Alice Cooper tribute artist signs off after 30 years
It’s been 30 years since Scott Rowe staged his first full Alice Cooper tribute at a Phoenix nightclub not far from where Cooper launched his own career with a talent show appearance in the Cortez High School cafetorium.
It was Thanksgiving Day 1990 and
Rowe had shown up at the Mason Jar with an actor and a dancer to perform what he describes as a vaudeville-style tribute to Cooper.
The actor played the Rev. Smith from “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” and dutifully punched the singer in the nose.
The dancer did an S&M-style dance on “Go To Hell.”
Rowe sang along to a tape while getting into character enough to earn some kind words from another local legend in the house that night, Judas Priest singer Rob Halford.
As Rowe recalls his meeting with a man whose nickname is the Metal God, “He calls me over and I’m like a little kid. ‘Oh, my God, It’s Rob Halford.’ I’m like, ‘One day, I’d like to have a little band.’ He goes ‘Oh mate, what you did was great. I loved your show.’ And that was kind of words of wisdom.”
30 years of playing Alice Cooper
After 30 years of getting into character and dusting off the staples that continue to define the Cooper legend, Rowe hung up the mascara after one last tribute show on Halloween at Cactus Jack’s.
“I’ve been doing this show on and off for 30 years,” he says. “And why should I put all my energy into somebody else’s music when I could just put it into mine? Don’t get me wrong. Alice got me where I am. It’s just that I believe in what I’m doing now.”
What Rowe is doing now is fronting a theatrical metal experience he calls Scott Rowe and Redrum.
They were actually opening his farewell to the tribute show on Halloween.
How does it feel to be saying goodbye to the character he’s played for 30 years?
“This has been a long time coming,” Rowe says. “I just need to do this. And I think I’ve paid my dues here. I remember a magazine called Get Out, back in 2000, they called me the Valley’s founding father of copycat rock. So I guess I’ll take that title and run with it.”
How Rowe got his start as a performer
Rowe’s life as a performer actually predates that Mason Jar performance.
“When I was in the Army, I would DJ and do little skits out in front of the booth,” he recalls.
“And lip sync contests were huge when I got out of the Army in ‘84. Living in Houston. I’d do three or four a week. I’d bring the house down and make $200. It was that easy. Five minutes work. Not bad. I did all kinds of little characters.”
The character that stuck was Alice Cooper.
“One night, there was like 500 people there for the best lip sync and lookalikes contest,” he says.
“So I went up against Bette Midler, Prince and beat them all with ‘I Never Cry.’ I wiped them out. Like 30 points ahead of everybody. My presentation. My drama. I act things out. But that’s how I developed the Alice character.” He even grew his hair to fit the part. “I figured if you’re gonna do it, do it right,” he says. “So I grew my hair out and started doing makeup. I used to be a mortician. So I knew I could do makeup pretty good.”
There were few tribute acts when Rowe came to Phoenix
When Rowe moved from Houston to Phoenix in August 1990, as he recalls, “No tribute bands or anything like that existed here.”
It wasn’t long before he’d started working with Jack Curtis, who decades earlier had booked the Spiders, a garage-rock group that featured Cooper and three other founding members of his group, into the VIP, a popular teen club in Phoenix.
“He told me some stories,” Rowe says, with a laugh.
“But he was handling lookalikes. He had Burt Reynolds, Roseanne Barr. So I’d go out with him, making appearances as Alice. He was my first agent. I did an appearance at a Suns game with a Garth Brooks lookalike.”
Not long after launching his act at the Mason Jar, Rowe started working live musicians into his performances, including an actual founding member of the Alice Cooper group, guitarist Michael Bruce.
How Michael Bruce got involved
They met in 1990, backstage at the Arizona State Fair.
“When I first got here, I was always wondering what happened to the band,” Rowe says. “And then, here I meet Michael.”
Getting Bruce involved, he says, “was everything to me in the beginning. It was fun to have the real thing there. I hold him dear to my heart. My God, I would never have thought when I was 16.... I had the ‘Muscle of Love’ album and I would sit there looking at it, always thinking Michael was the coolest guy in the band.”
Then, Rowe catches himself and quickly adds, “Besides Alice.”
What it takes to become Alice Cooper
To stage a proper Alice Cooper tribute show requires more than simply mastering the music and applying makeup.
Cooper is among the more theatrical performers in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, a reputation Rowe did all he could to honor with increasingly elaborate stage shows.
“Back in the day,” Rowe says, “it took two trucks to get me to the venue.”
The production he assembled for an Alice Cooper birthday tribute at the Library Cafe in 1993 cost Rowe $1,000.
Of course, the guillotine alone accounted for $500 of that total. But it’s not as though he never had an opportunity to use that guillotine again.
It’s not a wedding dress.
He also bought a Burmese python from Slayer guitarist Kerry King for that performance, which included Bruce and earned their act a front-page story in the local paper.
“Next thing I know, I look the next day and there I am on the front page of the Phoenix Gazette,” Rowe recalls, with a laugh. “Everywhere I looked that day. It was like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ Because back in the day, you had newspaper boxes everywhere.”
When Alice Cooper caught Rowe’s act
The first time Cooper caught his act was May of 1998 at a benefit for the Alice Cooper Solid Rock Foundation.
By that point, Bruce was no longer involved in the tribute.
“But Michael came in and did the last two songs with us, ‘Muscle of Love’ and ‘School’s Out,’” Rowe recalls. “And Alice was on his feet the whole time, clapping. That was the first time he had seen Michael perform since the breakup. Alice came backstage and he goes, ‘Scott I’m not gonna tour anymore. I’m gonna send you out.’”
Rowe laughed at the memory.
“I got a kick out of that,” he says. It was Cooper who suggested Rowe for that gig.
Even though he’d never seen him play at that point, Rowe says, “Alice knew what I was doing. And if I was doing a bad job, he would have told me to stop.”
Shutting it down after 30 years
Rowe says he’s proud of the work he’s done as the Valley’s premiere Alice Cooper tribute act.
“I never meant to go out and make a big living or anything,” Rowe says. “It is what it is. It’s a tribute show to the music I love. When you listen to those five albums that the Alice Cooper band did? I mean, come on. Who can match that?”
Asked what type of props one might expect to see at his last tribute show, Rowe says, “I’m debating the electric chair. I’ve got it set up out in front of my house for Halloween. I’m the only one in the neighborhood who has an electric chair. I’m gonna call my friend and see if he can haul that out.”
He’s also playing for some very special guests.
Not Cooper. He’s already seen the show.
“My 84-year-old mom is coming in from Dallas to see this show,” Rowe says. “She’s never seen me perform live. Never. Not even a talent show. So this is gonna be very special to me. My mom, my little sister and my niece are all gonna be there.”