Shane’s Rock Challenge: ALICE COOPER – From The Inside

Shane | 1 May 2014 | Reply

Shane’s Music Challenge: ALICE COOPER – From The Inside
5/10

Back in 1977 there were no celebrity rehab spa centres – if you wanted to kick alcohol or drugs, it was off to hospital or the loony bin you went, and Alice Cooper’s guzzling waster days had come to an end.

Whilst inside straightening out, he also dreamt up the concept for his next album: From The Inside, with each song being inspired by characters he met therein.

No-one’s going to sit here and say this is one of Cooper’s career highlights – it’s a harrowing listen at times and some of the songs just aren’t up to his normal high standards. Having said that, there is some gold to be discovered below the circus, as you’d expect with Alice Cooper Band cohort Dick Wagner co-writing the music, Steve Lukather popping up on a couple of tracks, and Elton John’s lyricist Bernie Taupin co-authoring all of the lyrics.

How You Gonna See Me Now may be Alice’s most underrated rock ballad. It’s a great piece of work that deserves to stand alongside Only Women Bleed or You & Me as one of his best softies.

Nurse Rozetta is a nasty piece of work turned into a solid rock song, while Serious is a catchy rocker, and final track Inmates (We’re All Crazy) ends the album on a high note with some epic loud-quiet-loud piano and guitar interplay that culminates in a crescendo of strings and a choir chanting ‘we’re all crazy’, which, at the time, they probably were.

As a perverse postscript, Cooper insists he was completely cured of alcohol addiction after his stint at the sanitarium, yet went on to become a notoriously decayed cocaine addict just a couple of years later. There’s a happy ending of course – he kicked that, saved his marriage and has had many career highs (I’m going to ignore the obvious joke) since.

By Shane Pinnegar