Article Database

Alice Cooper's Hallowe'en Night of Fear

It's a question of how you like your Hallowe'en thrills. Do you prefer bobbing apples or gawplng at sideshow freaks? Do you take ghoulish fascination in watching a man drive a long nail into his nostril? Hey, do you want the most legendary shock-rocker of them all? At the Roundhouse in London you got 'em. Alice Cooper, at 62 still merrily pushing the boundaries of good taste, hosts Hallowe'en events with some appropriately lurid support.

You may recall Jim Rose from his circus In the 1995, when he would regurgitate razor blades and staple-gun dollar bills to his forehead while his colleagues swung heavy weights attached to piercings In painful places. Then there's Zodiac Mindwarp, the veteran sleaze-rocker remembered for such records as Tattooed Beat Messiah and enjoying an amorous encounter in a bathful of eels. Cooper will have the usual help from zombies, duelling guitar heroes and enough fake blood to make the next Saw movie. He explains the appeal of his oeuvre thus: "You ever find a picture of the worst outbreak of bolls recorded on camera, or a humungous tumour growing in someone's stomach? At first. you're llke, Woah! I don't want to see that!', but in just a second you're glued." Different strokes for different folks, perhaps.

Frequenters of vicarage tea parties should avoid at all costs — for anyone else, this bizarro rock 'n' roll circus should be gruesomely good fun.

(Original published in the Playlist entertainment supplement of The Times, covering October 30 - November 5, 2010)