Sleeve Notes

Produced by Bob Marlette

Executive Producer: Bob Ezrin

Cover Design: Kane Roberts

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 togo 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."

The Album

"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".

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' (see left).

 

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 Blue Tinted Slipcase
UK	CD		00		Eagle	CDr Acetate in colour cover "Masterpiece Studio"
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
Europe	CD		07		Music Sessions	Reissued as 'Pick Up The Bones - His Latter Recordings'
Germany	2CD		08		Eagle	Reissue in double format with 'Dragontown'
?	CD		2011		PID	Entitled "Shock Rock Early Days" this is simply 'Brutal Planet' under a new name and cover.

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

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'.