Alice Cooper - Muscle of Love

Top 10 1973 album for Warner Brothers, featuring the title cut and 'Teenage Lament '74'. Out of print in the U.S. Nine tracks total. Album Description

Shows how badly they needed Bob Ezrin....

Some greats bands go out with a bang and others go out with a thud. The original Alice Cooper group falls into the latter category. To me, it was their weakest album since their debut record Pretties For You. The band admits that they were very tired from the whole record an album, then tour cycle and were in much need of a break. They didn't get one and instead recorded this rather uninspired, but not-without-it's-great-moments album.

Missing here was producer Bob Ezrin, the man largely responsible for turning them into the great band that they had become and who was probably responsible for the Alice persona. Without Ezrin, the Coop went back to their 50's rock-n-roll roots on a few numbers, like 'Teenage Lament '74', experimented with rag-time jazz on one song ('Crazy Little Child'), brought in a horn section for a few tunes ('Never Been Sold Before' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun'), got progressive on one piece ('Hard Hearted Alice') and continued with the hard rock of their previous albums on the other tunes and on a few that I already mentioned. There are no scary Alice songs or theatrical tunes here, just plain rock-n-roll ones. It is not the best batch of songs that the group ever recorded, but a few songs stand out. They are...

'Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo)' is one of my favorite A.C. songs to have never made one of their (or his) greatest hits albums. It has a heavy and catchy riff, some terrific singing from Alice, a good guitar solo and a violin solo at the end.

'Hard Hearted Alice' is an acoustic ballad that rocks out and gets a bit progressive during the instrumental section and has a Deep Purple-like organ solo in it. One the more enjoyable and tuneful songs here.

'Muscle Of Love' has a wonderful, and complicated hard rock guitar riff and rocks out more than almost any other song on the album. Some interesting lyrics from Alice, too, that deal with a young kid's discovery of his Dad's porno magazines!

Back on the negative side, some songs, like 'Never Been Sold Before' and 'The Man With The Golden Gun', start off promising enough, but are ruined by the horn section. The latter, in particular, is very disappointing. Nice heavy riff, but the instrumental section, which is intentionally very James Bond-like, ruins the song, with it's Star Trek-like female backing vocals and the horn section. Pretty dang depressing! Elsewhere, 'Teenage Lament '74' (which somehow made the greatest hits album) is my least favorite song by the original Alice Cooper group. Too fifties rock-n-roll for me. And 'Working Up A Sweat', while it's a rather upbeat and uptempo bluesy hard rock song, has never done anything good for me. As for 'Crazy Little Child'...it's not bad, but The Kinks did the old ragtime jazz thing much better! The album ends with a strange tune called 'Woman Machine', which the band supposedly had kicking around for a while.

The CD version comes with a lyric sheet (not found on the original album), along with the band pictures that appeared on the original LP, showing the guys outside of a club that has nude wrestling, the twist being that it's with a nude gorilla, who kicks their butts! Very amusing...a shame that the amusement doesn't carry over to the music. For all of it's flaws, Muscle Of Love is still worth having. Just don't expect much! April 5, 2008

BEWARE!

Another great Alice album but there are NO EXTRA TRACKS ON THIS CD. This has happened on several Alic Cooper listings and it is simply a lie and needs to be corrected. February 10, 2008

Funny title - great album

I had to get this one just for the title. I was pleasantly surprised by a great album at the same time. January 17, 2008

Reminder of School Daze in the '70s

Just a few quick comments on Alice. Don't know if it was mentioned but the original LP of "Muscle" contained a book cover. Back in those days, we used to cover our school textbooks occasionally! The album sleeve itself had some pictures of the boys as sailors out on the town, as I recall. The story of "Muscle" is relayed pretty well in the hard-to-find book, Billion Dollar Baby, by Bob Greene (not Oprah's trainer, the other one).
I reviewed this album several years ago (on another site). It sounded a little better than I anticipated, having not gotten a lot of play by me since the '70s ended (and I moved on to other bands like Van Halen). "Big Apple Dreamin" is great, and starts out with a dark ZZ Top-like groove. Most of the songs here (title, "Never Been Sold") seem to have a lot of potential but end up sounding too polished almost, lacking the grit and nasty edge of the previous Cooper releases. The title track approaches past glories, while the "single," "Teenage Lament" was one I always found kind of weak (for me, who enjoyed the Evil Alice of songs like "Sick Things").
In any case, it is a worthy addition to any Cooper collection, and I remember feeling quite pleased when I got my original copy in 1976 or so. The provocative title certainly got a reaction out of my mother.
Some reviews have compared this to Zep's "Coda." A more apt comparison might be Sabbath's "Never Say Die" - several killer tracks by a band spiralling downward.
If only the Coopers had regrouped after a break. Alice could have done the occasional solo thing like Mick Jagger, and we might have had a few more masterpieces over the years! November 18, 2007

What Extra Tracks!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I won't go into any great detail about this album that you wouldn't have already read in these reviews - either positive or negetive - being a fan of the ORIGINAL Alice Cooper Group, who owns an original copy of this album plus the six albums before it (and the Greatest Hits) on vinyl L.P., but I'd just like to know - WHAT EXTRA TRACKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! October 14, 2007

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