Home...... Previous Page
|
|
|
A change to a new record label to Spitfire brought sonething of a comeback and a change of style to a heavier, more industrial metal sound. Far heavier then anything he had previously released (bar the X-files soundtrack song which was really a Rob Zombie creation), it was almost unversally well received and now considered a benchmark release for Alice. |
 |
|
There was a Japanese/Australian bonus track called 'Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me' (Cooper/Marlette/Blake/Wilson) [4:09]. A few months after the original release Spitfire released a 'Tour Edition' in europe which featured the following additional tracks (the live tracks are taken from 'Brutally Live'):
|
Produced by Bob Marlette
Executive Producer Bob Ezrin
Musicians
Ryan Roxie - Guitars
Phil X - Guitars
China - Guitars
Bob Marlette - Bass
Eric Singer - Drums
Press Release
ALICE COOPER - Alice Gets Brutal
Special Report by Martin Popoff
Alice Cooper's new album Brutal Planet is due out on Spitfire Records in June. Produced by Bob Marlette and featuring Alice, Bob, Ryan Roxie and ex-Kiss, longtime Alice drummer Eric Singer, Brutal Planet is a concept album of "social fiction".
The man behind Alice gives us this exclusive on the lyrical thrust of the new record. "The last thing that I had written was The Last Temptation, which again was very novelistic, almost Something Wicked This Way Comes, and before that, I've always tried to write in concepts. And I said, you know, I've never really written anything science fiction, and I wanted this one to be in the form of a futuristic novel. So Brutal Planet is basically what this planet is going to turn into. And I have to go not by what I feel. I'm very optimistic. Alice is very pessimistic. I have to write the way Alice would think. He thinks we're flying toward a brick wall at 100 miles per hour. And he kind of would like to be there and see what happens at the end. This is Alice's state of the world address, a future state of the world address. But I like the fact that a lot of these things he sees are things that are going on now. In that sense it's not really science fiction but social fiction, or put another way, future horror. "
On the record's moral tone, Alice offers the following. "I think that's always there. I don't think you have to look for it, I think it's always there. I think there is always a moral level to everything. No matter what it is, there is morality, whether it's Frankenstein or Dracula, there is always a moral, good and evil. And I think this evil here on Brutal Planet is just man destroying the place and likely not fixing the damage."
Musically, the album is traditional yet uncompromisingly high-fidelity hard music, recorded digitally (a first for Alice), but as Alice laughs, with no patience for flagrant modern industrial elements, "with an all-human cast. For me, technology takes the heart out of everything. Any time you make life easier for man, it suddenly takes the heart out of it. When I hear techno music, I hear music that is basically a machine's idea of music. I hear pulse but no heart. So it is an artificial pulse coming from an artificial place. In other words, when you hear a real drummer play, he makes mistakes. He has timing mistakes. I would personally rather hear that than a perfectly controlled machine that doesn't know how to make mistakes. Expect to hear good hard rock with solid songs."
Our preview listen of the record detected a Sabbath vibe, or a reach back into the classic metal of Alice's pioneering hardware from the '70s. "Sure, that's fine. I think that when you have to create a basis for an album, you have to find some common ground musically, you know? And I think my kind of music will always be hard rock. I'm never going to go techno or country. You know, my roots are in The Yardbirds. We used to listen to everything from The Yardbirds to Stockhausen. It will always be a very 4/4 kind of beat, it will always be right on the money, with driving drums. I don't pretend to be anything other than a hard rock writer, but because I think that's what I'm best at. I do get to weave strange little stories around that kind of writing though, and I do try to get it as quirky as possible, but if you really strip it down to what it is, it's bass, drums and guitars driving hard rock. Some people might call that heavy metal, but it's just good riff rock. That's what it is."
Summing up, Alice had this to say about the album's overriding philosophy. "If there is any poetry or philosophy, it's from C horror movies from China (laughs). Everybody's got their own philosophies and mine is coming from a certain place. And I didn't harp on where mine is coming from even though I think it seeps through. My job on this album is to portray a place and then just kind of pose the question, do we want to go there? And, you know, I think it's pretty obvious that we don't."
"Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me" was inspired by the Simpsons. In an episode explaining how Bart became the way he is there is a segment where Homer makes Bart a "Krusty" bed that looks very evil and sinister. Homer is of course pleased with himself while we see Bart sitting on the bed repeating the line..."Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me".
The 'Gimme' Video
A video for 'Gimme' was shot in London by director Simon Hilton, and features Alice both in and out of make-up giving a group of musicians everything they want only for them to turn into a boy-band and in one version, have they`re heads explode. The second single is said to be 'Take It Like A Woman' with 'Blow Me A Kiss' said to be a possible third despite the fact that promo`s for it were sent to radio around the time of the albums release.
The symbols under Alice`s eye on the album cover:
"These aren't zodiacal symbols but astrological symbols for planets, at least the 3 last ones. I'm certainly no expert on astrology so take it as it comes. But I can't see the 2 first ones properly, ah the good old days of vinyl ;-) the third symbol is for an ascending node (a node being the point where the orbit of a planet crosses the ecliptic (suns orbit)... the next one is for Jupiter, and the last one (circle with a point in it) is for the sun, it is also the alchemical symbol for gold.
(Dragonlady, 16th June 2000)
A company spokeswomen from PlanetFX (Kane Roberts` company who did the cover) said that they had no specific meaning and they were just something that Kane added when he did the design.
