Constrictor (album)

Constrictor is the ninth solo and overall sixteenth studio album by American rock singer Alice Cooper, released on September 22, 1986^[1] After a hiatus from the music industry following DaDa (1983), Cooper remained in seclusion for three years. He starred in Monster Dog (1986), a horror film for which he wrote two songs. He also guest starred on the Twisted Sister track "Be Chrool to Your Scuel".

Constrictor was Cooper's first studio album to feature Kane Roberts on guitar, Kip Winger (who would gain fame with his own band, Winger) on bass, and the only one to feature David Rosenberg on drums. Winger has since pointed out that his name was erroneously spelled in the album credits as Wringer.^[7]

The album was partly recorded in Los Angeles^[8], a city Cooper had left in the wake of his Hollywood-abetted alcoholism. "It's fun to plug into LA now rather than being there," he remarked. "Everybody says, 'Oh, you look really healthy.' That's not necessarily a compliment when you're trying to be Alice Cooper."^[9]

The album returned Cooper to the charts at number 59 after the preceding Zipper Catches Skin (1982) and DaDa (1983) failed to crack the Top 200.^[10]

The horror series Friday the 13th teamed up with Cooper during this time to produce the theme song for its latest installment. "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" was written for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) and became a #4 hit in Sweden in 1987. Also featured in the film were Constrictor's "Teenage Frankenstein" and "Hard Rock Summer", the latter of which did not end up on the album.

The track "The Great American Success Story" was apparently intended as the theme song to the Rodney Dangerfield film Back to School (1986), but was not used.

The demo of "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" is totally different from final album version. A reworked version of the "He's Back" demo landed on the album as "Trick Bag" instead. The version of "He's Back" featured in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives was remixed from the album version.

Constrictor also led to one of the most successful tours of the late 1980s, "The Nightmare Returns" tour. Three songs from the album, "Teenage Frankenstein", "Give It Up" and "The World Needs Guts" were regularly performed on this tour. However, as with all Cooper live songs since his third solo studio album Lace and Whiskey (1977), these songs failed to remain in the setlist during subsequent tours. "Teenage Frankenstein" was also played on the tour supporting the follow-up studio album Raise Your Fist and Yell and occasionally during the 2001 "Descent into Dragontown" tour and during the 2019 "Ol' Black Eyes Is Back" tour, whilst "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" was played occasionally in the late 1980s and the early 2000s before becoming a frequent part of the setlist on the "Raise the Dead" tour. The song was resurrected alongside Teenage Frankenstein during the "Ol' Black Eyes Is Back" tour, the song was not played during the American leg and a portion of the European leg.