Gun N’ Roses guitarist Slash may have rubbished talk of his legendary Sweet Child O’ Mine riff starting life out as a warm-up exercise, but the same cannot be said for another iconic ’80s riff – Alice Cooper’s Poison.
In a new interview with Guitar World discussing the origins of the 1989 hit – which became the shock rock icon’s first ever top 10 hit as the 1990s dawned – Cooper’s Trash era guitarist John McCurry has lifted the lid on the riff’s unlikely origins.
McCurry got the gig in Cooper’s group shortly after completing work on Julian Lennon’s fifth album, Mr. Jordan. Before that, he’d played on records by Cher, Billy Joel, and Bonnie Tyler, and so he came into the writing process well-equipped for whatever Alice Cooper threw at him.
“Alice is one of the nicest people I’ve met, never mind working with,” he reflects. “Poison and my contribution to the song came about when Alice asked me to try to come up with an unusual riff to start the song and sort of weave it through the song.
“While in the studio, Alice and Desmond [Child, producer] came to me in the live room and told me they were working on another song for the record, and Alice really wanted a signature riff for it,” he continues. “He gave me a few examples of what he was looking for, and I happened to have a riff I used to warm up with from a couple of years before.”
The riff never got a verbal reaction from Cooper – Child was far more forthcoming – but McCurry didn’t need it. The pair knew the riff would be a hit.
“When I played it for him, he just smiled and patted me on the back,” he continues. “Desmond heard it and agreed it was right for the song. I was thrilled, of course, and even more so when it became the intro of the song Poison.”
Interestingly, it was the second time McCurry had worked his warm-up riff into a song, but Cooper’s hit greatly outshadowed John Waites’ Encircled, which had arrived two years prior with that same hook.
“McCurry told me that Alice was looking for something that sounds a bit like Sweet Child O' Mine, that kind of attention-grabbing riff and a big banger to start the album,” says Chris Sutton, author of Alice Cooper in the 80s [via The Booked On Rock Podcast].
Fortunately, the camps were able to come to a quick agreement so that the riff could happily live its double life as a Cooper and a Waite song.
“All they did was change the key and change the tempo,” Sutton reveals. “Poison is in the key of D, and the John Waite song is in the key of E.”
For good measure, the riff is also reprised in the intro of Cooper's Bed of Nails, with the impeccably named guitarist Guy Mann-Dude employed to add a little more shred to the record.
Guitar World's full interview with accomplished riffer for hire John McCurry will be published in the near future.
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