69 LP Pretties For You (Straight STS-1051)
8T Pretties For You (Warner/Reprise)
05/19/69 7" Reflected/Living (Straight ST 101)
02/09/70 LP Pretties For You (reissue, Straight/W.B. WS 1840)
89 CD Pretties For You (Bizarre R2-70351)
89 CS Pretties For You (Bizarre R4-70351)
CD Pretties For You (Rhino 70351)
Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier) Vocals
Michael Bruce Guitar, Keyboards
Glen Buxton Guitar
Dennis Dunaway Bass
Neal Smith Drums
Music, Lyrics and Arangements by Alice Cooper [group]
Produced By Alice Cooper [Group]
Cover Painting By Ed Beardsley
Photography by Ed Caraeff
Design by John Williams
1. Titanic Overture 1:09
2. 10 Minutes Before the Worm 1:27
3. Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio 5:33
4. Today Mueller 1:38
5. Living 3:02
6. Fields Of Regret 5:36
7. No Longer Umpire 1:54
8. Levity Ball (Live At the Cheetah) 4:23
9. B. B. On Mars 1:08
10. Reflected 3:10
11. Apple Bush 2:57
12. Earwigs to Eternity 1:14
13. Changing, Arranging 2:58
total time---> 36:10
From Rick Jones (December 31, 2002):
Vince also played harmonica. Michael sang the first two verses of "Sing Low." There are orchestral strings on a portion of "Levity Ball" that was due to the fact that it was a used tape and erased poorly before being utilized to record the band live at the Cheetah.
Frank Zappa liked us because he would say, "You've got five songs here that are two minutes long, and there's 38 changes in each one of them!" The great compliment was, he would go, "I don't get it -- that's great, that's why I'm signing you."
We were playing a big party in LA, with the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, Love -- all those great bands -- and we came on next to last because we were the house band. Everybody in the audience was on acid, of course, grooving on peace and love, and then all of a sudden you hear this DA-NA-NAA-NAAA and there's these insanity-looking clowns onstage. We scared the hell out of these people. They were all on acid, we looked like we'd just come up out of the ground, and we didn't mind a little violence onstage. That audience couldn't get out of the room fast enough. It was like somebody yelled "FIRE!" There were three people left standing: Frank Zappa, my manager Shep Gordon and one of the GTOs. Frank said, "Anybody that can clear a room that quick, I've got to sign."
How did you end up on Frank Zappa's Straight label?
No other record company would touch us. After we move to LA, we were living at The Landmark Hotel where Miss Christine and the other GTOs lived. Se was Dweezil's babysitter! Christine told Frank, "Why don't you take a look at Alice Cooper, they're this band of guys from Phoenix, and they're a lot like us," which intrigued Frank. He came to see us at The Cheetah Club, at Lenny Bruce's birthday party, and The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Paul Butterfield, every great band you can imagine, was playing, and the we came on! We started out with Out In The Streets by The Who and literally emptied that room by the second song. The other bands were groovey, LA-mellow, everyone in the audience was on a nice acid trip, and here comes this horror cartoon, blood everywhere, looking like insane clowns, and so much bad attitude. We didn't mind a little violence; we'd do a part based on West Side Story, with the knife fight. Oh man, it was so against the rules in LA. There were literally five people left standing. One was Frank, another was Shep [Gordon], who became our manager. Frank said, "Anyone who can clear a house that quick, I gotta have, come over and play me your songs."
He told you to turn up at seven, which you took to mean 7am...
Frank very rarely went to bed, he lived in the studio on coffee and cigarettes, so 7am didn't sound unreasonable. And anyway, we were so over-anxious! We turned up as Alice Cooper, all chrome pants and stuff, and started playing in the basement, and Frank came down with his coffee, like, "What are you doing?" But we kept playing. Maybe the best compliment I've ever got was Frank saying, "I don't get it." Musically, he said, we had six songs that were all two minutes long, but all have 35 changes in them an no returning theme. I said, "Is that a bad thing?" "Oh no," he replied, "that's great, I love the fact that I don't get it." He wanted to record us live because he thought nobody would believe we could play this stuff live, so Pretties For You was recorded in three days. Frank dis some engineering but production-wise, he said he didn't wan his signature on it.
