“It’s dangerous to give Alice Cooper a hit, because that’s just going to make things crazier!” – The Making Of ‘(I’m) Eighteen’, By Alice Cooper
Originally published in the July 2018 edition of Uncut
Originally published in the July 2018 edition of Uncut
For Alice Cooper and band, the ’70s began inauspiciously. Signed to Frank Zappa’s Straight label, a haven for oddballs and commercial misfits, they’d released two albums of psychedelic art-rock – Pretties For You and Easy Action – that had both failed miserably. Even a recent incident at a prestigious Toronto music festival, during which members of the crowd tore to pieces a live chicken that Cooper had tossed into the air, hadn’t lifted their profile. Exasperated, the group quit Los Angeles and moved back to Cooper’s hometown of Detroit, hoping to find a more receptive audience.
Manager Shep Gordon sought a solution in Jack Richardson, producer of Canadian hitmakers The Guess Who, but he was less than enthusiastic about taking them on. Instead he suggested his assistant, 19-year-old Bob Ezrin. The first thing he worked on, in the boarded-up Pontiac farmhouse that served as the band’s rehearsal space, was an unruly eight-minute jam called “I’m Eighteen”. What finally emerged was a lean protopunk classic that signalled the start of Alice Cooper as we know it.
Hammered down to three minutes, “I’m Eighteen” was a cry of teen angst, Cooper unleashing a vocal that captured the raw transition from adolescence to manhood, in all its confusion and exhilaration. The band – Glen Buxton (lead gtr), Michael Bruce (rhythm gtr), Dennis Dunaway (bass) and Neal Smith (drums) – created the requisite sense of malevolent dread behind him.
Alice Cooper: Vocals, co-writer Michael Bruce: Rhythm guitar, co-writer Dennis Dunaway: Bass, co-writer Neal Smith: Drums, co-writer
Alice Cooper: “The band hadn’t listened to what Zappa or anybody else had told us. Then all of a sudden here comes this kid from Toronto. For months we were working in that barn, recreating the whole Alice Cooper sound for what became Love It To Death. Bob said, ‘Why is it that, when you hear a Doors song, you know it’s them? It’s because they have a signature. What you guys have is that you’re a great band, but you have no signature, no personality. I’m gonna give you an identity.’ And he reworked the whole band.
“‘(I’m) Eighteen’ was Alice Cooper, and there was no getting around it.”
Released as a single in November 1970, the song was intended to test the waters for new paymasters Warner Bros (to whom Zappa had sold Straight in the interim). It duly gathered momentum, peaking at No 21 on the Billboard chart. Alice Cooper suddenly had both a hit and a trademark sound. It was enough to convince their new label to sanction the release of Love It To Death, which proved an international big-seller, eventually going platinum.
As Cooper went on to conquer the ’70s, “(I’m) Eighteen” cemented its place in music folklore, especially among the emergent punk tribes. Joey Ramone borrowed its snarling chords for the Ramones’ first song, “I Don’t Care”, while John Lydon auditioned for the Sex Pistols by miming to it on the jukebox of Sex on the Kings Road.
Michael Bruce: “(I’m) Eighteen” started out more as an idea than a song. It was just something I was working on and put a lyric to. I remember it was initially called ‘I Wish I Was Eighteen Again’. It had lyrics like, ‘Be the only high-school girl, be the only one for me’ – that sort of sappy stuff that you go through at school with your main squeeze and going steady. It was just a working title and didn’t really stick around long.
Neal Smith: For a very brief time in the summer of 1970, the band rented a house in Cincinnati, Ohio. The house was great, but it lacked a rehearsal room. We’d just hired a roadie, Ronnie Volo, who had access to a club in town called Ludlow Garage. Michael had this idea for a new song and wanted to play it for me there and work out a rough arrangement, just the two of us. He and I would do that from time to time, without the rest of the band.
Dennis Dunaway: Michael had these chords and the concept of “(I’m) Eighteen”, because we’d been talking about who the record-buying public was in that era. And we decided it was the kid who still lived at home and had some money to buy records, while the parents paid for food and rent. We could relate to that, because we were all high-school buddies.
Smith: Sometime in the wee hours, Michael and I went over to Ludlow Garage to work on the song’s groove and arrangement, with a very dramatic long intro. Once Glen, Alice and Dennis heard the song, ideas started coming from everyone. So much so that it ended up being a total band collaboration, with all five of us getting a songwriting credit.
Bruce: When the song changed into a jam it wasn’t the sappy, sugar-sweet version that I first envisioned. It became much more of a raw thing. And we encouraged Alice to keep going with the lyrics. I think he ended up having two or three versions.
Dunaway: We didn’t really have a rehearsal space, so at soundchecks we’d run through these chords and do a long improvisation of it. And what was good and memorable would stay in the song, while the crappy stuff would go out the window. It kind of developed like that, until we had an arrangement for it.
Cooper: “(I’m) Eighteen” started off as just one big jam. It hardly bore any resemblance at all to the version we ended up with.
Dunaway: It was this sprawling thing that we used to play on stage a lot. It starts with Michael on Farfisa organ, doing this bluesy, moody riff. That’s how we did it at the Hollywood Bowl, too. We were doing more of an FM version. Then Bob Ezrin was brought in as producer.
Cooper: It changed everything. Bob is my George Martin and always has been, ever since Love It To Death. He was great at taking the insanity of what we were doing and packaging it perfectly; he’d never let us write fillers. Every song had to have a great melody line and great lyric. Every song had to be something that people talked about. So he’d heard us play and went, ‘What’s that edgy song you do? The one that goes, “I’m edgy!”‘ I said, ‘It’s a good title, Bob, but it’s actually “(I’m) Eighteen”.’”
