Bed of Nails is from Alice Cooper’s 11th studio album, Trash. It was the album’s second most successful single, despite not even being released as a single in the U.S. Maybe some of that success was due to this music video, in which Alice the singer performs over and in a bed of nails while women in leather walk through the studio and play the cello.
This video was directed by Nigel Dick, who directed videos for anyone who was anyone. If Nigel Dick has not done a video for you, you are not really a rock star.
Alice Cooper can’t get a girl be he doesn’t have a car and he can’t get a car because he doesn’t have a job and he can’t get a job because he doesn’t have a car. This is one of Alice Cooper’s catchiest songs. Whenever I watch any of Alice Cooper’s videos, I think about how interesting it is that Alice Cooper has gone from being the controversial face of shock rock to being an almost universally beloved American institution.
What better way to celebrate Halloween than with the original horror rocker himself, Alice Cooper? Welcome To My Nightmare is one of Alice Cooper’s signature tunes and this early music video shows that, even before the advent of MTV, both Alice Cooper the singer and Alice Cooper the band understood the importance of matching the right image with the right song.
This video starts out with a Halloween-themed promo for MTV2. Obviously, that was not a part of the original video but it’s still pretty cool.
What I like about Alice Cooper is that once he gets off-stage, he’s just a normal, golf-playing suburbanite.
Alice Cooper singing about freedom is exactly what we all need to hear today.
This song was the first and only single off of Alice Cooper’s seventeenth solo album, Raise Your Fist and Yell. Despite celebrating freedom and being promoted by the music video above, the single failed to chart in the United States. However, in the UK, it reached #50 in the charts. Maybe across the pond, it was better appreciated that the video featured Rambo on guitar. (That’s actually Kane Roberts on guitar. Roberts co-wrote this song and is a legitimate rock and roll great. The presence of Roberts makes it easier to forgive the fact that Kip Winger played bass on Freedom.)
This song came out at around the same time that the Senate was investigating rock music and there was a strong push for warning labels to be put on albums. This song was Cooper’s response to the Tipper Gores of the world. “Stop pretending you’ve never been bad,” the lyrics say before going on to take a stand for freedom of speech.
Well we barely make the airport For the last plane out As we taxied down the runway I could hear the people shout They said, “don’t come back here Yankee” But if I ever do I’ll bring more money ‘Cause all she wants to do is dance And make romance Never mind the heat Comin’ off the street She wants to party She wants to get down All she wants to do is All she wants to do is dance And make romance All she wants to do is dance
— All She Wants To Do Is Dance by Danny Kotchmar
Though songwriter Danny Kotchmar and singer Don Henley may have intended All She Wants To Dance to serve as a biting statement on American imperialism and the lack of political commitment on the part of the the youth of the 80s, I have to wonder how many listeners picked up on the message when they first heard the song. All She Wants To Dance is one of Don Henley’s most enjoyable songs with a tune that is far more memorable than something like The End of the Innocence or New York Minute. In 1985, people were probably too busy dancing to this song to consider what Henley was attempting to say about America’s activities in Central America.
The video finds Henley and the band in one of those post-apocalyptic clubs that were very popular in 80s music videos. This was one of the many music videos to be directed by Steve Barron, who has directed videos for everyone from Tears For Fears to the Human League to A-ha and David Bowie. Barron, who started his career as a camera assistant on films like A Bridge Too Far, Superman, and The Duelists, is still an active director, mostly for television.
All She Wants To Do Is Dance was hardly Henley’s only politically-themed song and video. Whenever I think of Henley, I’m reminded of something that Alice Cooper said shortly before the 2004 presidential election. When presented with a list of musicians who had endorsed John Kerry, Cooper said, “If I wasn’t already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that’s a good reason right there to vote for Bush.”
What’s Halloween without a little Alice Cooper , eh, bats and ghouls? The veteran shock rocker has been combining horror with rock’n’roll since I was a young monster, and I’ve unearthed a double dose of Alice’s macabre music in anticipation of the upcoming All Hallows Eve. First up is “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask”) from Alice’s 1986 album Constrictor, and used as the theme for the movie FRIDAY THE XIII PART VI: JASON LIVES!:
Oh, how very 80’s! Next we join everybody’s favorite headbangers Wayne and Garth, as they attend an Alice show in 1992’s WAYNE’S WORLD, where the mighty Alice performs “Feed My Frankenstein”:
I saw Alice do this number at a Summer 2017 show, complete with Alice dressed as a ten foot tall Monster onstage! He’s still the Master of Grand Guignol Rock!
What’s that you say, my fiends? You’ve got time for one more…
“This is my tip-of-the-hat to early Rolling Stones. Like in 1964/65 when their songs were very Chuck Berry orientated. They just feel so good, in the pocket. This song was begging to be in the live show. We’ve done it in four different continents now and no one had ever heard it. By the second chorus, the whole audience is singing ‘I’ll Bite Your Face Off.’ It’s the perfect little 3 minute hit single.”
I’ll Bite Your Face Off was the first single to be released off Welcome 2 My Nightmare, Alice Cooper’s 26th studio album and a follow-up to Cooper’s 1975 album, Welcome To My Nightmare. Each song represents a different aspect of a bad dream. In I’ll Bite Your Face Off, Alice dreams about being introduced to the devil.
The video was filmed at several different live venues. One of these performances was at the 100 Club in London, where actor Johnny Depp joined the band on guitar.
In an interview with Songfacts, drummer Neal Smith had the following to say about I’m Eighteen:
“It was a song about growing up in the ’60s, with lines in it like you could go to war but you couldn’t vote. We had no idea it would become an anthem; we were just thinking it would be a cool song.”
I’m Eighteen was not only Alice Cooper’s first big hit but it also played an important role in music history when, in 1975, a nineteen year-old John Lydon auditioned for the Sex Pistols by miming along to the song. Lydon’s audition took place at a pub and Lydon later explained that the jukebox was filled with “that awful 60s mod music” and I’m Eighteen was the only song in it that he could tolerate.