From: Patrick Neve
I'm sure you're aware Zappa discovered Vincent Furnier and gave
the band their first couple of record deals. Frank's band of groupies,
the GTO's, gave the band the makeover that you see today. FZ: "When I
first saw them, they looked pretty much like a bunch of guys from
Arizona". Later, in his "Behind the Music" biopic, Vince said that Frank
had tried to get them to change their name to "Alice Cookies", but he
could never figure out why.
From: http://www.alicecoopertrivia.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/a-prettiesforyou.html
Alice looks back at "Pretties" now and sees the absurdity of it but back then
they were very serious and kind of disappointed with Zappa who wanted to turn
them into a comedy act and rename them "Alice Cookies"
(Renfield, June 1995)
From: Ben Watson's "NDOPP", pg. 157
According to Zappa, Cooper's relationship with Christine Frka furnished him
with most of his ideas.
From: Andrew Proue (March 29, 2002) In this month's MOJO, they asked 100 people who their heroes were. Alice Cooper picked Frank: Frank was the only one who stuck out his neck for us, for me. He was the one who said, "Here's a band that everybody in the business is laughing at - I like 'em." He was the perfect voice of cynicism, making fun of his audience, the establishment, the guys with the grey suits, the hippies, everyone. He was the outcast in LA, and so were we. We were the band everybody loved to hate. We stood for everything the hippies hated. We did not want peace, love and wonderfulness - we wanted Ferraris, money, girls, switchblades. Frank loved it. He said, "I'm starting a record company [and] I want you guys to be on it because it's for all the misfits out there." I'd watch him work in the studio and he was so far beyond anything I could imagine. All the stuff you hear on the Zappa albums that sound like little improvisations and mistakes, they're all written - every little squeak, bump and fart. I was in a place called The Experience one night in '68 or '69. Mike Bloomfield was in there, Jimi Hendrix was in there, Elvin Bishop. The premier guitar players all playing, all taking a solo . . . then Frank gets up and does an imitation of everyone there - Mike, Jimi, the whole - and then plays his own stuff. You should've seen the look on Hendrix's face! He blew everybody away. People were just atounded by the guy's virtuosity. We got to be very good friends. If you could make him laugh, you felt like you scored big. I'd sit there pretty quietly like a little mouse watching him work. He was truly one of a kind. There's nobody else out there trying to even be Frank because he's too hard to imitate. We could use a Frank right now.
"In November of 1971 [1968 I guess it's meant to be] we recorded our first album,
Pretties For You. For a week straight we arrived at the studio and played through
every song five or six times with Herbie Cohen and Zappa working over the levels
in the control room. We thought we were just getting down to business, ready to
lay the bed tracks and experiment, when Zappa walked out of the glass-enclosed
booth and said, "Okay. Your album will be ready next Thursday." I said, "There
are a few mistakes in that stuff. We weren't even ready to record," but he just
patted me on the shoulder and said, "Not to worry. Not to worry. We'll work
everything out in the mix." We didn't see or hear the album until five months
later."
From: Necessity Is... by Billy James
In a recent interview with Russell hall of Goldmine magazine (May 19, 2000
issue), Alice Cooper Group drummer Neal Smith reminisces about the
Pretties For You album. "I like Pretties For You for its originality.
When you create music that sounds like other music that's going on at the
time, it becomes dated. On the other hand, when you do something that's
different, it has a better chance of holding up over time. Unfortunately,
when we went into the studio, we were very green, and we didn't know
anything about the recording process. Frank Zappa said he wanted the
album to sound like a car driving past a garage while a band was playing.
That was his goal, and I think he more or less achieved it. He had us set
up our amps around the drum set, so there was total leakage. We would run
down the song - setting the dials on our amps and stuff, just trying to
get a proper sound going so that we could record - and Zappa would say,
"We got a take." We would be like, "What? We didn't even play the song
yet."
From Patrick Neve (affz, January 16, 2003):
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the cover art to Pretties For You, a
painting by Ed Beardsley, can be seen on the wall of FZ's place in this
picture of him with his parents:
Maintained by Román García Albertos