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Alice Is Alive And Well... And Doing Vaudeville

Aliee Cooper/The Spectrum

Alice Cooper's current tour is something of a comeback for him, both personally and professionally. He's spent the past year fighting and beating his reported long-time drinking problem (his forthcoming album, From The Inside, reportedly deals explicitly with his drying-out). Now the premier shock-rocker of the early-Seventies is back on the road trying to startle a new and younger audience accustomed to the theatrical flamboyance of (Cooper-­inspired) acts like Kiss.

The Alice Cooper show that pulled into Philadelphia on June 23 proved that Alice can still pull it off on stage. The show is as elaborate as any of his previous extravaganzas, incorporating several bits from past shows and combining them with brand new skits and special effects. Musically, Alice drew upon all his albums from Love It To Death through Lace And Whiskey, and the songs, especially the older ones, sounded great. The theatrics remained on a cartoon level for most of the show, but they were probably intended to; they worked well enough at that level, and they made for a most entertaining evening — a rock and roll vaudeville show.

Alice's set was exactly that: a gigantic television set, the screen of which was actually a movie screen on which were projected scenes of Alice in full costume and make-up. The real Alice made a terrific entrance, seeming to leap from the television screen onto the stage. He looked great. Dressed in a white tan top and white pants with red trim, and looking well-fed and healthier than his former emaciated self, he leaped around the stage, smiled and waved, and charged through three old favorites, "Under My Wheels," "Billion Dollar Babies" and "I'm Eighteen." The band sounded great too; the keyboard player shone on a new arrangement of "Eighteen," and two of the musicians turned out to be former Elton John sidemen, bassist Dee Murray and guitarist Davey Johnstone.

After a quick costume change Alice reappeared in black to sing "Is It My Body," with a huge boa constrictor draped over his shoulders. Then a quartet of dancing spiders joined him in an elaborate skit accompanying "Black Widow," complete with taped narration by Vincent Price. (The channel 3 news team covering the concert apparently found that routine just right for the 11:00 news, because they left right after filming it.)

Alice sang a couple of the ballads he's chosen for his late-Seventies trademark, "You And Me" and "Only Woman Bleed," both sounding quite credible. After another costume change, during which the giant TV entertained the crowd with mock commercials, he returned, accompanied by four dancing teeth, for "Unfinished Sweet," a bit salvaged from his old stage act. Next came "Escape," during which Alice and four robotic dancers seemed to run in and out of a graveyard scene on the TV screen.

During "I Love The Dead," Alice was beheaded on a guillotine. It's another old routine and one he might well drop since "I Love The Dead" isn't that great a song. This, naturally enough, led into "Go To Hell," followed by another ballad, my favorite of Alice's recent songs, "I Never Cry." After another intermission and costume change, Alice re-emerged in a private-eye trench coat to sing "It's Hot Tonight" and "Lace And Whiskey." The show's finale had him in white top hat and tails marching to "Battle Hymn Of The Republic" along with a line of helmeted dancers carrying machine guns, while war scenes played on the TV screen above them. For the inevitable encore Alice wore his final costume of the night — blue jeans and a T-shirt — and sang "School's Out," a most appropriate song considering the time of year.

Throughout the show Alice played to the audience more than he ever has; he smiled, laughed, waved and even introduced the band and the supporting cast during the encore. The audience loved it. The horrific portions of his show are no longer meant to frighten anyone, if indeed they ever were. The skits have no real logic, no connecting thread, but they aren't meant to. It really is like a vaudeville show: You don't like this routine? Stick around, the next one'll be completely different. It's all bits and pieces, but, surprisingly, most of the pieces work. The theatrics hold the audience's interest at one moment, the music does the job at the next. Technically, the band was faultless, and as for Alice's singing, as much as he tries to direct attention away from it with his stage presentation, he really handles himself well as a rock and roll singer, which is a lot more than you can say for bands like Kiss. The Alice Cooper show, once known as a travelling circus of decadence and perversion, is a lot more homey than it used to be, but it's still professional, entertaining and worth seeing. Welcome back, Alice.

(Originally published in The Aquarian, issue #219, July 12-19, 1978)