Bruce: Bob came along at a time when we really needed him. We’d done two albums – Pretties For You and Easy Action – and just weren’t getting our concept across of what we were trying to do, because we also had a show. We wanted to know how to translate that theatricality into the studio, and he was the one who picked up on that.
Smith: A few months after the original jam, we were at our farm in Pontiac, Michigan, doing pre-production for Love It To Death with Bob Ezrin. That was when he really started to shorten the arrangement down from eight minutes.
Dunaway: The one thing that the Alice Cooper group didn’t have, and desperately needed at the time, was a hit single. So Bob came in and said, “OK, we’re going to whittle it down.” And “(I’m) Eighteen” was the very first song we worked on with him, in our rehearsal space up in Pontiac. We started playing the long intro and he goes, “No! No! First of all, we don’t have time for any of that. Let’s just start with two instrumental rounds of the chorus.” So we did that, then he says: “Now let’s do the build into the vocals.”
Cooper: We said to Bob, “But we want to be The Yardbirds, we’re not gonna take guitar parts out.” So we’d play it for him and he’d go, “No, dumb it down! Think of what you’re saying – ‘I’m eighteen and I like it’. This is a dumb, frustrated 18-year-old kid, talking about being halfway between a boy and a man. And the punchline is that he likes the frustration, he likes the fact that he’s screwed up. That is what’s gonna sell this song, but you’ve got to make this much simpler.”
Dunaway: Later on, we were resistant to changing some songs when we were working with Bob, but for that particular one we were very accommodating. And by the end of the day we could hear it: “It sounds like a single!”
Cooper: We always thought more was better, but Bob would tell us that no, less is better: “This has got to be minimal in order for it to work.” Sometimes it takes an outside force to come in and say, “It’s a great idea, but you’re gonna have to do the opposite to what you think.”
FACT FILE
Written by: Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith Recorded at: RCA Mid-American Recording Centre, Chicago, Illinois Produced by: Bob Ezrin Personnel: Alice Cooper (lead vocals, harmonica), Glen Buxton (lead guitar), Michael Bruce (rhythm guitar, keyboards), Dennis Dunaway (bass), Neal Smith (drums) Released: November 1970 Highest chart position: UK – US 21
Bruce: It kept getting better and better until we all agreed on the one that made the finished record. It was an anthem, really, because it was at the time that the 18-year-old vote was being kicked around. The feeling in America was that if you were old enough to go to Vietnam and fight, you were old enough to vote.
Cooper: It was so simple and such a direct statement. That’s what got it on the radio. It was impossible to get away from, because every 18-year-old kid goes, “That’s me!” I remember us all driving along in Detroit one day. CKLW was the biggest radio station in the Midwest and we’d keep that on in the car all the time. All of a sudden, “(I’m) Eighteen” came on. We couldn’t believe it!
Bruce: We pulled over and were just kinda pinching ourselves – “Is this really happening?” Back then, whenever you heard something on the radio, it was official. It meant that you might have a hit record.
Dunaway: Michael remembers us pulling the station wagon over when “(I’m) Eighteen” came on the radio, then having a blast by listening to it with the doors open. But my recollection is that we heard it on the little transistor radio sitting on the shelf in our living room at Pontiac Farm. He came in and yelled for Neal to come down. Meanwhile, our road manager, Leo Fenn, was calling to tell us it was on the radio and was also telling us to keep phoning the station and requesting it, which we did. But we only had one phone in the house, so we decided to call all our friends and tell them to keep phoning the station.
Dunaway: Many years later, I bumped into Rosalie Trombley, the disc jockey who’d broken the song at CKLW. She’d been known as “The Girl With The Golden Ear”. I asked what made her start playing it and she said, “The lyrics. I knew it was a hit before the first verse was over.” She told me that she’d started playing it a lot, and on the third day all the other disc jockeys at the station came to her and said, “You can’t play this! These are the guys who threw the chicken into the audience!” But the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, because every phone was ringing with requests for “(I’m) Eighteen”. They saw that and went, “Oh, OK. Never mind.” At the time it became the most requested song in the history of the station.
Cooper: The song was subversive, but the record company suddenly had to go, “Wow! This notorious band that everybody hates has got a hit!” In our business, having a hit record is the Willie Wonka Golden Ticket, because now you’re generating money. Meanwhile, the artistic world is looking at it and going, “What the hell is this? It’s dangerous to give Alice Cooper a hit, because that’s just going to make things crazier!” And it did.
Dunaway: Having a hit with “(I’m) Eighteen” felt like we’d finally made it, because we were scraping bottom at the time. And it was kind of a surprise, because I’m not the only one in the band who thought Pretties For You was going to set the world on fire. We’d had a small taste of success before. In 1966, fresh out of high school in Phoenix, Arizona, we’d had a hit when “Don’t Blow Your Mind” [credited to The Spiders] went to No 11 on AM radio. Plus we’d worked with Frank Zappa and had a big underground following, just because of the chicken incident alone. So they’d known we were coming to town, but we just hadn’t had a hit single yet.
Cooper: Nowadays, I do “(I’m) Eighteen” in live shows and of course I have a crutch. But it’s not just a crutch, it’s a symbol of total rebellion. Sometimes I want to say to the audience: “I said I’m 18, not 80!” Because when I sing it on stage, I am 18. Alice doesn’t have an age, he’s like Batman or The Joker. Those characters never age, they’re stuck in whatever age defines them. So it’s very viable to see Alice at 70 doing “(I’m) Eighteen” and making you believe it.
