A while ago we asked the question, What would you like to see on our website?
The universal answer was (of course,) more stories about the ‘good old days.’ Some stories we’ve told over and over, like writing ‘Should I Say Yes’ in a full-blown [pun intended] tornado.
Is there anything left to say?
Valerie and I sat down and brainstormed, and came up with a pretty good list. We’ll take them in the order that they occurred to us. Here’s story #2.
Hangin’ With Alice Cooper 1986
NYC
Paradise Garage 1980s.
Valerie and Rick, our manager, flew to D.C. to do some ‘Track Dates.’
A track date is where the singer appears at a dance club (like Larry Levan’s famous Paradise Garage above) to sing their hit over a backing track, usually around two or three in the morning.
We needed money to keep our nine-piece band alive, and Valerie could make more money doing one track date than the band could make in a week.
They left me in New York to mix some demo tapes. We had time booked at the legendary Atlantic Studios on 58th and 8th. Everybody recorded there back in the Golden Age; Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, Sinatra, Count Basie. You name it.
I didn’t really know what I was doing there. We had a stack of two-inch reels. We put them up, and a couple apathetic engineers fooled with them. I fell asleep on the couch, then got up and took a look around.
Arif Mardin (center) w/Dizzy Gillespie and Chaka Khan
Down the hall, I ran into Arif Mardin, one of my producer heroes. He produced my favorite Chaka Khan album, What You Gonna Do For Me. But he also wrote up the horns for that first blast of Aretha Franklin singles, Respect, Think, and Chain of Fools.
And he knew about Nu Shooz!
“Nice horn charts,” he said.
I think I died and went to Heaven.
The second day, I come up the stairs and sitting at the receptionist’s desk is Alice Cooper. He’s manning the phones. Mr. Cooper sticks out his hand and says, “Vince.”
We order a couple of hamburgers.
While we’re eating he talks about how much he loves golf. His accent is distinctly mid-western, though later he owned a sports bar in Phoenix.
He was making a new album in the studio next to where I was (supposed to be) working. I was welcomed in to watch his sessions. Learned a whole lot. He had some beefy weight-lifter dude overdubbing guitars on a B.C. Rich. Machine tracks, live guitar. The coolest part was that they put the live drummer on last. That’s when the whole record came alive. I took that lesson with me when I left New York.
What a great down-home guy was Vincent Damon Furnier.
Never saw him bite the head off a bat. He said he doesn’t really go in for that kind of thing.