THE VIDEO Alice Cooper, "Poison," Trash, 1989, Epic
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Poi-saaaaaahn / you're poison runnin' through my veins / poi-saaaaaaahhn / I don't wanna break these chains"
THE VERDICT This video is like a time capsule of what heterosexual men thought was sexy in 1989. High-waisted thongs, high-waisted jeans, straight blond hair a la Christina Applegate and curly light-brown hair a la Rebecca Gayheart (actually, this gal looks quite a bit like Keri Russell). If you were to extend this into a full-length feature, it would also need to have clothes from Merry-Go-Round (it may already have this come to think) and Designer Imposters fragrances (which I know they still make, but I feel like approximately 1988 through 1994 was their heyday). I guess I should also note if you're really into this stuff, the uncensored version of the video lets you see the Keri Russell-looking-one topless.
Other than the two afore-described ladies lounging around, fonding chains, and trying to poison Alice, this video mostly features, well, Alice, looking at once especially leathery and the same as he's always looked. He's surrounded by a relatively generic-looking bunch of musicians who I'm pretty sure aren't the same guys who appear in the other videos from this album. Definitely not "House of Fire," though the "House of Fire" guys may well be the iteration of the band that appears in Wayne's World (digression on that to come!).
In this vid, he's got one guy with Zakk Wylde-esque hair (as always, I mean the hot Zakk Wylde, not today's Zakk Wylde) and a blonde guitarist who is seriously hott (yes, with two t's). He looks like the best of Duff McKagan crossed with the best of Taime Downe somehow shoved into one guy. Possibly after this video they realized they needed to surround Alice with way less hot guys. They should've put Kip Winger back in the band! (*Rimshot*)
Here's the promised Wayne's World digression: I also like that even though it's a bit later, the Alice Cooper of Trash always makes me think of Wayne's World. Alice is of course in real life a big-time conservative, which pains me greatly. I bring this up in the Wayne's World vein because his cameo in that movie (as well as his special guest appearance on The Muppet Show, which was one of my favorites growing up and is what I associate Welcome to My Nightmare Alice Cooper with) makes me think that unlike those other metal conservatives (I'm talking about you, Paul and Gene) Alice seems like a nice guy who's not unwilling to make fun of himself.
Of course, notorious metal conservative Ted Nugent and his tongue-in-cheek performance as himself on Undeclared combined with his real-life douchery only confounds this picture further. (As does big-time metal liberal Dave Mustaine's seeming inability to make fun of himself.) Sigh! As long as we're talking Wayne's World though, let me also mention the guitarist in Cassandra's band Crucial Taunt -- it's Marc Ferrari from Keel! He did the music for the movie and plays in her band. Also, regardless of your party affiliation, you must agree he's ah-dorable.
Long story short, we've got babes, we've got Alice, we've got a bright blue background, some pieces of diaphanous red fabric waving through the air, chains, chairs getting kicked over -- it's pretty much what metal videos are starting to look like at this point in time, as the 80s wind down and we head into the early 90s, when basically all metal videos will look like this (viz. 1991's "No More Tears," which is basically the same video just with more water and an exceptionally hot young Zakk Wylde). What I really want to talk about here is the song.
This was Alice Cooper's big comeback song -- I mean yes, there were singles in the 80s, like that horrible Friday the 13th one, but not like this. This song is what happens when you go out and hire yourself a hitman. I don't mean a mafioso, and for once, I don't mean Bret 'The Hitman' Hart (though get ready 'cause I'm about to go on a big tangent about wrestling). I mean a producer who can write songs that the whole world wants to hear, regardless of who's singing them. I mean what else has Desmond Child worked on: Bon Jovi's biggest albums, 80s KISS, 80s Aerosmith... think about it. (And I'm not hating, I have heard Alice himself say as much about this album.) I mean think about this song -- it's freakin' genius. Who could screw it up? Nobody.
