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The Monster Mash

ALICE COOPER
Hammersmith Odeon, London

"EVERYTHING you heard about me/ I must have done it..."

After sex, drugs and gratuitous violence, the strongest selling force that keeps rock rolling has got to be nostalgia. Now Alice has the lot.

I can remember ages ago my first girlfriend's best friend telling me that Alice at Wembley was the best show she'd seen since... oh, Hendrix at somewhere. I can still recall the shame and the jealousy 'cos I was considered too young to be allowed up to London to get my own butchers at the glam baby slicer.

Still, I saw IT on TV with the noose, sword and python and all that malarky, read about all the daring drag rituals, doll dismembering and other deliciously sordid stuff in the papers and made grudgingly do with those glorious records.

Then, as time and trends passed as time and trends do, there were stories of booze and golf and anti-drug broadcasts, of cleaning up, going straight and of — death of all deaths! — teaming up and blanding out with Elt's old reject Bernie Taupin.

And then there was nothing, until last year when a recuperative album called "Special Forces" showed there was healthy disdain for life yet in the dirty old dog. And then Harrigan drags himself back from Midem a week or two back with tales of Alice traipsing round the South of France with hotel receptionists more than willing to take in his python, but refusing point blank to honour HIS bookings.

Now I know why.

Alice at Ham. O. was a hideous cod-piece, a slit throat or two, an onstage mock battle, a sword and a knife, a spit and a stare, a whip and a sneer, a mangled blond dummy, a flesh and blood goddess, a stick insect frame, a skewer and a cane, a cripple's old crutch and, I almost forgot, that obligatory snake. (Quite well behaved!)

Alice, was a shriek at the Eighties, NOT a shadow of yore. An ace septic showman smart enough to update his line in sociable outrage from Seventies sexual confusion and paedophiliac perversion to something equally and aptly app(e)alling to modern sensibilities — war!

The "Special Forces" Show is constructed from filth, mutilation and a mercenary rat­pack with no allegiance but, of course, to self preservation. Alice's coldly calculated dig and dance at the world's current worst fears of destruction are the tools of his own bitter-sweet survival.

New songs — "Who Do You Think We Are?" and a particularly abysmal "Seven And Seven Is"; ballads ("Only Women Bleed") and an overlong and tamely theatrical "School's Out" encore — couldn't compete with old breast-beating beauties like "Guilty", "Under My Wheels", "Billion Dollar Babies" or a great "I'm 18".

But the band were game for the gore and magnificently up to it, the man himself was a match any day for your grim Gazza Numans or wild young Watties, and the show was a subversive, black-comic success.

In these times of Arran sweaters and Prince Charles's playing funk, Alice's return is especially welcome. I love the way all his songs flaunt bad old fashioned self-aggrandisement, the way you know it's all for show, yet he's so good at acting that you almost believe it.

And beneath the eye-liner and blood, I love the lingering doubts that if you peel away the monstrous anarchist mask, tear away at the middle-aged Mr Average behind it and you may well find someone or something not at all nice.

Tonight the myth of the man bruised his legendary monster, like when he trouped on the flags at the end of the show. The Stars And Stripes and Union Jack. "God Bless America" he yelled. "God Bless Britain. And God Bless ME!"

And Breshnev's Russia, Alice... or what?

On The 'Roadie'

Roadie (directed by Alan Rudolph)

THERE'S a theory that if you get enough rock stars with enough record sales in a film, even if only a small percentage of their fans go and see it, you've got a box office smash. The Bee Gees "Sergeant Pepper" and Village People's "Can't Stop The Music" are all the prosecution really needs to offer.

Alan Rudolph's "Roadie' features Meat Loaf, Blondie and Alice Cooper, who've clocked up a few sales between them, but the film's British distributors feel its appeal is limited, and are handling it very gentry. Not a great artistic loss, but "Roadie" is pretty entertaining within its limitations.

As you'd expect with Meat Loaf, subtlety is not the key, but the mighty Meat's very grossness is appealing here. His performance as Travis W. Redfish won't cause many de Niro fans to switch their allegiance, but the Moby Dick of rock 'n' roll is clumsily convincing.

"Roadie" offers no serious insights, it's simply an excuse for cameos and amusing episodes in between the songs: There are plenty of them, like Meat as the world's greatest roadie literally powering an open air Blondie gig by bullshit.

Alan Rudolph's last film was the turgid "Welcome To LA" (which included Geraldine Chaplin offerin such conversation crushers as "The sleep of reason produces monsters"). Meat's role is on a lower intellectual level altogether: "Is Alice Cooper one of Charlie's Angels?" he innocently inquires.

The soundtrack includes songs from Joe Ely, a great Blondie version of "Ring Of Fire" and Roy Orbison and Hank Williams Jr stopping an Austin bar fight in mid-punch with "The Eyes Of Texas". Alice Cooper (and the snake) and Art Carney contribute entertaining cameos, and the whole film is a lot funnier than "Dead Ringer".

Patrick Humphries