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10 Alice Cooper Brutal Planet EAGLE, 2000 £6.99 You Say: ÒHow cool... a heavy, industrial metal album.Ó Sandy Scott, via e-mail Following a restorative six-year break, Cooper eschewed his customary Hammer Horror concept of darkness for a bout of harsh reality. Brutal Planet wasn’t only his heaviest musical splurge, with industrial rock intersecting with metal, but the album stacked up themes of social dysfunction, such as domestic violence (Take It Like A Woman), school shootings (Wicked Young Man) and environmental rants (the title track; Eat Some More). One of Blow Me A Kiss’s co-writers, beside Cooper and his new foil Bob Marlette, was a returning Bob Ezrin, who took an executive producer credit. Only Gimme, which was sung from the point of view of Satan himself, slipped Alice back into old chestnut territory. 4 Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies WARNER BROS, 1973 £3.99 You Say: ÒThat elusive thingÉ a concept album that rocks!Ó Mike Pelucci, via Facebook Massively confident – and financially buoyed – after School’s Out’s mainstream invasion, the AC band’s charttopper was a lavish, gleeful and almost over-ripe extension of the band’s love of showmanship and musical theatre, as Ezrin slapped on the gloss. Folk balladeer Rolf Kempf’s Hello Hooray was transformed into valedictory, campaigning pomp rock, likewise 1969 album track Rejected was overhauled for a barnstorming Elected, while Generation Landslide and No More Mr Nice Guy showed new pop smarts. It wasn’t all about crossing over, as orchestrated finale I Love The Dead upped the horror ante with – arguably – popular music’s first anthem to necrophilia.

9 Alice Cooper Trash EPIC, 1989 £5.99 You Say: “The ’80s radio rock smash.” Dave Deakin, via e-mail After a mid-’80s slump into caricature, Trash’s mercenary assault on the burgeoning hair metal market was a genre masterclass – even if it was occasionally shameless (witness the Livin’ On A Prayerlike House On Fire). Guest reinforcements rounded up by Cooper’s new foil, Desmond Child, included Jon Bon Jovi, Stiv Bators and Steven Tyler, with co-writers such as Jovi, Joan Jett, Richie Sambora and even Diane Warren, present to ensure that Trash was bulletproof, with the horror/shock quotient dialled back for maximum across-the-board approval. The power ballad supremo Only My Heart Talkin’ was released as a single, but it was Poison that became Cooper’s first US Top 10 single in 12 years. 3 Alice Cooper School’s Out WARNER BROS, 1972 £3.99 You Say: “An anarchist My Generation, the fantastic title song made them huge (deservedly).” C.C. Wilde, via email With great timing, and an incendiary anthem, Cooper wielding a sabre on Top Of The Pops for School’s Out was as subversive and thrilling as Bowie’s Starman had been just a matter of weeks earlier. Of School’s Out’s core tracks of swaggering teen rebellion, only Public Animal No. 9 tapped the Detroit gristle of the preceding albums, with Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets, the brass-driven Grande Finale and greasy ballad Alma Mater inspired by West Side Story. With each record, an increasingly slick Ezrin assumed a greater influence, but the (later released) demos of My Stars and Luney Tune, when compared to the finished versions, underlined precisely why he needed the band. 8 Alice Cooper Dirty Diamonds SPITFIRE/ NEW WEST, 2005 £7.99 You Say: “A return to his classic sound.” Peter Brock, via e-mail Following 2003’s The Eyes Of Alice Cooper, Dirty Diamonds was a much more satisfactory attempt at resuscitating the AC band’s Detroit garage sound. So much so that some parts liberally filch from the 1971 opus Killer, for example Be My Lover’s oily riff for Perfect and The Saga Of Jesse Jane from cross-dressing cowboy ballad Desperado. But Cooper always did sound good in such lean, mean surroundings: on You Make Me Wanna and Sunset Babies (All Got Rabies), he sounds 21 years old again. Meanwhile, the soulful and swarthy Zombie Dance, the title track’s snaking Queens Of The Stone Age aura and Stand’s unexpected funkmetal and a rap from Xzibit firmly tipped the balance away from retro. 