www . steelnotesmagazine . com
So now that the Fillmore closed , Gail came to work for us at Live Enterprises operated in New York City . When she came to work the first day she said “ The first thing that I was asked to do is call Bellview and get a real straight jacket .” “ Oh , this job is going to be different .”
Alexxis : [ Laughter ] Yeah , I bet !
Dennis : [ Laughter ] Can you imagine ? So she called Bellview and said “ I ’ m from The Alice Cooper facility and we need some straight jackets .” And Bellview told her “ We don ’ t use straight jackets anymore , we use drugs .” “ But we can tell you where you can get some straight jackets .” So that was the first job that she did for us .
Alexxis : Wow , yeah that must of been very interesting ! [ Laughter ]
Dennis : [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : So now after this would you say your breakthrough point came with ‘ Love It To Death ’?
Dennis : Yeah , definitely , but you know it depends . I mean by then we were kind of a cult band because we had thrown the chicken out in the audience up in Toronto over the varsity stadium , The Rock and Roll Revival with John Lennon , The Doors , Chuck Berry and everybody . And the audience ripped the chicken apart . So word spread like fire on that and you know we had recorded with Frank Zappa . We were a pretty famous underground band but we didn ’ t have a hit single .
Alexxis : Right ..
Dennis : With ‘ Love It To Death ’ we had ‘ I ’ m 18 ’ which was played by Rosalie Trombley at CKLW up in Windsor , Canada right across the river from Detroit . She was like Wolfman Jack down in Mexico . They could have a transmitter that was more powerful than what was illegal in the United States , so her radio station covered the whole Midwest of the United States and all up in Canada . Rosalie Trombley was known as “ The Girl with the Golden Ear ,” if she played your record it would become a hit and back then you could have a hit break regionally like that . Well she started playing ‘ I ’ m 18 ’ and by the third day all of the DJ ’ s at CKLW came to her while she was on the air ,( she wasn ' t talking at the moment but it was a break ), and they told her “ you can ’ t play this song by the band . These guys threw the chickens and they ’ re crazy and they ’ re weird and all that .” She told me this many years later , the timing couldn ’ t have been more perfect because every phone was ringing off the hook for requests for ‘ I ’ m 18 ’ and if the DJ said ok I guess it ’ s ok then . It became the most requested song
Steel Notes Magazine
in the history of their station at the time and they were playing it in heavy rotation . Every fifth song was ‘ I ’ m 18 .’
Alexxis : That was awesome !
Dennis : You had to be The Beatles to get that . I talked to her many years later over a giant martini in Phoenix , Arizona and I said “ So how do you know a song is a hit . What appealed to you about “ I ’ m 18 .”? And she said , “ The lyrics .” By the end of the first verse , I already knew it was a hit . [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : Absolutely , and it became an anthem song for teenagers you know ?
Dennis : The thing about that is you know we all started at the same high school pretty much . Michael Bruce went to a different local high school but it was at the same time , in the same town and Neal went to another high school , but all three high schools- Cortez , Camelback , and North High were all in the same area of Phoenix , Arizona . So we were all pretty much the same age and so to write a song about being 18 when you were older than that was no problem for us . We can just click right in and we didn ’ t have to say “ Well I went to school on the West coast and I went to school on the East coast ” and try to compare notes . No , we didn ’ t have to talk about that so writing a song like ‘ I ’ m 18 ’ we decided OK , who is the record buying public ? OK , it ’ s a kid that ’ s still living at home but he ’ s old enough to have a job , so he ' s got money in his pocket he doesn ' t have rent to pay and everything . So that ’ s who was buying records . The majority of record buyers were that age group .
Alexxis : Right .
Dennis : We can relate to that you know . So let ’ s write a song that ’ s specifically for when we were that age and for those people . And that ’ s what we did and it became a hit for us and at the same time Cream Magazine and Circus Magazine were starting to cover The Alice Cooper Group and even like Circus Magazine had that kind of bubblegum format .
Alexxis : Sure ..
Dennis : But it was funny they would be like ‘ Dennis likes that color green and long walks on a lonely beach ’ and stuff like that . [ Laughter ]
Alexxis : [ Laughter ]
Dennis : They had all these pictures of Alice dressed half as a woman , half as a guy you know , and the pictures of us did not fit
Steel Notes Magazine www . steelnotesmagazine . com
15