Alice Cooper review – a potent brew of sex, death and pantomime villainy
It’s hard to believe that when Alice Cooper emerged in the early 70s, his horror makeup, songs about sex and death and theatrical hangings were seen as a threat to the moral fibre of society. Today, while the shockrock pioneer’s vast influence stretches from punk to “antichrist superstar” Marilyn Manson, he’s more pantomime villain than shocking. Where Cooper once channelled the feeling of unease in the post-summer-of-love era, these days his show is considerably more “He’s behind you!”
It’s still a great night out. The former hell-raiser may now spend much of his time as Vincent Furnier – a mild-mannered, sober, married man who prefers the celebrity golf circuit to horror – but he can slip on the old persona as easily as a golf shoe.
It certainly takes chutzpah for a 71-year-old to begin a concert with a droll song called Feed My Frankenstein, about his insatiable libido, while sharing the stage with a giant monster. Cooper’s deathly croak may have lost a smidgeon of its power but he looks even more as if he has been recently exhumed from the nearest cemetery. He is part-ham, part-showman, the Phantom of the Opera reincarnated as a rock god.
He strides out of his “nightmare castle”, with top hat and twirling cane, and kisses a ghost bride (his wife, Sheryl Goddard) who disappears in smoke. Half the time it’s like a lowbudget slasher movie soundtracked by hard glam rock, especially when an actor has her throat theatrically slashed by a sabre-wielding masked slayer. The sight of the straitjacketed singer being restrained from attacking a baby (thankfully, a doll) with a meat cleaver is slightly more disturbing (and has reportedly led to some American punters walking out in disgust). Cooper, though, gets his comeuppance – by being apparently guillotined. The giant
contraption and fake “Alice” head have been part of the act for aeons.
He’s never stopped releasing new music – the Breadcrumbs EP came out only last week – but it’s mostly ignored in favour of live staples from his heyday. Still, 1970’s I’m Eighteen – a song with which Johnny Rotten auditioned for the Sex Pistols – packs a new kind of raw power as Cooper rages against infirmity.
There’s enough in his mammoth catalogue for him to leave out classics such as Elected and Only Women Bleed in favour of the hair-metal anthem Poison and proto-goth I Love the Dead. A youngish band featuring guitarist Nita Strauss and drummer Glen Sobel make Under My Wheels and No More Mr Nice Guy rock vigorously.
Cooper ends, as ever, with 1972’s School’s Out. Scores of huge black balloons tumble from the ceiling, and the sight of grown men and women cascading over their seats to burst them is as comical and faintly disturbing as anything in the show.
• At First Direct Arena, Leeds, 7 October. Then touring.