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Feel like cutting up a doll? Try a slice of Alice Cooper

A theatrical event:

"'It's a Real Jekyll-and-Hyde Thing,' said Alice Cooper," a tragedy in three acts.

Act One — Alice as Jekyll. Time: Yesterday afternoon. Scene: A conference room in a downtown motel. Enter Alice Cooper, big rock star, stage right. He wears a very hiply tailored suit in a loud green-and-red plaid. Beautiful suit of clothes. He is preceded in your mind's eye by Press Clippings and Rumors. The Press Clippings huddle downstage left — "Cooper Sets New House Record," "Cooper Albums Earn Gold Records," "Cooper Making Millions on Evil that Lurks in Hearts of Men." The Rumors gather closer to center stage — "Cooper is really Eddie Haskell of 'Leave It to Beaver'," "Cooper used to kill a chicken to end his act." "Cooper is, you know, queer."

Could be the road manager

Alice Cooper in his beautiful suit looks so straight that if he only had a briefcase he could be the road manager. He sits down and in friendly, reassuringly normal tones, shoos Rumors offstage. No, he is not Eddie Haskell. Eddie Haskell is a cop in Hawaii. He never killed a chicken in his act. He is not particularly fond of boys.

He is reminded that he once said he wished his audiences were sicker, there were lots of interesting things he could do onstage.

"Oh, I think they're much sicker than I am. I read all kinds of things I didn't do — but that's OK. People need to fantasize... I'm not the first to do what I do — there were Busby Berkeley, Bela Lugosi, the Marz Brothers..."

Mr. Cooper, with idols like those, do you feel your show is more a theatrical event than a rock concert?

"Well, you try to do the music the best you can... The heavy rock is the backbone... (The theatrics) put the icing on it... I just throw the images out... I just act out the audiences fantasies onstage... Like you, you really want to cut up a doll, don't you? You really do..."

Flo and Eddie

Enter, stage right, the fun-loving Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, who, disguised as "Flo and Eddie," share the bill with Cooper. Volman wears a German helmet with a pink plastic flamingo on top. Sunny good humor reigns, but Cooper is sidetracked by a serious question: What is it like being Alice Cooper onstage?

"It's a flash for me — I've got to turn into Alice before I go onstage. It's really a Jekyll and Hyde thing. Alice is pretty sick."

"Could we see a little of Alice?" asks a TV cameraman.

"You don't want to. If Alice were here you'd all be dead by now."

Act Two — Alice as the evil Hyde. Time: Last night. Scene: Convention Center, arranged for "festival seating" (a cute little euphemism which means there aren't any seats — you sit on as much floor as you can find, or in the balcony). It's a sell-out crowd. With seats that means about 7,000, but the way all these people are packed in, standing and sitting, it could be 10,000 this night.

Volman and Kaylan and their band are onstage, sending out good, beaty, tuneful rock 'n' roll, singing new songs and old stuff from their days in The Turtles, "Happy Together," "Eleanor."

The music is good, professional, high level stuff, a pleasure to hear, and the act works in a lot of pointed burlesque of the mannerisms of superstar musicians. Volman gets laugh mileage out of his joyous expanse of belly, and Kaylan beats a tambourine senseless. They get a standing ovation and have to do an encore.

Then the speakers pour out syrupy neo classical music, a crew of stagehands erects a chromium skeleton of an arch of triumph onstage, and the rush for choice festival seats down front gets intense. It's time for:

Alice Cooper! And there he is, dressed in a white tailcoat, skin tight white trousers, an undershirt out of a bad Polish joke and four-inch-platform leopard-skin over-the-knee Erroll Flynn buccaneer BOOTS.

He stands on a flight of glowing steps, and behind him lights flash on the arch, with a bass player and guitarist stationed in the bases of the pillars. Two more guitarists stand to the outside, an organist in the background, and at the top of the stairs is a drum kit that's shinier than a customized Harley-Davidson.

A series of tableaux

Alice Cooper's act resolves itself as a series of tableaux, more or less, done to musical accompaniment.

Some of them are effective. "Eighteen," an Alice Golden Oldie, put a charge in the air. The crowd, almost entirely teenagers whose average age is maybe 16, feeds back a power that almost visibly flames in Alice's black-rimmed eyes. Eerie.

Some of them are jive. Alice complains of a bad tooth in one lyric, falls onto a bench and is attacked by a mad dentist with a Christmas-tree-sized drill. Alice fights him off only to be menaced by a man-sized tooth with woman's legs. He takes a giant toothbrush and toothpaste and erotically brushes the tooth, getting as much sniggering sexual mileage out of the symbols as he can.

Some segments were dull. Two years ago in his first Louisville appearance Alice was strapped into an electric chair. Last year he was hanged. This year he was guillotined. But it was a third-rate magic stunt pulled out of a very old hat.

Some bits are expected: The seven-foot live snake is back this year, and there was a stage full of pieces of store-window dummies for Alice to do lewd things with.

At one point Alice said he was going to prove that the audience was crazier than he was. He threw armloads of rolled posters into the crowd and laughed through the scramble.

Gets his insults

Another time he told the crowd, "I haven't been insulted yet tonight. Let's hear you say the dirtiest thing you can say." And — this is weird — there he stood, alone in the spotlight being sworn and gestured at by a furious crowd in a truly amazing perversion of the way a performer basks in the love of his fans. And the sad thing is, the crowd wasn't offering any particularly interesting, inventive language.

Act Three — Alice is a Real Person. Time: Very early this morning. Scene: A downtown motel room. Alice Cooper sits, wrapped in a big towel, wearing sunglasses, watching TV. Down the hall a record company publicity man tends bar for a party that sputters for lack of a star.

Some conclusions:

Elvis Presley shook his hips and teens knew it was him and them against the world. Alice Cooper draws his dividing line the same way — by being gross and shocking. His act says, "You and I can understand this but your parents would be upset." Reason enough right there for any kid to lay out $6 for a ticket. We haven't come very far in a generation.

Alice Cooper is not a great satirist of Middle America or the Generation Gap or contemporary sexuality or anything. And the third time around, he has begun to satirize himself.

Flo and Eddie are funnier satirists. And they sing better, too.

Teen-agers of Louisville, REALLY want to cut up a doll?