Muscle of Love

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

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forglasgowonly
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Muscle of Love

Post by forglasgowonly » Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:19 pm

Hi Dennis,
playing this album again just now. It seems to be forgotten within the catalogue. It has a really cool, more relaxed vibe. It also strikes me that it sounds like a road weary band (the Rolling Stones Its only RnR from the same era springs to mind). I don't hear much of the sinister lyricism, or "character" songs. It's still a wonderful album, but to these ears sounds a light year away from, say Schools Out. Were you guys burned out from touring? Hard Hearted Alice seems to suggest so.

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by Dreary » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:52 pm

There was a lot going down during the creation and recording of MoL.
Yes, we had been driven into the ground and needed a break, especially Glen and Alice.
It's often been suggested that Alice was doing all of the interviews while the rest of us were kicking back and partying. The way we saw it is that we were in Connecticut trying to create an album while Alice was in New York City hobnobbing with celebrities. I thought we could make that work because enough of the chemistry was still there. But when Michael brought in Mick Mashbir and Bob Dolan, there was a different dynamic. Even though Glen, and the rest of us liked Mick and Bob, the feel of the rehearsal room was different than ever before. Glen saw it as Michael teaming up against him, and despite the ongoing humor, the resentment was there.
Glen did learn all of the new songs and he played some things that would have been a big plus to the actual recording session, if he could have been counted on to be consistent. We didn't have the luxury of losing
The other major hurdle concerned Sunset Sound Studios in LA. We wanted to record in the studio that the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Doors had recorded (Studio B) but we arrived to find out that management had booked Studio A, which was where they mostly recorded orchestras. This effected my bass sound because the studio speakers were so outrageously heavy on bass that Jack Richardson had to mix the songs with the bass blaring at triple the desired volume, and when he took the mixes down to another studio for reference, the bass still thin.
I had tickets to see Procol Harum at the Hollywood Bowl but Jack wasn't sure about a bass track, so I spent the whole night in the studio ready to redo a track only to find out my original bass track was fine.
"Hard Hearted Alice" is the mood the band was in during that album.
I'm most proud of my bass playing on "Man With The Golden Gun" and "Muscle of Love."

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by Railwayman » Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:57 am

Mr. D.
Thanks for providing insights and answering questions from us Sickthings, certainly a loyal and enthusiastic bunch.

MoL is a great album but following BDB was always going to be a challenge.

I understand that Bob Ezrin was / is a very 'hands on' kind of producer. With the different team on MoL did you have more freedom in how you wanted to present the material ?. There is certainly a different tonal quality to MoL than its predecessor BDB. Is this related to the 'sound' you wanted or just the environment in which your recorded the material.

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by Dreary » Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:54 pm

Railwayman wrote:
Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:57 am
Mr. D.
Thanks for providing insights and answering questions from us Sickthings, certainly a loyal and enthusiastic bunch.

MoL is a great album but following BDB was always going to be a challenge.

I understand that Bob Ezrin was / is a very 'hands on' kind of producer. With the different team on MoL did you have more freedom in how you wanted to present the material ?. There is certainly a different tonal quality to MoL than its predecessor BDB. Is this related to the 'sound' you wanted or just the environment in which your recorded the material.
Pretties For You had a tight unified direction that Easy Action lacked due to us not being able to spend much time together in a rehearsal room. LITD, Killer, SO, and B$B were all developed during rehearsal time with Neal, Glen, Michael, Alice, and I in the same room together, and therefore had a tight unified direction. MoL lacked that togetherness, but somehow we still felt the freedom of our early days because we weren't limiting the songs to any particular theme.
Also, if we had thought of the Muscle of Love title and song earlier in the process, we likely would have built our songs around that and locked into a more unified direction. As it was, we had already come up with most of the songs at that point.

We had worked closely with Jack Richardson on LITD and Killer due to Warner Bros. insisting that Jack would oversee the production of those albums. Everybody loved Jack. He would expect you to push yourself and you did because you wanted to please him.

Each of our albums had a different feel. The only two that had a similar feel are LITD and Killer because they were rehearsed in the same room and recorded in the same studio with the same equipment.

MoL was the first time we had recorded in a large room rather than a smaller, more intimate room. And it had equipment problems. One machine in particular kept breaking down and we would have to wait for a studio repairman to come fix it. He would take the machine away for a while, then return it and it still wouldn't work. Finally, on the third time, Jack Douglas told the guy that we wanted a replacement because the machine was broken. The guy said, it's not broken. So Jack Douglas pulled the machine out of the rack, kicked open the door to the parking lot and heaved the machine into the air. It hit the pavement and shattered into a million pieces. Then Jack stood face to face with the repairman. The repairman said, it's broken. And we got a new machine. But we had lost several precious hours of studio time. To this day, Jack Douglas says he regrets having done that because he respects studio equipment so much.

The group attended the mixing sessions on every album up until MoL. The New York sessions with the Pointer Sisters, Ronnie Spector, and Liza happened with Alice as the only group member in attendance. I did manage to find out when some of the sessions were scheduled and made sure to be there. I was at the quad mixes as well. But we felt uninvited and it felt like our band had been taken away from us.

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by Railwayman » Tue Aug 24, 2021 6:01 pm

Wow Dennis .... what a reply. Many thanks.
When I first heard MoL the sonicality (now there's a new word for you) was more akin to LITD with SO and BDB being somehow brighter if that's the right word. Remember the home stereo graphic equalisers it almost felt like the highest frequencies had been turned down and the sound was somehow 'duller' Still a great record.

Once again many thanks for the reply.

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by pitkin88 » Thu Aug 26, 2021 3:34 am

Do you remember what was the last song you worked on and how long a gap was there when Ezrin walked and Douglas got on board?

Also was there any fear that Ezrin had gone or was it a collective band, minus Alice, sigh of relief?

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by Dreary » Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:56 pm

pitkin88 wrote:
Thu Aug 26, 2021 3:34 am
Do you remember what was the last song you worked on and how long a gap was there when Ezrin walked and Douglas got on board?

Also was there any fear that Ezrin had gone or was it a collective band, minus Alice, sigh of relief?
The last song I worked on? Do you mean with Ezrin? Last song on MoL?

We were rehearsing at Nimbus 9 in Toronto. We had just worked up an old song called "Woman Machine" when Bob showed up. We started playing it for him and he stopped us during the intro and said he had an idea for a change. We hadn't even gotten to the verse! So Michael suggested that he listen to the song before making any changes. Bob said, I guess you don't need me then. Michael said, well I guess not. To everyone's surprise, Bob walked out. None of us thought he wasn't coming back over that little spat. It was standard for us to have passionate exchanges and nobody ever quit. We always bounced back and, of course, Bob would.

The obvious replacement was Jack Richardson who taught Bob how to produce, and who had overseen the production of Love It To Death and Killer. Jack owned Nimbus 9 Studios.

The only gap was the time it took for us to find out that Bob had actually quit, which wasn't what any of us expected or wanted. We didn't even get a chance to talk it over with him. It seemed impossible. We just wanted him to listen to our song before we dug into working on it.

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Re: Muscle of Love

Post by steven_crayn » Mon Aug 30, 2021 1:36 pm

Bob Ezrin’s take on the Woman Machine fall out
https://youtu.be/1DWxgHBWOZw
Lead guitar on Social Debris. Album on iTunes, Amazon & Spotify, title track featured on TV

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