What does that song try to say, or what story does it tell ?

A very bizzare song indeed but one of my favorite Alice Cooper's songs.


To me, it is about a guy (name Steven of course) who is basically insane and kills his love(?). Whether that is the meaning or not, that is my understanding of it.




Cat

The song cannot be taken out of the context of the other two (Years Ago, The Awakening)

To me the song is an exploration inside the mind of a man (Steven) who is stuck psychologically at the age of a little boy ("I'm a little boy, No I'm a great big man"), due to some trauma ("all my toys are broken, and so am I inside, mom").  The song Steven is the "nightmare" he experiencesas he comes to terms with his past. 
As for dying (I don't want to feel you die"), I think this is Steven dealing with the past.  Young Steven has to "die" so that the trauma can be dealt with and adult Steven can move on. 

I still can't pick the significance of the line "You've only lived a minute of your life" however. 

"Years Ago" tells of the past trauma, "Steven" tells of him coming to terms with it, and "The Awakening " tells of the resoultion after the psychological journey. 

In high school, I read an interview that Alice Cooper did. His real name is Steven Cooper. As a child he was molested by his step father and then dumped at the carnival. He never saw his mother or step father again. This is what the song "Years Ago" is about. In the interview, he talked about how the song "Steven" is a continuation of the song "Years Ago." It is him as an adult looking back at his childhood when he was alone and broken after being raped and then dumped at the carnival. That is why the album is called "Welcome to My Nightmare." It was his real life nightmare, and a biography of his life.

Alice's real name is vincent furnier, just to erase confusion there. I dont think the interview mentioned can have been very sincere seeing as i am not aware of alice having a stepfather (his mother and father are still together) and i find it highly unlikely that the raping incident ever happened.
As for the Steven song, I wouldnt like to say, although i notice that in the album notes to the following album, Alice Cooper Goes To Hell, the 'bedtime story' at the beginning involves a boy called steven and a dream/nightmare. coincidental?

Yes Alice Cooper's real nameis Vincent Furnier.He was never at a circus or raped your information is completely wrong.

Don't forget that "The Awakening" recalls "Only Women Bleed". My impression is that the child, Steven dies after only living "a minute" of his life (figuratively), and then possesses his father, who put pennies on his eyes.

Putting the songs into chronological order:
1. "Steven" happens first: it's the beginning of this particlar nightmare. A child dies and his father is possessed by Steven.
2. Some time later, possessed by Steven's malevolent spirit, Steven's father kills his wife (Steven's mother), and his realisation is told in "The Awakening".
3. Steven Sr. flips, and as Steven Jr., goes to play in the park, remembering how he was "Years Ago". Steven hears his (now dead) mother calling him.
4. Steven Sr. tells us that "Only Women Bleed". Chronologically speaking, the middle section recalls that moment of realisation when he'd just killed his wife.

>:( grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you all got it wrong!!!!!!!  Alice was called vincent yes but quit tryin to figure out his songs cause he is just writing about what he likes to write about and he mght just like the name stephen. Its not like he's gonna think about all this logic for a song. He just likes death and horrer ect. with dead and wants to express that.

GOOD ON HIM! :D

no my friends mum told me that its accually his brother steven who died of an overdose
retartssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Well, your friends mom is wrong.  :o

steven is also mentioned at the end of "wind up toy" on hey stoopid album!?

I always thought this song was either about the child that was abducted and sexually abused and is called 'My name is Steven' or is about someone who suffers with Schizophrenia and has a multiple personality. either which would send you mental and later on in life he kills his wife but cos he's so mentally unaware he does not know it's him and basically all the references about 'pennies on my eyes' it because he's mad! If you hear the line he is half laughing cos he's so mentally gone.

The song cannot be taken out of the context of the other two (Years Ago, The Awakening)

To me the song is an exploration inside the mind of a man (Steven) who is stuck psychologically at the age of a little boy ("I'm a little boy, No I'm a great big man"), due to some trauma ("all my toys are broken, and so am I inside, mom").  The song Steven is the "nightmare" he experiencesas he comes to terms with his past. 
As for dying (I don't want to feel you die"), I think this is Steven dealing with the past.  Young Steven has to "die" so that the trauma can be dealt with and adult Steven can move on. 

I still can't pick the significance of the line "You've only lived a minute of your life" however. 

"Years Ago" tells of the past trauma, "Steven" tells of him coming to terms with it, and "The Awakening " tells of the resoultion after the psychological journey. 


Nice.

Steven only lived a minute of his total existence. He don´t have to worry ´bout growing old and die. Because
there are second comings. Or because the whole concept of death is an artefact based in the concepts of god
and religion. Or generally speaking, alice means that the sensation of existence is just an illusion.

Think a lot of illegial substances where running through his veins when he wrote the line. No offence, I love alice.

The Steven song is essentially about a man with the mind of a boy who is lost in his own nightmares.

Only lived a minute of your life?  Is screaming so much I can't stand it?  Only Alice could visit such a painful topic, but isn't it a distressed father killing his baby?  God knows this kind of thing happens  The guy is eaten away with remorse, still hears the kid screaming his name, even after the fateful act

Chilling  As chilling and beautiful as Dada (same topic?)

1st "ema" it steven not stephen ph dosen't even sound like v 2nd the song mite be about someone at the time who was mentaly un stable and kill his wife and alice cooper was f***ed in the head and on drugs

What does that song try to say, or what story does it tell ?


I'm probably wrong, but I have always heard this song as an aborted child or a baby that dies not long after birth. Just long enough to be named and have one dream. . . As I said, I'm probably wrong but that's the first and only impression I got from this song. I still love it, but it had a lasting impression on me and always gave me chills. 

