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Alice Cooper: His effect on audience is frightful

If you've ever been to a Motley Crue concert, you've seen living evidence of Alice Cooper's effect on rock 'n' roll. The whole notion of theater in rock originated when the preacher's son decided that he knew how to grab people's attention and hold it.

And so the whole concept of truly larger-than-life concerts began and the marriage of theater and rock — or in Cooper's case, horror and rock — remains with us today. There was a certain campiness to the things a man who took the name Alice did and the young people — especially — responded.

But if acts like Ozzy Osbourne owe Cooper a debt, Alice isn't so sure he wants to collect. As he said of those who've appropriated from him, "There are a lot of Alice clones out there. Sure, they've borrowed certain aspects, but they don't do the full treatment.

"They may spend millions of dollars on decorating their stage, but they don't deliver a real show. Whereas with us, if you're sitting in the first 10 rows — you might get splattered!" Cooper said.

"There's definitely a whole different sense of black humor at our shows. We more or less mesmerize our audience so they can't look away from the stage," he added.

Over the years though, Cooper's act has always been one that's hard to miss. After all, he has been hanged, guillotined, electrocuted, attacked by black widow spiders and chased by a 10-foot tooth onstage — and lived to tell about it. If there is such a thing as theater of the absurd, Alice Cooper, whose original name is Vincent James Furnier, is a walking definition of it.

His music is equally hard-hitting. Though "School's Out" remains a classic, there is also "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "Dead Babies," "Welcome To My Nightmare" and "I'm Eighteen."

Then there was his appearance on the American Music Awards show. He started out singing "You and I" and went berserk midway through, shifting into "You Can Go To Hell" and grabbing a woman out of the audience, tearing her dress off and literally dragging her across the stage.

Mere mention of that incident draws some good-natured laughter from Cooper for two reasons. The first is that the woman, Sheryl Stratford, became his wife, and the second was the fact that he pulled it off. "It was all set up," Cooper chuckled. "But, we didn't even tell the producer. The police came up and everyone thought I was being arrested. It was great!"

Not long after that, though, Cooper disappeared from the scene. He had grown disheartened with music and couldn't bear thinking that his audience might get the impression that the Coop had gotten soft because of what was happening with radio playlists.

As he now explains, "It was the only way we could cope with disco. The only thing we could get played were ballads. We'd have 10 songs that just rocked, but the only thing you'd hear on the radio would be 'Only Women Bleed' or 'You and I.'"

Still, the time off did the man good. "The energy is the most important thing ... I drank two bottles of whiskey every day for 10 years, but I stopped drinking four years ago. I'm 38 years old now. I weigh 134 pounds and I never thought I'd ever have this kind of energy. I feel better now than I did 10 years ago."

That new energy, coupled with a shift back toward harder rock, gave Cooper the inclination to do it again. After all, no one puts on a show like Alice Cooper and he knows that better than anyone else.

Two years in the making, the current tour promises to be quite a spectacle. Though Cooper won't give specifics about the show and thereby spoil the surprise, he did say that the guillotine is being employed "and it's now anatomically correct." Also, he said, the people who were involved in making the film "Aliens" were enlisted for staging and costumes and there's "even more blood than ever before."

Perhaps it's best said that Alice Cooper's show is a living, breathing 3-D slasher film come to life and set to music. He'd probably like that a lot, although he'd insist that there's more plot to one of his shows than just gratuitous slicing and dicing.

The question remains, though: Is there an audience for Cooper's brand of gore and glory in 1986? For Halloween in Detroit, his shows sold-out in a matter of minutes. But what about shows that aren't scheduled for a day devoted to ghosts and goblins?

Cooper's banking that his hold on the crowd will continue. "This is like shotgun theater. I'm always tempted to bring out a kitchen sink at the end because it's like 'OK, now you've got it all...'

"It's all manipulation — it's the biggest part of the show. My love affair with the audience is literally that I rape them. But they want to be treated roughly and they come expecting to be taken.

"Most performers come out there begging for applause, but not Alice. He's like give it to me NOW! Alice is a very arrogant character."

One would think that with an attitude like that Cooper might have problems functioning in the real world. But, he countered in a nice, calm voice, "Naw, I'm not like that at all. That's just an alter-ego thing which comes out when I put on the makeup. I can use Alice any time I want, but it just gets boring, so I think a lot of people may be disappointed when they meet me offstage 'cause I'm nothing like what they expect."

Does that mean that the onstage character never comes out in public?

"Well, I've had to use Alice a few times when people get pushy or boisterous, but I don't make it a habit. Or occasionally when we don't have any luck getting into places. But, it's not something I like to do."

ALICE COOPER - with Vinnie Vincent's Invasion Sunday 8 p.m. at the West Palm Beach Auditorium, 1610 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., and Wednesday, 9 p.m. at the James L. Knight International Center, 400 S.E. Second Ave., Miami.