I know I've talked about Welcome To My Nightmare in the past, when I listed some of my favourite albums of Alice Cooper's. Today, I'm gonna be talking about the TV special that accompanied it, and comparing it to both the album and to the concert video by the same name as the album.
... I'm gonna be fully transparent here- I've got an essay to write on this subject, so I'm using this as an excuse to organise my thoughts a bit. It's not a persuasive essay, or a research essay, but just a descriptive one, which for some reason my mind can't seem to comprehend.
Welcome To My Nightmare was Alice Cooper's first solo album, after leaving his band (which, confusingly, was also called Alice Cooper). It is stylistically different from much of his earlier music- some of the songs are almost orchestral, and most of the album has a focus on creating a dark, nightmarish atmosphere. Earlier albums, although still dark, were often closer to typical classic rock, with only a handful of exceptions (not to say I don't like them, of course). The songs all fit a theme, but without any form of narration, the actual story they tell can be vague.
Alice Cooper: The Nightmare was originally a TV special, first aired in 1975. It starred Alice Cooper as Steven (the main character of the album, in a sense), and Vincent Price as the spirit of the nightmare- a sort of guide, taking Steven through the nightmare. Parts of some songs were redone, while others were taken from the album (source: my sense of hearing). The movie contains some lines of dialogue between key songs in the album, generally between Steven and the spirit of the nightmare, which help to clarify the story. There are also a few small changes made to the lyrics in order to make them more cohesive with the plot.
Welcome To My Nightmare, along with being the name of the album, was the name given to a recording of a concert, released in 1976. It's quite different from both the album and the video, having more humour than either of the others, and doing more to change the songs than the video. The song Years Ago, which is normally accompanied by Steven and The Awakening, is split apart, with verses played between other songs. The concerts also have more actors than the TV special, surprisingly- people dressed as spiders, skeletons, monsters and the like. (I'm aware they were often the same actors playing multiple parts- what I mean is they appear more often). As mentioned before, the concerts had more humour, often in the form of Alice's antics- between songs, he sits in front of a box, watching people in costumes emerge and start dancing, all the while acting like a kid sitting in front of a TV.
Anyways, I've gotta get to writing the actual essay, so that's gonna be it for today! Hopefully you enjoyed today's post, and remember to keep an eye out for these videos (they're sold together on Amazon, but sometimes pop up on Youtube if you're lucky)
