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Alice Cooper's Array of Rock Gimmicks

The young man in the washroom at the Rubber Bowl had, by his own testimony, gulped down three tabs of yellow sunshine — which accounted for his preoccupation with the paper towel dispenser ("Oh, wow — this is really something,")

He was still lucid enough to share with me his faith that Alice Cooper, soon to do her set at Saturday night's concert, would show up promptly to deliver the goods.

"Alice isn't like Sly," he affirmed.

TRUE ENOUGH, Alice never disappoints her fans like the notoriously tardy — and sometimes totally absent — Sly and the Family Stone.

But once they're onstage and gathering steam, there's an essential similarity between the two groups' musical bags: it's extra-heavy, frantic acid rock — designed to get you up there in pounding waves of tumultuous sound.

But before dealing with Ms. Cooper's sound, there is the unavoidable matter of her appearance and demeanor.

Alice Cooper is, to edify the innocent, the name of this five-man rock ensemble — all former track team members at Cortez High School in Phoenix — and also the legally adopted name of its principal person, who does the vocals.

ALICE falls just short of being what is politely termed a transvestite, and what is known on the street as a drag queen. But Alice has protested that her stage outfits aren't drag, and technically she is right: there is certainly no attempt to convincingly impersonate a woman.

At the Rubber Bowl, Alice was togged out in a short vest of glittering silver and a pair of black leotards with odd holes and decorative things running down the sides. That exposed Alice's middle — which, sadly, thickens in exactly the wrong place.

With raccoon-like patches of black make-up around her eyes, and with droopy, frazzled tresses, Alice looked a good deal like a streetwalker who'd been left out in the rain. Guitarist Dennis Dunaway — whose bright green pant­suit would be the envy of Fairlawn housewives — looked almost like a Renaissance maiden in his curly, flowing hair.

WHY ARE millions of average American kids giving wild approval to types who, a generation ago, would have been called evil names and beat up on the street?

Sexual ambiguity in varied forms has become big box office in pop entertainment: Mick Jagger and David Cassidy exude androgyny, with or without makeup. An English singer-guitarist who is an out­-and-out drag queen — David Bowie — is earmarked as America's next superstar. RCA Records has already flown a planeload of 19 American music critics to London to hear him-her sing.

(One critic calls the Bowie phenomenon "the drag-rock syndrome — the self-conscious quest for decadence that is the rage at the moment.")

ALONG WITH this, of course, goes Alice Cooper's trendy use of mock-violence — the python around her neck; her literal use of "gallows humor" when she "hangs" herself at the end of the set; the '50s-type rumble with knife blade flashing; her sado-masochistic black leather jacket with the funny strap things.

For musical material and effects, Alice is smashingly eclectic: who else, in 30 minutes, can borrow the opening notes from Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, a melody from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, the Jets' theme from "West Side Story," a lyric from folksinger Don McLean — and Lawrence Welk's bubbles?

Among the gimmicks, perhaps most commendable was the lighting. The musicians were bathed in deep hues of green, blue, magenta and yellow, which pulsed and changed with the music.

In its class, the music is above reproach. The instrumentation is basic — three guitars, an impressive drum layout belonging to skilled Neal Smith and Alice's vocal chords. The playing is tight and well-drilled, building to frenetic climaxes, with a nice illusion of improvisation.

ALL THAT was lacking in much of the group's music at the Rubber Bowl was a clearly developed musical line going from here to there: at times the guitar work had a static quality.

So in a way did the vocals: Alice is a shouter, punching out hoarse, episodic lines in the fashion of, say, Leon Russell.

Quite captivating was the group's elaborated version of its recorded, '50s-style gang rumble the audience hears waiting police sirens, a driving percussion accompaniment and a chorus of woeful voices shrieking at varied intervals. As in some of the serious new music, conventional melody is gone and everything boils down to a series of events in time.

With this staggering inventory of gimmicks — sexual, visual and musical — we're left with the question Alice herself poses in an opening vocal: "What is it I got that makes you want to love me?"

WHY, indeed, were the teenage girls at the edge of the stage reaching out their arms — begging to be touched by ugly old Alice? What appeal did Alice have for our spaced-out friend in the washroom, and an estimated 20,000 others at the Rubber Bowl?

If the answer is a fascination with high drag and sadomasochism, I would be somewhat disappointed in the audience. Sexual tolerance is long overdue, but only sheltered young suburbanites would celebrate drag as the latest kick. That scene has been around too long. Viewed offstage and up close, it's merely sad and depressing.