At 60, Alice Cooper Is Still

The Master Of The Macabre

 

By John Voket

There are some artists you always dream of meeting or chatting with. For me it was shock rocker Alice Cooper.

So when I got the chance to live the dream and chat with him prior to the release of his latest project, a concept album called Along Came A Spider, I told him how as a Catholic School eighth-grader, I would pull out my Alice Cooper eight-tracks and play them for my neighborhood friends.

Then their parents wouldn’t let them play with me anymore.

Cooper said he had heard that story before, but was critical of those who, even early-on, rejected him and his music because of its macabre style.

“So you were just like me, an outcast,” Cooper replied. “But that music was designed that way. I realized all my fans were going to be on the outskirts, the outlaws among their friends. My fans were not going to be the Beatles fans, they were going to be those kids who were a little more artistic ... who didn’t think like everybody else.”

Cooper said he always understood the outcasts.

“I was the boy between age 10 and 15 who watched every horror movie, I always laughed at the wrong time, and I always had a dark sense of humor, and it’s always come through in the music,” Cooper said. “I just never realized there were that many outcasts out there who related to me.”

As the clock tolled 9 on Halloween evening, and the lights went down at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort Casino, a legion representing four generations of outcasts greeted a sneering but svelte Alice Cooper who rewarded them all with a 100 minute plus set of his own brand of Psycho Drama.

Sounding better than ever, the leather-clad Cooper moved around the stage wielding all manner of objects from a cane that complimented his occasional top hat, to a riding crop — which some fan took home after it was chucked into the crowd — to several swords, to an obviously fake baby doll that was skewered to a bloody stake.

The latter was a perfectly creepy compliment to “Dead Babies,” from the 1971 album Killer – a run-of-the-mill prop for a performer like Cooper.

But, Cooper paid the price for his horrific shenanigans, first being bound up in a straight jacket for one of the highpoint numbers of the show, the “Ballad of Dwight Frye,” before being strung up on makeshift gallows to pay the ultimate price for his sins.

In between it was the raucous audience that reveled in Alice Cooper’s many dark and devious prescriptions, screaming along with hit after familiar hit. From the opening cavalcade that included, “No More Mr Nice Guy,” “Under My Wheels,” “I’m Eighteen,” and “It’s My Body,” to the encore strains of “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Elected,” the Coop remained in top form, putting on a show that belied his chronological 60 years.

While it did not play a major role in the Halloween set, Cooper teased the crowd with two numbers from Along Came a Spider. The new album, which Cooper said he is readying for a fully staged 2009 tour, was represented by “(In Touch With) Your Feminine Side” and “Vengence Is Mine.”

His last concept album, 1975’s “Welcome to My Nightmare,” got more attention with the haunting guitar riff of the title track pitching his dedicated fans into delirious fits of joy as a nation of costumed zombies limped and danced around the stage like rejected extras from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video.

Then “Cold Ethel” fed into Cooper’s first big crossover hit, “Only Women Bleed,” which actually got airplay on easy listening stations back in the day ... frightening!

The period between “...Nightmare” and “...Spider” was also well represented with the crunching power chords of “Feed My Frankenstein,” “Poison,” “Lost in America” and “Dirty Diamonds,” which found Cooper dangling dozens of fake diamond necklaces over his head before tossing them into the roiling throng that gathered in front of the stage.

While his stage show always was an over the top experience, no level of fan adoration will forgive an artist who is all flash and no substance. And Cooper will be the first one to admit that from the early days to his latest offering, his first and foremost job is crafting good songs.

In fact, in the early 1970s, Bob Dylan himself was quoted complimenting the songwriting skills of Alice Cooper.

“You know we worked in a time when you put an album out and hoped a single would break the Top 40. Every week bands would put out about 500 singles, and they would pick one or two new songs for the Top 40,” Cooper recalled. “We were up against Simon & Garfunkel, and the Supremes, and The Beatles, so you better have a great single ... and we had 14 of those!”

Cooper said his latest project reflects the best combination of a fleshed out storyline, similar to his massively popular Welcome to My Nightmare, populated with quick hit, buzz saw rockers and yes, one sweet ballad as well.

The concept for Along Came a Spider, Cooper thought, would make a great radio drama but he thought contemporary fans wouldn’t get it. So he packaged the songs with an introduction that leads listeners to believe they are chapters from a serial killer’s diary, until the very last note when...

“It leaves the audience with one of two things: either none of the murders happened, or there’s another killer out there,” he said. “I love the idea of leaving the audience with that question.”