If you’re a fan of heavy metal, you can’t say that Alice Cooper isn’t an influence on it, whether you like him or not. Though he has said many a time how he thinks that shock rock is dead, he manages to keep it quite the contrary. With sick (literally) theatrics and costume changes, Alice has been in the business for fifty years now. And with a new album, Paranormal released in July, and his recent 70th birthday celebration, he has no plans to stop anytime soon.
“You have been chosen to spend the night with Alice Cooper. It’s too late now for you. He’s coming.” said a voice over the curtain designed with Alice’s trademark eyes with spiders as the pupils. As the audience of mainly baby boomers and Gen-X’ers began to rise to their feet, (which they remained doing so the entire show, which was pretty shocking if you ask me) it collapsed, and the band, as Alice slowly walked out in an unhooded black cloak, began the 2000 title track to Brutal Planet.
The next four or five songs were wall-to-wall hits. Smash hit No More Mr. Nice Guy, electrifying opener to 1971’s Killer, Under My Wheels, and the groovy title track to Billion Dollar Babies, which turned 45 this year. Alice swung a sword and a number of canes around throughout the night, throwing most of them into the first few rows of the sold out crowd.
Iron Maidens guitarist and as described by my concert buddy, a “mega babe” Nita Strauss and highly acclaimed drummer Glen Sobel both had solos that blew the roof off of the place. Nita had many short ones, including about two minutes of just her onstage while Alice and the group prepared for one of the most anticipated songs of the night, Poison. And Sobel smashed for five minutes in the middle of Killer’s Halo Of Flies.
Now, you’re probably wondering: What theatrics?
During the Wayne’s World cameo’d tune Feed My Frankenstein, with a little help from some masked men, Alice, covered in a blood stained buttoned up lab coat, was strapped to a platform, and was “turned into” a Frankenstein with a two foot head. After a set of songs from Welcome To My Nightmare, and a new song, the all-hands-on-deck Paranoic Personality, he was dragged into a straight jacket due to his insanity, just to rip into the early hit, the Ballad Of Dwight Fry. This part featured his wife Sheryl playing Nurse Rozetta, of whom he tried to strangle to death with his sleeves at the end of the song.
It descended into the guitar solo at the end of Killer’s title track, and out came the guillotine.
Following Alice’s execution, one of the masked men began to prance about the stage for maybe 30 seconds with Alice’s head, while his band paid their respects by blasting the repetitive chorus of I Love The Dead. Alice came out minutes later in a blood drenched white button down to belt out his first hit, I’m Eighteen, following an encore of his trademark School’s Out, which involved a lick of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall Part 2.
Alice doesn’t blab or tell stories onstage like most artists do anymore. His shows these days are more of a rock opera than a standard classic rock concert. Think of it as The Who playing Tommy all the way through, just without the whole storyline and such. In fact, he only spoke directly to us near the end when he introduced the band, and thanked us.
But whoever wants to complain can go get their head caught in a guillotine.
Josh Bradley Live 