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Eva Will Kill Me One Evening

We meet Alice Cooper, the most bewildering and popular person in pop music ● Perversion, sex and violence are in his incredible shows ● On stage, chairs, bottles and real knives fly ● A doll is cut to pieces and beheaded ● Erotic "duet" with Eva, a Pythoness three meters long. "She is docile", the singer becomes, "but sometimes she 'wakes up' and if I don't immediately end the song I risk dying" ● "Every night I lose three kilos" ● "Will I like it in Italy too?"

"There is no sex!", Alice Cooper proclaims to those who ask him without hesitation if it is: a) a man; b) a transvestite; c) a homosexual. Twenty-six-year-olds, 1,87 high, ten million 33rpm records sold and a bank account of about five million dollars, Alice does everything to confuse those who want to know everything about him. Apart from the stage name of a woman, he makes his voice small, has effeminate manners and to those who ask him what his real name is, he whispers with his mouth in heart: "Mary...". In reality, Mr. Cooper, an American from Ohio, is a very normal boy, who that keeps a beautiful South American hidden (maybe it's his wife). A character has been created that is unprecedented in the world of pop music: his shows leave an impression, they never leave you indifferent.

Naked, and tortured, he rips off her arms

The first appearance on the stage provokes a certain repulsion in the squeamish. A little for the heavy prostitute trick that gives it an equivocal air (whoever is in the front row also has the "privilege" of being overwhelmed by a sweet fragrance of which Cooper makes extensive use), a little for his white skin. But above all for the presence of a python three meters long with which the rock singer performs. The python, or rather the pythoness, is called Eva. It is brought on stage where it cannot be harmed. But more than once Alice noticed with barely concealed terror that the snake, despite the sleep-inducing drugs, showed signs of intolerance and awakening. "In fact I risked suffocating to death," Alice Cooper confesses carelessly, "I had to close the number quickly to avoid disastrous consequences. I have a premonition that sooner or later this reptile will kill me".

Eva represents sex: which is why Alice performs a song sliding the pythoness down his body, wrapping it around him to the point of kissing her. In the public there is those who feel disgust and those who cheer.

The central part of the show is divided into three parts: the doll, the fight and the hanging, accompanied by related scenes.

Alice appears with a doll, performs a musical monologue, caresses her and then furiously undresses her, teases her, tears off her limbs and finally with a small axe chops off her head from which blood (red juice, of course) gushes out. While Alice continues to rage on the small mutilated doll, her companions engage with him in a battle, to the West Side Story. Every gesture is calibrated to the millimeter, every punch is choreographed, but the audience is convinced that they are serious. Chairs split on heads, bottles are shattered (they will be plastic, but the effect is extraordinarily realistic). Finally, Alice throws a knife at the drummer. It will be a fake, retractable ones. Not at all: the drummer takes a leap, the knife passes between his open legs and gets stuck, remaining firmly fixed, in a big amplifier.

"For you I will be even more provocative and brutal".

Third act. Always counting, Alice Cooper is hung by his companions with a dismal ceremonial, made atmospheric from the lights. After the protagonist's death, a musical curtain, and Cooper reappears on stage in a white tuxedo, all covered with sequins: this addition means a return to a new life. The show is winding down. Alice performs some encores, warms up again, removes his jacket and distributes some of her posters to the public. Scenes of hysteria, the rock singer's shirt torn to shreds; some horror-loving girl wants to follow the example of the pythoness Eva and kiss him.

Alice greets the audience from a stage that is reduced to a battlefield. He is exhausted. "I lose three pounds per show," he says.

The audience is enthusiastic. Admired but he also upsets the girls. There is always one who faints, one who vomits (even more than one) and even one who, seeing the doll torn to pieces and beheaded, screams without restraint: "I want my mother!".

In February Alice Cooper will come to Italy, probably with big variations in the show; will transform some numbers, others will be eliminated, others will be new. He predicts: "It will be an even more provocative, violent, sensual show".

"Will I like it in Italy?" Alice asks himself with his artificial falsetto. It is likely: the boys, after they have listened to him on the records will want to see him.

(Translated from the Italian lanaguage publication, 2019)