MAKING OF THE ALBUM: Alice Cooper – From the Inside
Published on October 22, 2011 by Christian Sellers · No Comments
By the mid-1970s the Alice Cooper band had split following the release of their disappointing swan song Muscle of Love and frontman Cooper had embarked on a solo career, commencing with his classic 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare. But as Cooper was venturing into his late twenties and further into a downward spiral of alcoholism and exhaustion he had dispensed with his trademark make-up and had begun to experiment with his sound, moving further away from hard rock with his film noiresque album Lace and Whiskey, in which he played the role of a hard boiled detective. While his first solo album had proved that he no longer needed his backing group, the two subsequent records cast a shadow over his longevity and willingness to move with the times. Having released seven albums as the frontman of Alice Cooper and three as a solo artist the future had begun to look bleak for Cooper, while his ever-growing dependency on alcohol threaended to destroy not only his career but also his health and sanity.
Cooper had worked with producer and co-writer Bob Ezrin on his first three solo albums, as well as his more successful records with his former band, but by the time his first live album The Alice Cooper Show was released in December 1977 Cooper had been forced to take a long hard look at what he had become. His hit singles were now few and far between (You and Me, the lead single from Lace and Whiskey, had barely made it into the top ten) and some critics had begun to write him off as a has-been, but it would be his personal life that would suffer the most. His drinking had been excessive since his days with Alice Cooper and he had been a regular he had been a member of the unofficial club the Hollywood Vampires, which had included the likes of Harry Nilsson and The Who‘s Keith Moon. But by the time Cooper was ready to admit he had a serious problem many of his hard-living peers, from Jim Morrison to Jimi Hendrix, had already passed away. Cooper’s poison was beer and Canadian rye, and while his lifestyle was not quite as extreme as Moon he knew that if he did not conquer his demons he would suffer a similar fate to his friends.
It would be during the touring of Lace and Whiskey, which had been released in mid-1977, that Cooper’s health forced those around him to take action. Having woken in his hotel room, Cooper soon found himself kneeling over the toilet and throwing up blood into the bowl. At the behest of his manager, Shep Gordon, Cooper was admitted to the Cornell Medical Center in Westchester County, New York. With the support from both Gordon and Cooper’s wife, Sheryl, he faced the arduous task of turning his back on his dependency to alcohol and re-emerging as a sober and wiser individual. Predictably, it would be the first two or three days that would be the most intense for Cooper, as his system attempted to replenish itself and he tried to rediscover his true inner self. Despite receiving regular counselling, the most therapeutic aspect of the experience was that it would be his time Cornell that would inspire the concept for his next album. While Cooper was merely exhausted and locked in a self-destructive pattern, he was surrounded by patients who were quite literally insane. Like any writer will admit, this is the perfect environment to inspire creativity and by the time he finally emerged from the institute the seed for his next record had been planted.
Appropriately-titled From the Inside, the album would be his first solo effort to not feature a contribution from Ezrin, instead opting to work with a new producer, David Foster. Almost two years younger than Cooper. Foster had worked as a session keyboardist and pianist for a host of artists, including former Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as well as Bobby Womack, Neil Sedaka and Rod Stewart. While Foster’s background would add a new element to Cooper’s sound, it would be his choice of songwriter and musicians that would play the most significant role in the direction that From the Inside would take. Guitarist Davey Johnstone and bassist Dee Murray had both been regular collaborators of Elton John and had performed on his 1973 classic Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Another veteran from John would be lyricist Bernie Taupin, who would play an invaluable role in helping Cooper to interpret his memories of Cornell into radio-friendly songs. Other contributors during the sessions would include Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen, Toto‘s Steve Lukather and David Hungate, Fred Mandel (who had performed on The Alice Cooper Show) and guitarist and co-writer Dick Wagner, who had performed similar duties on Welcome to My Nightmare.
More than any other album, From the Inside would see Cooper at his most confessional, as was evident with such songs as The Quiet Room, which featured such lyrics as, “How long have I been gone? Did the winter kill the lawn? And all those polaroids you sent are on the wall of the quiet room.” The album’s love song, Millie and Billie, also made references to mental health; “Millie, our world’s asylum and our minds like you say ain’t that straight.” Performing the duet with Cooper was twenty-five year old Marcella Detroit who, over a decade later, would join forces with ex-Bananarama singer Siobhan Fahey to form Shakespears Sister. The the most poignant, however, would come with the song How You Gonna See Me Now, in which Cooper expressed his fears of how his wife would feel about meeting him once he was sober and whether or not she would still love him once he had changed. It would be this song that was the closest in tone to Elton John and most demonstrated Taupin’s influence.
With Warner Bros. still willing to take a chance on Cooper, From the Inside was released in November 1978, two months after the death of Keith Moon at the age of thirty-two. Commercially, the album was Cooper’s least successful solo effort, climbing to number 60 in the US album charts, his lowest entry since Easy Action in 1970. While the title track failed to generate much interest, How You Gonna See Me Now – which continued the tradition set out by Only Women Bleed three years earlier in which Cooper would release a ballad to promote his album – charted at number 12 in the US. This would be his highest-charting single until Poison reached reached number 7 eleven years later.
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