Killer

Product Information

The album reached number 21 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and the two singles “Under My Wheels” and “Be My Lover” made the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Desperado” is a brilliant track and it brings side one to a perfect close with remembrance disguised as bravado.

Anyway having said all this it's great stuff to have at last, good pictures, notes, raw sound ACG live music and will get played over and over. Cooper said in the liner notes of A Fistful of Alice and In the Studio with Redbeard, which spotlighted the Killer and Love It to Death albums, that the song “Desperado” was written about his friend Jim Morrison, who died the year this album was released. Steve Paul scenester/ex-McCoys guitarist Rick Derringer supplies rip-roaring guitar here and it sets up the rest of the album for off-the-cuff, sleazy racket-making perfectly. Here, the notorious “Dead Babies” and title track, “Killer” comprise the dark, two-part epic that live resulted in a) Alice chopping apart baby dolls and b) the ritual hanging of Alice himself. The disc finishes with 3 excellent alternative studio versions including a version of 'You Drive Me Nervous' which rivals the finished album version.

Cooper said in the liner notes of A Fistful of Alice (1997) and In the Studio with Redbeard, which spotlighted the Killer and Love It to Death (1971) albums, that the song "Desperado" was written about his friend Jim Morrison, who died the year this album was released. With tribal tom-tom drums and near-backwards soaring guitar lines, “Killer” emerges from a courtroom argument that ends the “Dead Babies” descending guitar sick-out like a tattered zombie slumping through a late night mist. Alongside Welcome to My Nightmare, it is one of only two Alice Cooper albums where every song has been played live, although "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" has never been played since the end of the supporting Killer Tour, while "You Drive Me Nervous" was not played subsequent to the Killer Tour until 1999, and has never been performed since 2006. According to an NPR radio interview with Alice Cooper, "Desperado" was written about Robert Vaughn's character from the movie The Magnificent Seven (1960). Along with the singles “Under My Wheels” and “Be My Lover,” the record also includes “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” “Desperado,” and the prog-rock-inspired epic “Halo Of Flies.

The Coop's 2nd release of 1971 following 'Love It To Death',WOW what a disc,superb from start to finish. An amazing set from the Mar y Sol Pop Festival that shows the incredible musicianship of the band, with a lot of the songs extended into jams, there’s even some mean harp playing by Alice himself! That is, until the title is bawled out so loud, you go rushing for the volume to turn it down lest your parents hear that scrawny manic with the crazy spider-eyes screaming “DEAD BABIES!Robert Christgau rated the album a B−, stating that "a taste for the base usages of hard rock rarely comes with a hit attached these days, much less 'surreal', 'theatrical', and let us not forget 'transvestite' trappings". Vinyl pressings are so good these days that it's like listening to the clarity of CDs but with the warmth of analogue. Liner notes Archived 2011-07-19 at the Wayback Machine from " The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper", Rhino Records Box Set, 1999, Catalog No: RHIN 75680. The song “Dead Babies” stirred up some controversy following the album’s release, despite the fact that its lyrics conveyed an “anti-child abuse” message. Alice’s vocals are at their roughest and razor-gargled best on “Killer,” too: They scrawl all over “Under My Wheels” like the retardedly etched lettering on the cover and open up the proceedings with all the teenaged head rush of a highly anticipated Friday night concert just after racing directly home from school.

And it sees Alice rollin’ hastily outta bed out from under a mountain of empty Budweiser cans, applying his smeared, runny mascara all around his glazballs with a clawed, talon’d hand then running his fingers through his ratty, knotted black mane, quickly hooking Katchina the snake ‘round his neck, throws back the warm backwash from the last beer of the afternoon and he’s off -- And so are The Coopers, in full force for the duration of this airtight, upright and skintight rock’n’roll album. on the Billboard 200 album chart, and the two singles " Under My Wheels" and " Be My Lover" made the Billboard Hot 100 chart.Desperado" was performed only once prior to the Trash Tour in 1989, but has been frequently played live since. He explained that "it brings all the elements of the band's approach to sound and texture to a totally integrated pinnacle that fulfills all the promise of their erratic first two albums" and that "each song on [the] album finds him in a different role in the endless movie he is projecting on them.