You And Me Love's A Loaded Gun Ballad Of Dwight Fry Alice Cooper

You And Me Album: Lace and Whiskey (1977)
Love's A Loaded Gun Album: Hey Stoopid (1991)
Ballad Of Dwight Fry Album: Love It To Death (1971)
by Alice Cooper

FYI, this is not AI, consider this as you watch and ponder the idea of "space".

Not at all typical of Cooper, You And Me is a very romantic soft rock song by the Grandfather of Goth. It is every man's love song to his significant other - celebrating the everyday pleasures of two people sharing their lives together.

You And Me was a significant departure from Cooper's usual dark-themed rockers. It was the last in a trilogy of ballads Cooper recorded, following "Only Women Bleed" and "I Never Cry" He has described this genre as "heavy metal housewife rock."

In an interview with Creem magazine a few months after the release of "You and Me," Cooper discussed the impetus behind his trilogy of ballads: "I did those songs totally out of spite," he said. "I kept reading so many interviews and articles that I said I was never considered musical. Best rock show they ever saw, but musically lacking. 'They aren't as good as ELP.' Of course not," he laughed, "we didn't want to be."

You And Me was written by Cooper and the renowned rock guitarist and songwriter Dick Wagner. During his long and distinguished musical career, Wagner has played lead guitar and written songs for many big-name bands and artists. In addition to Cooper, some of the other notable musical acts he has worked with include KISS, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Frank Sinatra, Meat Loaf, Etta James, Ringo Starr, Guns N' Roses, Rod Stewart, Air Supply and Tina Turner. Wagner contributed to several Alice Cooper albums, both as a guitarist and songwriter; he and Cooper usually collaborated on ballads. In addition to "You and Me," other rock ballads Wagner co-wrote include "I Never Cry" and "Only Women Bleed."
This was the lead single off the 1977 album Lace and Whiskey, which was the shock-rock legend's third album as a solo artist following the breakup of the original Alice Cooper band in 1974. Cooper decided to change up his sound a bit on this collection and soften his image. He considered it a concept album based on a 1940s-era detective he called "Inspector Maurice Escargot." For his 1977 tour, Cooper divided his show into three sets: Oldies, Hell, and Lace And Whiskey. This third part he performed in his Escargot character.

Lace and Whiskey was produced by Bob Ezrin, who co-wrote most of the album's tracks with Cooper and Dick Wagner. He also played keyboards on the album. Ezrin is a well-known figure in the music industry, particularly in the rock world. He was one of the most commercially successful producers in the 1970s and has done production work for a slew of top artists and bands, including KISS, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Rod Stewart, Jane's Addiction, Hanoi Rocks, Deftones, Berlin, Nine Inch Nails and Peter Gabriel. Ezrin produced eleven albums for Cooper, including the hugely successful LPs Billion Dollar Babies and School's Out.

This song climbed to #9 on the US Billboard Hot 100, marking his last Top-10 on the chart until "Poison" in 1989. The song also hit #23 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and # 3 on the singles chart in Australia.

Cooper performed You And Me on The Muppet Show in his 1978 season 3 appearance, doing it as a duet with the appropriately creepy Beakie, a bird-ish Muppet who was actually the embodiment of Miss Piggy after she was transformed by Cooper.

"Love's a Loaded Gun" is taken from the 1991 album Hey Stoopid. The single managed to peak at No. 38 in the UK and No. 31 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It was one of three singles released from the album (the other two being "Hey Stoopid" and "Feed My Frankenstein") that launched "Hey Stoopid" into the top 40.

The single featured a B-Side, a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire".

Ballad Of Dwight Fry is a salute to the actor Dwight Frye, who played maniacal characters in many Universal horror films, including Renfield from the original Dracula (1931). Cooper dropped the "E" from the name to avoid a lawsuit.

In concert, Cooper would perform this song in a straitjacket from which he would escape and strangle a nurse. Later live performances of this song included a mock beheading of Cooper onstage with a fake guillotine. The audio of a live performance provided here.

The shock rock legend wrote Ballad Of Dwight Fry with guitarist/songwriter Michael Bruce, who was an original member of the Alice Cooper Group. During his tenure with the band, Bruce wrote or co-wrote many of their biggest hits, including "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "I'm Eighteen," and "School's Out." He also played keyboards and contributed vocals on their records.
The child's voice at the song's intro was actually a woman in her early 20s, who was a friend of the band.

Ballad Of Dwight Fry a track from Love It To Death, the third studio album by Alice Cooper (the band). Co-produced by Bob Ezrin and Jack Richardson, the album climbed to #35 on the US Billboard 200 album chart and #28 on the UK album charts. It also featured the track "I'm Eighteen," which brought the band its first big mainstream hit and became one of Cooper's most recognized songs. The band established their accessible Heavy Metal sound on this collection.

The album also marked the beginning of a productive, long-term working relationship between Cooper and Ezrin. Following Love It To Death, Cooper recruited Ezrin to produce a number of albums for both the Alice Cooper Group and his solo releases. Among the notable albums he produced for Cooper include School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome to My Nightmare and Lace and Whisky. Throughout the '70s, Ezrin was one of the most successful and in-demand music producers on the rock scene. In addition to Cooper, other notable acts he has worked with include KISS, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Dr. John and Rod Stewart.

In addition to Ballad Of Dwight Fry, Michael Bruce also contributed to the writing of five other tracks on the album, two of which he penned entirely on his own: "Caught in a Dream" and "Long Way to Go."

A gaggle of inmates at an insane asylum were among the first to hear this song. The Alice Cooper Band worked it up after moving from Los Angeles to the Detroit area in 1970. They were living and rehearsing at an abandoned farm in Pontiac, just north of Detroit, right next to an insane asylum.

"The inmates would stand by the fence and listen to them rehearsing, working on the songs in a barn," Gary Graff, author of Alice Cooper at 75, explained on a Podcast. They had the doors thrown open and the window of the hay loft thrown open. How appropriate was it that Alice Cooper's test market would be the residents of an asylum next door? That had some influence on 'Ballad Of Dwight Fry.'"