I'm not sure if Alice's parents are still alive, but his father is/was a minister. Alice's albums tend to tell stories, mostly fictional but based on an amount of life experience. Eg; You can find out a bit about his childhood and his father in the song 'Nurse Rosetta'. The album 'Welcome to my Nightmare' was originally planned to be a movie. That didn't work out, the album did.

Steven, fictional, was the child whose eyes the nightmares were seen through. Steven was carried through to other albums (hey stoopid and the last temptation) and in the latter Steven was seduced (not raped) by a man into joining a sideshow carnival, which he didn't end up doing. The reference to 'you've only lived a minute of your life' means nothing more other than that Steven is still only a child.

The story continues, and we find that Steven's father was a man who beat his mother and Steven lived in constant fear. Eventually, Steven kills his father and sets his mother free. As time goes on and the nightmares continue, Steven comes to believe that he is the only person left alive and is taken on a guided tour through his nightmares by a female zombie who eventually turns out to be the devil trying to claim his soul. Only then does he realise that he does not have nightmares, he has died, and his nightmares are his experiences in the afterlife. Steven's adventures take him through both heaven and hell and although he is dead, he lives on in Welcome 2 My Nightmare, the sequel. Hope this helps. 

my intepretation (and i am not dumping my opinion on anyone here) is that the album follows a child called steven who was born in an irreversable coma and cannot therefore escape constant nightmares, and is living in bed while his father beats his mother. i feel that the song is sung from the mothers perspective as she is about to release him from his miserable life

I've read a few things on this song and it's at least part of a trilogy that has to be taken into context (three songs - Years ago, Steven and The Awakening) of a whole concept album called 'Welcome to my Nightmare'. This is my interpretation and opinion based on what I read from the lyrics, listening to the songs and gaining from other people's contributions from websites...

Before and after 'The Steven Trilogy', alcoholism features prominently in the album which I believe around this time could be classed as Alice Cooper's (Vincent Furnier's) nightmare. There was an instance where Cooper couldn't finish his tour as a result of drunkenness. He fell off the stage head-first into concrete during the 'Welcome to my nightmare' tour in Vancouver. I do wonder, to some extent or other, whether this trilogy, is an extension on that nightmare that Cooper had with alcohol. Also, Only Women Bleed and Cold Ethyl deal with alcoholism and male chauvinism which ties up with the ending of The Awakening beautifully. A person called finslaw in October 2011 wrote:

"I however find Cold Ethyl subtly feminist. It is as if Alice is hearing some guy list what he wants in a woman

1) Always available for sex 2) Silent 3) Easily dominated 4) Not needy.

Then Alice says "okay Mr. Chauvanist pig, I have just the girl for you. Her name is Ethyl." Be careful what you wish for."

Of course, the last song on the album is called Escape and, yet again, alcohol is mentioned explicitly as a means to escape reality.

I get the strong impression that 'The Steven Trilogy' are a collection of three songs about an alcoholic who has an irreversible violent episode.

Years ago, deals with Steven as a broken man in the present thinking back to his childhood. He was at a carnival where I'm sure plenty of drink was flowing thick and fast. People say the song is about a split-personality but the lyric "I'm a little boy, no I'm a great big man, no let's be a little boy again" implies Steven's struggle to resist the temptation of alcohol. The voices of his sibling and mother at the end may well be literal or they may be symbolic of his conscience playing up as he decides what to do. 

We then have to listen to the song 'Steven' to continue the story...

The song Steven seems a bit more straight-forward and takes an horrific turn. I initially deduced that Steven was either killing his wife or is baby but a person on the internet stated he killed his pregnant wife which makes a lot of sense in this context. I believe Steven is a man who took his domestic abuse 'too far' (the theme of alcoholic domestic abuse carried on from Only Women Bleed) and accidentally kills his pregnant wife in the process. This explains the lyric; "You've only lived a minute of your life" as the focus seems to be on the unrelenting guilt that Steven has killed not just one life from his recklessly destructive alcoholic abuse but two in one act.

The third and final part of the trilogy The Awakening shows Steven finally wakes up sober ("Suddenly I realize I see it all through real eyes") after some time asleep. He looks at his hands and realises blood is dripping from them. The telling lyrics are "getting up from the easy chair, looking for my wife" and "Following a trail of crimson spots that lead into the night". The context confirms that Steven killed his wife and carried her body out of the house either to bury her or get rid of the evidence. The last lyric is "and oh it makes me feel like a man". This is an ironic reference to the first song where he is drinking in Years ago, being a boy doing grown up things like drinking at a carnival and showing where "acting like a man" has finally lead him.

The song afterwards called Escape is using alcohol as a means to deal with life, whether it is less extreme like working for the weekend, or more extreme like in Steven's case, a life-long vicious cycle of alcohol abuse with a new role to add to the mix...to drown a very guilty conscience.

I've guessed most of it but as explanations go, the idea that 'The Steven Trilogy' is a grim morality tale seems very plausible.  :)

"You've only lived a minute of your life" means he hasn't had a good childhood.  They say the childhood years are the best time of your life, well you'll find in other Alice Cooper albums that Steven's childhood sucked.  Any fun he ever had was very short (a minute of his life).

Steven's made appearances in many other albums, and Nightmare was only a taste of his childhood.  In one album, you find that Steven is sent into an asylum, possibly because in that album he's a full grown man who still believes he's a child.  This is from the song "Wind-up Toy."

Did you know in Welcome 2, he kills his father?