Welcome To My Childhood Nightmares

Alice Cooper: Master of the Macabre

Back in my salad days, in the early 1980's, it was tough for parents to keep their 6 year old kids indoors. Of course this was well before the home computer revolution kicked in and changed the concept of "recreational activity" forever, but back then it was the norm for young kids to get outside with toy guns and stage mock wars, build tree houses and maybe even organize a one-day international cricket match with the rest of the kids in the street. This is what the normal kids did. But not me.
Being the pasty indoors type I was (and try to kid myself I am no longer) I preferred to spend my time indoors surrounded by books, assorted comics and a limited supply of Star Wars figures. Sure, I may have even dabbled in He-Man figures too, but there was one other source of entertainment in the house that used to hold my attention for endless hours during those formative years: my parents big stack of vinyl records.
I was lucky that my parents were of an age that meant that this stack wasn't filled with cheesy Perry Como or Pat Boone records - on the contrary, I was blessed with a bounty that included a mixture of classic rock, progressive rock, pop & new-wave albums - a veritable smorgasbord of wax from the years spanning 1967 to 1983: the Golden Age of Popular Music.
I used to spend hours sitting quietly looking at the albums, reading the liner notes, examining the artwork in the gate-fold sleeves and having a listen to the ones that I thought would be worth the effort, and it was here that my lifelong interest in music was nurtured. However amongst this stack were some images that were bound to leave an impression on an inquisitive 6 year old with an overactive imagination, and now over 25 years later I can finally bring myself to confront these disturbing images of the past which bore their way into my sub-conscious and made me wake up during the night on more than one occasion in a cold sweat...

Alice Cooper,  Killer (1971). Slithery...

There was this one big, red-looking album in the pile which I always approached with caution. It was called Killer and it was by a creepy-looking dude called Alice Cooper. And it also had a picture of a big freaking snake's head on the cover. It used to give me the shivers, yet I couldn't turn away. Everything about this album cover seemed to scream out "Danger!" (I guess the redness should have tipped me off, right?). I remember thinking to myself "Who would do this??". I couldn't understand what would possess someone to put such a horrific image on the front cover of their album. Didn't they want us to listen to it??  And this was in the days before CD's remember, so it was a BIG snake's head on that 12" album sleeve. To top it off, there was also a track on there called "Dead Babies"!! What manner of evil was this anyway?!? It got into my 6 year old brain. I used to peel back the sheets in my bed every night before hopping in - just checking to make sure that there were no serpents with slithery tongues lying in wait, silently plotting my demise. I later discovered that this Alice Cooper character liked to wear a hangman's noose and was known to decapitate live chickens on stage. My young brain also worked out that songs like "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "Welcome To My Nightmare" weren't just clever titles - they were warnings. If anyone could order a reptilian hit on me in my own bed it was Alice Cooper. So I kept checking the bed.....

Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath (1970). Ghoulish...

There was another album cover that used to flash across my mind as I lay in bed, eyes closed, trying not to think about snakes - and it was called Black Sabbath. I didn't know what a sabbath was but that seemed irrelevant. I was much more interested in trying to work or who (or what) that was, standing in what looked like a church graveyard, silently looking back at me with those hollow black eyes. It looked like a woman but I couldn't be sure. Was it living? A ghost? What did it want?? This one genuinely gave me the creeps. Like the Mona Lisa the eyes seemed to follow you around the room no matter where you stood. I would even leave the room and close my eyes and BAM! - there it was again right back with me. I saw this apparition night after night in every shadowy recess of my bedroom for months. Something had to be done, so in an attempt to regain my sanity and neutralize the effects of this image I decided to put the album on and have a listen. Maybe it was full of bright happy songs that I could sing along to? Maybe the creature on the cover was the singer who actually sung in a nice sweet voice? WRONG! The first song was called "Black Sabbath" and it opened with the foreboding sounds of pounding rain, thunder and the tolling of a funeral bell, before a doom-laden three note guitar riff literally exploded out of the speakers.
I yanked it straight off the turntable and into the nearest drawer before collapsing into the foetal position.


KISS, Dressed To Kill (1975). Sinister..

Speaking of foetal positions, I had an uncle who used to be a big KISS fan. On a particular visit to his house as a kid I was unfortunate enough to be quietly minding my own business, when out of the blue he suddenly sprang out from behind a nearby wall wearing a full rubber Gene Simmons mask (with a long blood-red rubber tongue) and screamed loudly in my face. At least that's what they told me he did later, after I was revived and helped up off the floor from said position. It's hard to maintain your dignity  when you're frantically trying to cover a damp wet stain slowly spreading across the crotch of your pants. It's for this reason that I approached every KISS album with a certain degree of caution from that point on. But to be honest none of them really bothered me as a kid too much - except the Dressed To Kill cover. KISS didn't seem threatening when they were in their glam-rock stage outfits - but there was something extremely sinister about them in suits standing on a street corner. Especially Gene. The evil look on his face on that cover is another image that stayed with me after dark. I assumed that every noise I heard outside during the night was Gene coming to "get" me, so I did what any desperate kid would do in that situation - I prayed to Ace for deliverance.


Skyhooks, Ego Is Not A Dirty Word, 1975

Terror wasn't the only undesirable feeling I experienced while going through the record stack - some images caused slight nausea. There's the severed finger from an over-zealous female fan on the back cover of Skyhooks' Ego Is Not A Dirty Word album. Even though it's animated its still has a gross kind of detail. I also realized that some images are capable of causing that unique gut-nausea that one only experiences when looking at something too appalling to describe adequately. Lionel Ritchie on the cover of his Can't Slow Down album is a classic example. It's not only those snappy white pants & matching shoes that had me reaching for a bucket - it was that shocking 80's mo' and that smug look on his face, which seemed to be taunting me: "Hey kid, I wrote "All Night Long (All Night)" - what have you done with your life??". Damn you, Lionel - damn you and your finely crafted pop songs to hell!!

Lionel Ritchie, Can't Slow Down (1983). Horrific...

 As a wise Beatle once said, all things must pass, and as I grew up I started to outgrow the childish reactions I had to these album covers as a 6 year old. Slowly but surely I began to regain my confidence - even managing to get outside with my mates to kick the footy around once in a while. I eventually became a relatively well-balanced primary school aged boy. All was well until one day in 1990 when I caught a glimpse of Vanilla Ice on the cover of To The Extreme.

It was about then that The Fear returned.

"The horror..... the.. horror.....".



"Aww yeah... VIP in full effect"