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Hollywood — Alice's Super-Tour

When the Alice Cooper Show sets out on tour next month (Cash Box, Feb. 3), they won't exactly be sneaking out of town. Not with the kind of preparation going on out here right now, and later in the East, under Joe Gannon's direction. Gannon was the man who put Neil Diamond on the stage of the Greek Theatre in Hollywood and the Winter Garden on Broadway, and the one who, probably more than anyone around, has made theatre rock a reality — by getting it on, and making it "theatrical" to the extent that it works as theatre.

The show Gannon is putting together for Alice with designer Jim Newton is going to be a real whopper, as benefits a tour that's "the biggest tour ever ... ever!" The blueprints for the stage call for an area thirty feet deep and forty feet wide, achieved by fitting together a set of nine modular units with various platform levels and connecting risers supporting an over-all superstructure twenty feet high for the lighting. The lighting alone will draw on a 125,000-watt capacity, and as Gannon said last week, "When you've got that kind of power going on in the lights and with the short throw we'll have, you can really get some fabulous effects with things like dark amber and magenta gels."

On top of that, according to Gannon, the production will be equipped with all kinds of specialty items — a fog machine, a bubble machine, a confetti machine, mannequins, neon tubing — "the works," all reflected in the black plexiglass lining the floor and bouncing off the polished gilt superstructure. "I want to treat the people for the first time," said Gannon, "to the real magic of the theatre. A rock show has always been like seeing a play with only one scene. We're going to be making changes with every number, including costumes. Even the crew members will be wearing costumes that are costing us between two and three hundred dollars each."

The total complement on this tour will be 60 to 70 people, including a crew of eight, management personnel and press, bussing and trucking to 56 U.S. and Canadian cities for a total of sixty dates. The tour itself grew out of a projected "Alice at the Palace" show slated for Broadway, but like Topsy, it just grew. Said Gannon, "This show will be like a major Broadway production that's a hit already, a super-smash play with a run-away super-star in the lead. It would be too expensive for Broadway, anyway. We've working on a budget bigger than any musical has ever enjoyed. And it's just going to be wilder than anything ever."

It all, of course, springs from the show-biz phenomenon of the star himself: "Alice is already, on his own, unbelievable theatre but almost no one realizes how really legitimate he is. He's no more transvestite freak; he's a fantastic actor — on stage, a brilliant creation and totally legitimate. That's what we're going to show him to be."

News Report

Alice Cooper has made a name for themselves by bringing theatre as well as rock to the people. With the launching of their new "Alice Cooper Show," over 820,000 "stage buffs" will see Alice do his thing in 56 cities, beginning in March.

The tour is designed to coincide with the release of their new album, "Billion Dollar Babies" and the current push behind the new single, "Hello Hurray" which is bulleted at #44 this week on the Cashbox Top 100 singles chart. The total complement on this tour will be 60 to 70 people, and it will be staged by Joe Gannon.

The Warner Bros hand continues to come up with new ideas to keep their momentum (which is considerable already) moving ever onwards and upwards. Recently, they took over an outdoor display on Times Square.