Harmonies on Stage.

Alice Cooper co-founder and Hall Of Fame inductee Dennis Dunaway answers your questions!

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livinluvin72
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Harmonies on Stage.

Post by livinluvin72 » Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:17 am

In the Billion Dollar Baby book, Bob Greene describes a scene where Shep confronts Alice about the harmonies on stage and says, “They’re really bad. You guys need to practice before the next show.” Alice makes all kinds of excuses, “My monitors are bad, we know the parts, we never could do harmony on stage”.
While this is going on, Mike is hitting on a young lady so Bob documents both conversations simultaneously so it’s kind of humorous. This goes on for a full page as Shep really tries to get Alice to agree to practice the harmonies with the group but Alice resists.
It didn’t seem like Shep was able to convince Alice to practice the harmonies with the band.
It didn’t seem like live harmonies were a strength of the band.
Why did Alice resist practicing?
Did he just feel it was hopeless and wouldn’t help?
To be fair, unless you’re the Eagles, The Beatles, CSN&Y, most hard rock bands have limited harmony chops as they tend to be instrument driven rather than vocal harmonies driven. It's almost like the instrument volume is so high that subtle vocal harmonies get lost.
Mostly it’s just a lead singer doing all the vocals.

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Re: Harmonies on Stage.

Post by Dreary » Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:44 am

livinluvin72 wrote:
Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:17 am
In the Billion Dollar Baby book, Bob Greene describes a scene where Shep confronts Alice about the harmonies on stage and says, “They’re really bad. You guys need to practice before the next show.” Alice makes all kinds of excuses, “My monitors are bad, we know the parts, we never could do harmony on stage”.
While this is going on, Mike is hitting on a young lady so Bob documents both conversations simultaneously so it’s kind of humorous. This goes on for a full page as Shep really tries to get Alice to agree to practice the harmonies with the group but Alice resists.
It didn’t seem like Shep was able to convince Alice to practice the harmonies with the band.
It didn’t seem like live harmonies were a strength of the band.
Why did Alice resist practicing?
Did he just feel it was hopeless and wouldn’t help?
To be fair, unless you’re the Eagles, The Beatles, CSN&Y, most hard rock bands have limited harmony chops as they tend to be instrument driven rather than vocal harmonies driven. It's almost like the instrument volume is so high that subtle vocal harmonies get lost.
Mostly it’s just a lead singer doing all the vocals.
Yes, we should have paid more attention to our vocals. Our monitors couldn't cut through our bone crushing stage volume so we could hardly ever hear what we were singing. We would tune up, jam, and warm up our voices with a couple of songs but Alice was always in another room meeting backstage VIP's. Glen didn't sing and Neal and I rarely sang so it was up to Michael and Bob Dolan to harmonize with Alice, who had occasional off-nights due to drinking. We always listened to the board mixes, and on most nights, the harmonies sounded good.
I think we're all better singers these days, and Alice's voice is in amazing form.

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Re: Harmonies on Stage.

Post by pitkin88 » Tue Apr 27, 2021 9:39 pm

I've always liked the doo bee doo harmonies on Under My Wheels when the band played it live and the dog at Bowie.

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Re: Harmonies on Stage.

Post by Dreary » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:09 pm

pitkin88 wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 9:39 pm
I've always liked the doo bee doo harmonies on Under My Wheels when the band played it live and the dog at Bowie.
We invented the doo bee doo parts to keep the song going when the music dropped down while Alice talked to the audience.

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