http://dmme.net/michael-bruce-with-billy-james-no-more-mr-nice-guy/
Michael Bruce with Billy James: No More Mr Nice Guy
Gonzo 2007-2017
No sickness, no
obscenity, no billion dollars: battle axeman’s memoir cuts to the chase and
tells it like it was.
The fall of 2017 saw the surviving members of
ALICE COOPER reunite for a short concert track, and it was a perfect opportunity
for the group’s guitarist Michael Bruce to update and reissue his autobiography.
Yes, the singer’s stage persona came out of the ensemble that had passed their
name onto the frontman to eventually produce a chasm which would leave the band
in the shadows and him in the spotlight, an unjust contrast that Bruce’s book
tries to balance out. Many will find Michael’s account weird because it avoids
the cheap-thrills sensationalism usually associated with both the collective and
the vocalist and, instead, focuses on their inner life, but that’s the whole
point of this slim tome: to remember the past events in a no-frills fashion.
Fashion of their own was a vital part of AC’s
existence, and the quintet made a conscious effort to come up with original
ideas – visual, aural, lyrical – and entertain audience and themselves. That’s
how the legends about the band were born. Michael addresses every rumor the
ensemble amassed over the years, yet mythbusting isn’t major part of his book –
simply because most of the stories prove to be true, even though the
circumstances of those events didn’t seem so scandalous. In fact, scandals
didn’t play too important a role in the group’s routine at all – possibly,
because the players tried to concentrate on its creative aspect, leaving
personal issues and agendas on the roadside.
Basically, the only thing the musicians had in
common was a background in the arts, and the collective image – as well as
albums sleeves, songs arrangements and, of course, the stage show – that stood
out of rock crowd and pulled the public was a result of great attention to
detail. Their public stood out, too, as the quintet became “the type of band
that attracted a lot of lost souls” which could hardly be surprising given the
subject matter of “Dead Babies” or other pieces whose genesis Michael’s digging
into here. In his words, “It was a lot of hard work but it was always fun,” and
there are funny moments on these pages that didn’t seem to make it to the
group’s lore, what with Bruce switching his pedal with Frank Zappa’s and then
with Eric Clapton’s, and tragic elements such as the unraveling of Glen Buxton,
the sole casualty of the line-up’s ascension to fame, if not glory.
A few other artists land here, too, but
luminaries like Jim Morrison, “a real asshole” Harry Nilsson or Elton John are
little more than bystanders in Michael’s story, unlike Bob Ezrin: depicted by
him with due respect, despite their many clashes, the producer appeared to be
the villain of this volume, getting in the way of some musical decisions and
contributing to the group’s drift from rock ‘n’ roll theater to something more
Broadway-esque and to the eventual rift between Alice and the ensemble. Bruce
provides a sound reasoning for creating a monster, as he puts it, by allowing
Vincent Furnier morph into Alice, the name Michael’s using when he refers to the
vocalist, albeit he never really admits it was a mistake rather than a natural
course of the shock-rock combo’s development.
The guitarist takes his reader from the group’s
early days, with just a bit of pre-AC background, through the band’s halcyon
period and beyond, to the "Battle
Axe" extravaganza and the ensemble members solo meandering,
such as Michael’s "In My Own
Way" and the reformation of BILLION DOLLAR BABIES with the
book’s co-writer Billy James, although not to this moment of their life when
their footnote status got reversed, and the listener’s interest in these
veterans’ achievements, not apocryphal shenanigans, increased enough to take
them where they belong. This tome couldn’t be more timely, then, to help the
artists get their due and dancing from the attic into full view. Rough yet
essential read.
***3/4
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