2 Alice Cooper Love It To Death STRAIGHT, 1971 £3.99 You Say: “Songs to hang for.” Jim Paterson, via Facebook At the very beginning, the AC band wrote by democracy, producing messily conjoined Frankenstein’s monsters of songs, until Ezrin arrived. For example, I’m Eighteen, a US Number 21, was a lengthy jam until the producer isolated the best three minutes on the tape and added piano counterpoints. The heartfelt teen anthem’s hooky urgency was reproduced all over Love It To Death while the coup de théâtre Ballad Of Dwight Fry was their first successfully creepy epic, out-grandstanding the Doors/Pink Floydinspired psych marathon Black Juju. It wasn’t all Ezrin: there is ample proof here that most AC bands members could write great songs, and Cooper has still to find a co-writing foil to match guitarist Michael Bruce. 7 Alice Cooper From The Inside WARNER BROS, 1978 £5.99 You Say: “The presentation of madness was not just schlock horror.” Matthew Downey, via Facebook After seven albums, the Cooper-Ezrin partnership had perhaps inevitably staled. Guitarist/co-writer Dick Wagner remained, but AOR wiz producer David Foster and Elton John’s guitarist Davey Johnstone, bassist Dee Murray and lyricist Bernie Taupin shook things up – even if From The Inside didn’t sound so very far removed from a Ezrin record. Arguably the crucial difference was Cooper finding a meaningful concept to work with – namely, the time he spent in a sanitarium while receiving treatment for alcoholism. Whether it was that treatment, or a new post-Ezrin start, Cooper’s songwriting was invigorated, and he might never have sung better than The Quiet Room and Inmates (We’re All Crazy). 6 Alice Cooper DaDa WARNER BROS, 1983 £5.99 You Say: “(From) Alice’s drugs and alcohol period… clever.” Bradley Plunk, via e-mail Cooper’s crack cocaine years – he would describe the as “my dark ages” – spanned four albums between 1980-83, and during that time gamely opted for a somewhat strange, and often strained, blend of rock and synthetic new wave. But when all else failed, he sent for Bob Ezrin, who brought his experience from Pink Floyd’s The Wall to shift DaDa into uncanny art rock. In fact, the title track and Former Lee Warmer’s creepy ambience recall nothing so much as the AC band’s original avant-rock weirdness, Enough’s Enough sounds like Sparks, and the intended anthem I Love America is more mocking than celebratory. All of which makes this is Cooper’s most underrated record by some distance. 5 Alice Cooper

Welcome To My Nightmare ATLANTIC 1975 £4.78 You Say: “I really appreciate the theatricality.” Allan Carpenter, Facebook Cooper’s first solo album allowed Bob Ezrin free rein, without stubborn resistance from the AC band – would any of them have agreed to the daring, masterful and feminist MOR ballad Only Women Bleed? Guitar foils Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, shipped in from Lou Reed’s Berlin opus, bolstered Ezrin’s now-trademark grandeur, though Department Of Youth and Cold Ethyl were right off the old AC band bat. It’s all so perfect for Cooper’s horror schlock concept – Vincent Price even narrates The Black Widow – while the piano hook introducing eerie centrepiece Steven was appropriated by John Carpenter for his own Halloween film theme. 1Killer Alice Cooper WARNER BROS, 1971 £6.12 You Say: “Has the most straightahead rockers and the beautiful Halo Of Flies.” Tom McCool, via Facebook The all-time greatest rock album, reckons John Lydon. Killer’s menace, anti-authoritarian buzz and muscle make it as much a Detroit proto-punk masterpiece as The Stooges and MC5 debuts, if less eulogised due to its influence on metal. Killer is a thrilling point between hard rock (Under My Wheels and You Drive Me Nervous echo fellow Detroit icon, Mitch Ryder) and art rock: Halo Of Flies is a searing, inventive threesong suite, while the Dead Babies/ Killer climax – plus a free calendar of Coop in a noose – provided the shockrock dramarama that sealed their legend.