Questions about EASY ACTION

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

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tuneylune
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Questions about EASY ACTION

Post by tuneylune » Tue May 11, 2021 11:49 am

Hello Mr Dunaway,

Been spending a lot of time with EASY ACTION lately. Despite David Briggs's opinion. think the album sounds very good. Love the short songs, great playing by all of You on "Below Your Means" (really enjoy Your slinky notes around the 3:00 mark) and it seems that on "Return Of The Spiders", Vince is beginning to truly morph into Alice. The dueling guitars and just the overall frantic flow on "ROTS" almost have You sighing in the relief when it stops briefly before kicking back in again. Do You recall who is asking about Hearing a playback at the end?

The one song that truly stayed with Me was Your second version of "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye". It's as if the song is in three parts. You mentioned in Your book about the Stockhousen influence for the song. Was there also trying to make it something like The Beatles "Revolution 9"? The second part of "LDADG" seems to have the same kind of ambience.

Thank You again for taking the time to answer all the question We've thrown out to You on the Forum.

TL
"I need everything the world owes me..."

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Re: Questions about EASY ACTION

Post by Dreary » Tue May 11, 2021 7:41 pm

I dug out the record for a listen. I haven't heard that song in many years so I have a more objective ear now.

Concerning the bass part, this is proof that we had been herded back into the studio before we were ready. My bass patterns vary a lot, which to me, screams that I was still searching for the ultimate feel. In this case, the loose improvisational nature of it seems to have it's charm.

This recording is insightful to my writing method. Most, if not all of my bass parts went through this stage in development. I think the same can be said about Neal's approach. We tried lots of ideas before settling on what we thought worked the best for each part of each song. This song was recorded mid-stream in that process.

It's why, when we played song ideas that were still in those experimental stages, Bob Ezrin would say, that's not a song, that's ten songs. Thankfully, one of the many great things about Bob is that he quickly recognized that that process of searching for the ultimate idea was how Neal and I came up with strong parts in the end. Bob was patient because he saw that we would eventually zero in. And when we did, it always felt like a locomotive was coming through. Sometimes it would even effect the direction of a song.

It sounds like David Brigg's calling us into the control room to listen.

As for "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye", I don't think the Beatles influenced it consciously. It's more like yet another example of the Beatles being ahead of everyone else. Our influence came from the concept of abstract art. We wanted to make a statement like a "Happening" where nobody knew where it was going to go - not only was the sound collage different every night, but so was the visual assault. You can get a brief glimpse of that in Diary of a Mad Housewife and the "Animal Pajamas" footage from the Rock and Roll Revival. There are similarities, but there are also elements that only happened on that particular night.
The Easy Action recording was more sinister because David Brigg's made it clear that he thought it was garbage. And I was thrown off because it was hard for me to ignore the fact that I was playing so abstractly on the Cowsill's Hofner bass.

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