Dedicated music listeners probably all have fond memories of the records which sent him or her down the rabbit hole of collecting favorite artists or genres. One disc that warped me as a child was a pretty good-sized hit in 1971: Love it to Death by Alice Cooper.
By the time a copy ended up in my hands in the mid- to late-1980s, it was a thrift store item picked up because the dudes on the cover looked super weird. I also probably at least recognized the title of "I'm Eighteen," the hit single that propelled Love it to Death into the charts. Along with an earlier purchase of the Rolling Stones' Big Hits, Alice Cooper helped send me toward loving all kinds of trashy, envelope-pushing rock music, a preference that's never abated even as I've learned to also appreciate more sedate sounds.
I've long had all the group's original LPs, but recently learned a lot more about them by reading Bob Greene's excellent Billion Dollar Baby, written after he accompanied them on a tour promoting its final LP, Muscle of Love. (Playing Santa Claus, Greene was "beat up" by the band at the end of each night's show.)
Greene's book portrays a group who stuck together as a collective of equals until and after they became superstars. But the cracks were showing; painted into a corner by the outrageous antics that helped make them stars -- and the need to constantly one-up themselves -- the focus on media savvy lead singer Vincent Furnier (that is, Alice Cooper himself) gradually alienated the rest of the band. Though few knew it at the time Greene's book appeared in late 1974, the group had already played their final shows the previous April.
As high schoolers in Arizona, the lineup morphed through lineups as The Earwigs, The Spiders and The Nazz. All five "classic" members were in place by the time they moved to Los Angeles to take a crack at stardom. In 1968 they were discovered by manager Shep Gordon, pumped in Greene's book as the genius behind the group's ramp-up of the freaky antics.
Gordon was intrigued by their ability to clear out clubs via noisy, chaotic rock and an androgynous stage appearance. He shortly helped get them a deal with Frank Zappa's Bizarre/Straight enterprise. Two subsequent LPs went nowhere and the band, tiring of L.A. indifference, relocated to Michigan to re-group. Their third LP, Love it to Death, recorded in Chicago with Canadian producers Jack Richardson and Bob Ezrin, finally put them in the Billboard top 40.
By the time of the breakthrough, the group had already become somewhat notorious thanks to Gordon's behind-the-scenes work getting press for an increasingly violent -- yet moralistic -- stage show. But it certainly helped that on Love it to Death, Alice Cooper put together an album that both lived up to the wild image and is a far more musically successful distillation of the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floydisms explored on their first two LPs.
Extended, horror-themed tracks "Black Juju" and "The Ballad of Dwight Fry" follow in the footsteps of earlier experiments, but with a much tighter focus than before. Rather than disrupting the album's flow, they mix well with short, catchy rockers such as "Caught in a Dream," "Is it My Body" and "Long Way to Go." It's easily one of the best hard rock albums of the early '70s, and the most consistent by far of all of the Alice Cooper group's discs.
The release history of Love it to Death ended up as somewhat of a collectibles-inducing mess. Initial copies were released with LPs labeled as Zappa's Straight label -- though, oddly, covers only show the logo of distributor Warner Brothers. That company must have picked up the band's contract either just before the Love it to Death's release or fairly soon after, as copies of the album with Straight labels aren't too common.
Even goofier, there were four variations of the cover art within a short time of its release; the variations are in order within this article. The first version features Cooper's thumb sticking out of the front of his cape in a somewhat suspicious place. The thumb survived long enough for a white violator box to appear on the cover and plug, "Including Their Hit I'm Eighteen." Apparently, as the album was now gaining some attention, someone got concerned about the thumb, and the original cover art was briefly censored by using two huge white stripes at the top and bottom of both the front and back cover. Shortly after that, the "standard" cover appeared, including the white "I'm Eighteen" box but with the thumb (and Cooper's entire right arm) airbrushed out of the image. After all that rigamarole, it's a good thing the album sold. (Straight/Warner Brothers WS 1883, 1971)
