Welcome to My Nightmare

By the time Alice Cooper recorded his last band album (1974’s *Muscle of Love*), the group\'s trash rock was starting to choke on garage fumes. So for his debut solo album the next year, Alice staged a kind of musical production as big as his million-selling budgets would allow, pulling in top session players and collaborators, including producer Bob Ezrin, guitarists Dick Wagner (who filled in on previous Alice Cooper albums) and Steve Hunter (Lou Reed), and even horror movie doyen Vincent Price. The album inspired a TV special, a world tour, a concert film and, eventually, a 2011 sequel. Based on a kid’s nightmare and doused in satire, the songs shift painlessly from themes of cannibalism (“Devil’s Food”) and necrophilia (“Cold Ethyl”) to a beautiful cigarette-and-alcohol elegy to lonely women (“Only Women Bleed,” which hit No. 12 on the *Billboard* singles chart) and good old-fashioned teen anthems of growing pains (“Department of Youth”) and departing (“Escape,” cowritten by Kim Fowley). The classical-minded Ezrin pulled musical strings here so the songs are as dynamic and orchestrated as they are funny and, even, scary.

For the first time since 1992,Rolling Stone'sdefinitive classic returns to the scene, completely updated and revised to include the past decade's artists and sounds. When it comes to sorting the truly great from the merely mediocre, the enduring from the fleeting,The New Rolling Stone Album Guideprovides music buffs and amateurs alike with authoritative guidance from the best voices in the field. Filled with insightful commentary, it not only reviews the most influential albums of all time, but also features biographical overviews of key artists' careers, giving readers a look at the personalities behind the music.This fourth edition contains an impressive -- 70 percent -- amount of new material. Readers will find fresh updates to entries on established artists, hundreds of brand-new entries on the people and recordings that epitomize the '90s and the sounds of the 21st century -- from Beck to OutKast to the White Stripes and beyond -- along with a new introduction detailing changes in the music industry.Celebrating the diversity of popular music and its constant metamorphoses, with thousands of entries and reviews on every sound from blues to techno,The New Rolling Stone Album Guideis the only resource music lovers need to read.

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