Muscle Of Love - ALICE COOPER***

Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo)/Never Been Sold Before/Hard Hearted Alice/Crazy Little Child/Working Up A Sweat/ Muscle Of Love/Man With The Golden Gun/Teenage Lament '74/Woman Machine

Muscle Of Love was the final album to feature original members of the Alice Cooper band. The relatively subdued Teenage Lament ’74 was a UK No.12 hit single. (US:10 UK:34)

“Muscle Of Love was the last hurrah of the original Alice Cooper band as production issues and exhaustion set in from relentless touring and recording. Alice wanted to do more theatrics but the rest of the band wanted to scale it back. Thematically, the shock value is pretty much gone here and is replaced by some more topical songs about what they were getting up to at the time.”

“Muscle Of Love has plenty to offer but it just doesn't feel like Alice Cooper and at times it's pretty generic, although I can understand why the band would want to move away from the image and theatrics.”

“It's a kind of a lost album that has a little bit of everything on it. It's the original bands last record. Teenage Lament '74 and Hard Hearted Alice are good glam rock numbers. Big Apple Dreaming is a garage number that goes along well.”

“Compared to Alice Cooper's previous four albums, Muscle Of Love was an outright disaster, and probably led directly to the break-up of the original band. Aside from the title track, none of the material on display has the flair, bravado, lyrical incisiveness or backbone that people had come to expect from the group.”

“It's obvious that the band were having problems at this point, much of the album feels rushed, and the spark that ignited previous classics is pretty much gone.”

“Muscle Of Love finds the Alice Cooper band trying to avoid the theatrics of their legendary front man. With less worry about concept and stage show the band focused more on creating a straight forward rock ‘n’ roll album.”

“I consider Muscle Of Love has a slapdash feel about it, like Alice and crew went through their musical closet and just emptied out left over stuff from previous recordings. But that in no way should indicate these cuts are bad, all are good, just not as good as what had been put out before. After this album the original Cooper band split up and Alice started his solo career.”