In April 2007 'Brutal Planet' was reissued under the title of 'Pick Up The Bones - His Latter Recordings'.
Known Releases
Country |
Format |
Number |
Date |
Chart |
Label |
Notes |
USA |
CD |
5038-2 |
00 |
193 |
Spitfire |
|
USA |
CD |
ADV-038 |
00 |
193 |
Spitfire |
Promo |
UK |
CD |
EAGCD115 |
00 |
Eagle Rock |
Initial copies In Slip Case with poster |
|
UK |
CD |
EDGTE115 |
00 |
Eagle Rock |
Double CD with Bonus Disc featuring It's The Little Things (live) / Wicked Young Man (live) / Poison (live) / My Generation (live) / Total Rock Rockumentary / It's The Little Things (video)/Screen Save |
|
UK |
CD |
|
00 |
|
Eagle |
CDr Acetate in colour cover |
UK |
CD |
|
07 |
|
Recall |
Double CD including Brutal Planet and Dragontown |
Japan |
CD |
POCP 7492 |
00 |
With Bonus Track 'Can`t Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me' |
||
Australia |
CD |
8573839032 |
00 |
With Bonus Track 'Can`t Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me' |
||
Australia |
CD |
8122735532 |
00 |
Double pack with the 'Essential Alice Cooper' compilation |
||
Germany |
CD |
EDGTE115 |
00 |
|
Eagle |
2CD version As UK Version |
The Tour:
Band:
Ryan Roxie - Guitar
Pete Friesen - Guitar
Greg Smith - Bass
Eric Singer - Drums
Teddy `Zigzag` Andreadis - Keyboards(From Ryan`s Band Glamnation and Gun`s And Roses)
Show Directed by Robert Jess Roth
Setlist:
Full setlists for all shows can be found here |
The Show
The show starts with large box being wheeled to stage center by two masked henchmen. They open the box to reveal the upper torso and head of 'The Controller' who introduces us to the Brutal Planet and warns the audience to 'Leave, before it`s too Late'.
|
'Go To Hell' features Alice`s daughter Calico as the Whipwoman who is kicked from the left platform by Alice. 'Eighteen' again features the Crutch. 'Pick Up The Bones' sees Alice with a pillowcase, searching the stage for bones that can been seen all over the place. The end of the song is chillingly effective with the last couple of lines said by Alice with no musical accompaniment and with white spots picking him out center stage while the sound of the wind is played through the P.A. Breathtaking. 'Feed My Frankenstein'. Alice picks up body parts and places them in the Frankenstein Machine. 'Wicked Young Man' and the Band and Alice march around the stage in time to the beat. Very effective. Calico, as the nurse, appears from time to time, only to be chased or thrown into the car`s boot.
Henchmen appear to tie Alice into the straightjacket for 'Ballad Of Dwight Fry' and the normal Nurse killing scene follows. (NOTE: This track was featured later in the set on the first few shows of the tour.) Then it`s off to the Guillotine. After the Instrumental section and drums solo the nurse carries out Alice`s severed head and places it in the Frankenstein Machine. She pulls a switch and the machine fills with smoke (when it works!). Alice bursts out in Top Hat And Tails and into 'No More Mr Nice Guy'. 'It`s Hot Tonight' sees Alice in a gangster hat pretending to roll dice as if playing 'craps'.
'Poison' opens with Alice in the Leather Jacket mimicking that album`s front cover pose. 'Take It Like A Woman' and 'Only Women Bleed' are segued together as Alice sings to the women at the front while sitting on an upturned Can. 'You Drive Me Nervous' see`s Alice moving around the stage shaking as if nervous. 'Under My Wheels' features the Ban introductions. These change a bit from night to night but in the UK Pete was from 'Waynes World' and The Almighty. Greg was either from Carpetworld, Teletubbies or "Waynes World - Non Speaking Role!" Eric from "Every band you`ve ever seen, and he`s finally found a good one!" Teddy from Toys-R-Us or "The pages of the National Enquirer" and Ryan, while playing T-Rex`s 'Get It On', is from Hollywood circa 1977! 'School`s out' has all the normal chaos of Balloons and Confetti.
This leads straight into the finale of 'Elected' featuring the Presidents again, Clinton with cigar and no trousers arguing with his wife(Calico again) and them all falling to the floor fighting. The out comes the Flag* and a quick reprise of 'Brutal Planet' as Alice is dragged off the stage and the original Alice with trenchcoat from the beginning of the show reappears on the platform carrying the severed head. Very effective. Show differences. For the first few dates of the tour in Europe, 'Guilty' was played instead of 'It`s The Little Things'. But the end of the show was very different. During the 'Brutal Planet reprise' Alice reappears as the new Controller from the beginning of the show and has a short speech. Then 'Dwight Fry' is played on just an acoustic guitar with Alice bound in the straightjacket. When it gets to the 'I`ve got to get out of here' section, Alice is led off stage and never escapes. People who saw this said it was chillingly effective and no reason has yet been made for changing it to the current format. * If anyone managed to get a good photo of Alice with the Welsh flag at the Newport, please get in touch. I have a major Alice fan in desperate need. This was the first time ever for Alice in Wales and most of our camera`s packed in at that point! Please help if you can. Pictures by Antony John and Triin Randlane. |
|
Songs rehearsed for the tour but not so far performed completely included 'Luney Tunes', 'My Stars', 'I Love The Dead', 'Killer', 'Guilty' (played first few shows only), 'Sanctuary'.