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intothewellsabyss
Nov 28, 20224 min read

Alice Cooper - Killer (1971)

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐘𝐏𝐓𝐒 - 𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊 & 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐋…



On November 27, 1971, the Alice Cooper band released their fourth full-length studio album Killer via Warner Bros. Records.


The album reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and the two singles Under My Wheels and Be My Lover made the Billboard Hot 100 chart.



Background:

Alice Cooper said in the liner notes of A Fistful of Alice and the internet blog In the Studio with Redbeard, which spotlighted the Killer and Love It to Death albums, that the song Desperado was written about his friend Jim Morrison (The Doors), who died the year this album was released.



According to an NPR radio interview with Alice Cooper, Desperado was written about Robert Vaughn's character from the movie The Magnificent Seven. Halo of Flies was, according to Cooper's liner notes in the compilation The Definitive Alice Cooper, an attempt by the band to prove that they could perform King Crimson-like Progressive Rock suites, and was supposedly about a *SMERSH-like organisation. Desperado, along with Under My Wheels and Be My Lover have appeared on different compilation albums by Cooper. The song Dead Babies stirred up some controversy following the album's release, despite the fact that its lyrics conveyed an "anti-child abuse" message.



Live Performances:

Killer is the third-most-represented album in Alice Cooper's solo concert setlists behind Welcome to My Nightmare and Billion Dollar Babies, accounting for 13.3 percent of the songs he has played live. Alongside Welcome to My Nightmare, it is one of only two Alice Cooper albums where every song has been played live, although Yeah, Yeah, Yeah has never been played since the end of the supporting Killer Tour, while You Drive Me Nervous was not played subsequent to the Killer Tour until 1999, and has never been performed since 2006. Desperado was performed only once prior to the Trash Tour in 1989, but has been frequently played live since.



Subsequent Influence of Killer:

Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd. called Killer the greatest Rock album of all time. Punk icons Jello Biafra & (the) Melvins covered the song Halo of Flies on their 2005 release Sieg Howdy!. Minneapolis Rock band Halo of Flies took their name from this song as well. Psychobilly musicians Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper covered the song Be My Lover on their 1986 release Frenzy. Power metal band Iced Earth covered the song Dead Babies for their 2002 release Tribute to the Gods. Guns N' Roses (featuring Alice Cooper) covered the song Under My Wheels on the soundtrack of The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.



Noteworthy:

In 1971 the band was doing its first headliner tour. Backstage at a gig in Florida, a young woman came in with a Boa Constrictor coiled around her arm. This gave Alice a fright, and after experiencing this kind of reaction, the idea of using a snake in the stage performance began. With “Love It to Death” and the follow-up album “Killer” both charting well, the band was able to afford a more elaborate stage show, including sophisticated props and elements of gothic horror, and they became a highly popular concert attraction in the US and UK over the next few years.



* SMERSH was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Joseph Stalin. The formal justification for its creation was to subvert the attempts by Nazi German forces to infiltrate the Red Army on the Eastern Front.



Critical Reception:

Rolling Stone's Lester Bangs gave it a favorable review. He explained that "it brings all the elements of the band's approach to sound and texture to a totally integrated pinnacle that fulfills all the promise of their erratic first two albums" and that "each song on [the] album finds him in a different role in the endless movie he is projecting on them." He concluded by calling Alice Cooper "a strong band, a vital band, and they are going to be around for a long, long time."


Robert Christgau (Village Voice, Rolling Stone, NPR, Blender) rated the album a B-, stating that "a taste for the base usages of hard rock rarely comes with a hit attached these days, much less 'surreal', 'theatrical', and let us not forget 'transvestite' trappings". However, he said that "(the album) falters after Under My Wheels and Be My Lover, neither of them an I'm Eighteen in the human outreach department."


AllMusic's Greg Prato rated Killer four-and-a-half out of five stars. He stated that "disturbing tracks ... fit in perfectly" and that "other songs were even more exceptional". He concluded by pointing out that "it rewarded them as being among the most notorious and misunderstood entertainers, thoroughly despised by grownups."


As noted in the introduction, the album reached No. 21 on the Billboard album chart and two singles made the Hot 100 chart. Be My Lover reached No. 49 on the Billboard chart and Under My Wheels reached No. 59.



Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells



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