I've been thinking about this lately because of something that happened to me, about which I am very, very ashamed. As I've mentioned before, I love professional wrestling (shut! That's not the thing I'm ashamed of!), and as I don't think I've mentioned before, I've finally found in my fiance a man who's willing to watch it with me (so let's throw out all your gendered stereotypes about who watches what right now, okay?). Anyway. I hadn't watched it consistently in a couple of years when we started watching it again this past January, at which point I got really into not just wrestling for the zillionth time, but the music of wrestling.
Now, back when I was first watching wrestling in the 1980s, sure, wrestlers had entrance music. But except for Hulk Hogan's Rick Derringer theme ("Real American" -- don't act like you don't remember!), it was mostly instrumental and repetitive. A lot of it I would guess was public domain (e.g., Ric Flair's "Also Sprach Zarathrusta", Randy 'Macho Man' Savage's bizarre choice of "Pomp and Circumstance").
As it turns out, at least for WWF/WWE wrestlers, these are all written by the same guy, who also plays many of the instruments, which is a heck of a thing to do. Anyway, he's been doing that for a couple of decades. But long story short, at some point in the 90s, they began to shift away from having theme music to wrestlers having theme songs. And while these theme songs vary in musical style (girl pop for Tiffany, Jimi Hendrix tribute for John Morrison), a great many of them are pretty much lyrical metal. Though some feature performers from nu-metal bands (e.g. Randy Orton's theme, which I have grown to utterly love), there's nothing nu about the sound they wind up with.
So it wasn't really a surprise to me that I wound up really digging the theme song to Monday Night RAW -- it's this rocking, rollicking thing that you could imagine Slaughter or even Cinderella doing. Or really anyone doing. It's that kind of song -- there isn't a band on earth that could screw this thing up, that's how well-produced it is. And as if to prove my point, once I finally went to figure out who performed the Monday Night RAW theme ...it's ...ulp ...oh god ...it's Nickelback. Yes, the band widely reviled as bottomfeeders of basically, well, the entire music industry. Nickelback. A band basically synonymous with suck. Why, why couldn't it have been Creed? Or Uncle Kracker? Or something else equally embarassing? But no, it's Nickelback. Yes, dear reader, I like a Nickelback song. By accident! By accident!
But here's the thing: Could Nickelback have accomplished this one their own? Oh hell no. You know who produced the album this came from? That's right, the former Mr. Shania Twain, Mutt Lange. Do you know what else he produced? An assload of hits for AC/DC and Def Leppard. If this were performed by AC/DC or Def Leppard, I wouldn't be ashamed. But this is the damnedest part of the whole thing. If this were performed by AC/DC or Def Leppard (particularly the latter), it wouldn't sound that different. That's the thing. Producers, composers, lyricists like Desmond Child or Mutt Lange -- they help you create songs that are just impossible for performers to screw up. Or for listeners to get out of their heads. Thus explaining why Ke$ha has a hit with a song ripped off from "there's a place in France where the naked ladies dance."
P.S.: In all my distraction with this song's production, I forgot all about the weird Burning Man-looking sculpture in the video. It's hard to see in grainy black and white, but I think Alice is tied to it at one point.
P.P.S.: One other thing I love to do with all these wrestling themes is come up with the perfect 80s metal band to perform them. The Big Show's "welllll" is just calling for the voice of Glenn Danzig, and similarly, the wailing in Edge's theme would be well-suited to Geoff Tate and Queensryche. I'm pretty sure the new theme for the newly 'dashing' Cody Rhodes was written explicitly to rip off Slippery When Wet-era Bon Jovi, so why not have them cover it? Winger are perfect for the sleaze-rock of Dolph Ziggler's theme, and come on, a silly rap-rock theme for The Miz? Somebody call Anthrax!
P.P.P.S.: I know a lot of people find this post because they're searching "who are the girls in the Alice Cooper 'Poison' video" or something like that. I can't find any info whatsoever on the blonde (sorry!), but many sources point to the brunette (who I described as looking like Felicity/Keri Russell) being a gal named Rana Kennedy. So far as I can tell, she's now a Pilates instructor in North County, and most of the other work she did even back in the late 80s/early 90s was fitness modeling. (Cue NBC's little 'The More You Know' shooting star thing.)