album Welcome to My Nightmare with his new band that he nicknamed the Nightmare Band because that was the album and they went on tour for about three years.
Now we've got Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on guitar and Dick Wagner is the lead guitarist. This was the B side to the single Only Women Bleed. It's a track called Cold Ethel and the intro solo is an awesome ringtone so feel free to use this as your ringtone. I do.
Yeah.
One thing I miss Steve Hunter on lead guitar. He has a second solo during the song which is kind of more of the same and keeps it going full speed. So here it is.
Freeze me with your charm.
That's cool.
Yeah, I like this. This whole track the guitar all over this just sounds semi chaotic slightly out of control.
Just this honking snarling kind of sound.
Just loved it.
Gonna jump ahead two more years to 1977 and this is Lace and Whiskey. Let me check on that 1977. Don't you love it when I do my research during the show and not beforehand.
You wouldn't love me if I was prepared with you. Okay I'm scrolling through the D to D to D Lace and Whiskey 1977. All right. See I'm gonna leave this crappy part in because that's how much effort I put into it.
So anyway there's a song on Lace and Whiskey called Road Rats which is all about the roadies that move his show around from town to town.
And excuse me he's redone Road Rats for his most recent album called Road. I like the original better. I'm a I'm a prayerist anyway.
Dick Wagner again on guitar both times. I got two solos out of this. The end solo is slightly longer. So here's the first one from Road Rats.
And he's buried in the mix again isn't he. Same thing turn it up as loud as you can take it. Preferably with headphones on and you'll hear him.
So here's the second solo and this is the one that leads us out of the song.
So
so
I don't like to be that guy who talks over guitar solos but it was almost over and it was fading out. So anyway that is my selection of favorite Alice Cooper guitar solos from 69 to 79.
And be sure to let Mark know if you like what you heard and we'll do more of these. Let Mark know what kind of things you want. We can do favorite drum solos, favorite live acts, favorite vocal performances. The options are endless.
And we'll just creep all over that. So thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the tunes. Bye.