[photo from contributor]
“Caught In a Dream” by Alice Cooper
Marty E: I don’t know who it was who gave me Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death album, but it sure was a weird album, I think, for anyone to hear – especially a little kid. I mean, “Ballad of Dwight Fry” and “Black Juju” legitimately freaked me out, while “Sun Arise” almost sounded like some folky nursery rhyme. “I’m Eighteen” was everywhere, of course, as the radio hit. It’s kind-of funny, now, to think about listening to that song when 18 seemed old to me.
But it’s the first song on the album, “Caught In a Dream” that struck me the most and has stayed with me, and is not only my favorite Alice Cooper song, but one of my all-time favorite songs.
“I’ve been runnin’ through the world
With a gun on my back
Tryin’ to catch a ride
In a Cadillac…”
I imagined Alice with a rifle strapped across his back and a beaver pelt on his head, with his eye makeup, looking like a demented Davy Crockett, hitchhiking on Highway 2, or wherever. How do you like THAT visual?!
Again, fast-forward to about thirty years later, I happened to meet Alice Cooper backstage after a show at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. He was vaguely familiar with me as he had played the Dirty Pearls on his radio show and gave us a very generous shout-out. I got to shake his hand, and I told him about my image that I had of him when I heard that lyric for the first time. I took a shot in the dark and asked him if that was also his idea, or if he just felt like there was a gun pointing to his back.
He replied, “I was feeling the pressure, Marty E.”
That was pretty fucking cool, too.
NEXT UP… a little departure