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Return of the Bizarre — Alice Cooper's New Show

With television cameras film­ing the proceedings for a projected 90 minute net­work special, Alice Cooper returned to the American stage for the first time in two years before a slightly less than capacity crowd at Anaheim Stadium. In spite of an ir­reverent scoreboard that insisted on spelling his name with two p's, the Coop successfully unveiled a new show that easily ranks as his most elabor­ately staged effort to date. The fast-paced 75 minute presentation features a stage designed like a giant TV set assembled at a cost of close to half a million dollars-and a 43 person cast of performers and crew.

The show lived up to advance billing as a "greatest hits" affair with Alice effectively blending relatively straight­forward blasts from his musical past and present--"Under My Wheels, "I'm Eighteen," "Billion Dollar Babies," "Only Women Bleed," "School's Out," "You And Me"-with several of the dramatic sketches that first earned him a reputation as rock's master of the macabre. In keeping with Cooper's recent move toward a total entertainment approach, the Hollywood Vampires — Steve Hunter, Dick Wagner, Prakash John, Whitey Glan and Fred Mandel, who replaced Jozef Chirowski when the latter retired from music to pursue a career as a lumber-jack — maintained a low visual profile throughout the set. Much of the time the band was concealed from view by a giant screen used to broadcast Putney Swope-styled commercials during breaks in the onstage action.

The concept-less format provided Alice with an excellent showcase for the acting abilities that will soon be displayed on the silver screen in Sextette. The twenty-nine year old singer moved through a succession of characters ranging from your basic vicious Alice to three songs as alter ego Vince Furnier and introducing the audience to the Clouseau-styled "tough detective" Inspector Maurice Escargot. At strategic intervals throughout the show, the Coop is joined onstage by some familiar creatures and creations — dancing teeth, dancing spiders, the guillotine, the nine foot mechanized Cyclops built by Disney and the reincarnation of Cold Ethyl (played by wife Cheryl) as a ballet dancer — associated with him during his career.

Despite the decidedly family hour content of the show, controversy has continued to plague the Cooper troupers. Angel, the ten foot boa constrictor, was refused entry to Canada by zealous border guards when the Cooper camp found themselves lacking certain vital information regarding her pedigree, forcing Alice to rely on untested local talent for his three western Canada gigs. Most kinks were worked out before the current Midwestern leg of the tour. More serious are two legal battles Alice is currently involved in, one stemming from the incident that led to his house arrest in Australia and the other, a multi-million dollar civil action filed by his girlfriend of seven years, Cynthia Lang. Based on a recently established precedent that legally sanctions agreements made between couples living together, Lang is asking for $2.5 million in damages — representing half of Alice's estimated earnings during the period they lived together — $5 million in punitive damages and $90,000 in annual support. Co-defendants named in the suit include Shep Gordon, Joe Greenberg and Alice Enterprises, Inc.