This documentary on Alice Cooper has been a long time coming. It tells the story of this legendary piece of the American subculture. As odd as it may seem, Alice Cooper is a piece of American pop culture, and this documentary tells the story of his rise, fall and redemption as an artist.
It doesn’t quite tell the story of Vince Furnier’s salvation and personal redemption (which, by the way, was told in HM Magazine issue #94, which is still available as a back issue, and the book Rock Stars on God, which you can still find (and get from me) if you look hard enough).
It does, however, document quite nicely the origin of the Alice Cooper band, which was solidified early on as The Spiders. That’s creepy enough, but the movie shows the germination of the ongoing concept and the eureka! moment when they stumbled upon their sound, image and new name. Turns out it was a bandmate who fell upon the name with a Ouija board, not Vince himself.
There’s some great early footage that’s not hard to look at in the historical chronicling show here. The audio is good, too. Thank goodness, though, the band found their sound and exploded. Also shown is the tension that ensued when he teamed up with the legendary Bob Ezrin and kinda split with the band. It’s easy to see why this artist fell into the cliched clutches of drugs and debauchery that led to his hitting rock bottom and institutionalization.
His fall was hard. It gets a little ugly, but it could’ve been documented worse, I’m sure.
What follows is an extraordinary comeback on the commercial music scene with an on-air concert performance on MTV. He was worried he might flop, but instead the new Alice Cooper stuck. Since then, he’s released album after album and a small collection of legitimate hits, like “Poison” and “Hey Stoopid.”
Watching this will endear you to the man and explain pretty adequately his Alice character. It could have told so much more, but a documentarian and movie producer has to make cuts and is restricted by time to tell a certain story and leave some items on the cutting room floor. Slightly incomplete but job well done.
Comments