Article Database

Cleveland Plain Dealer
May 1978

Author: Jane Scott

The indestructible Alice

If you were over 30 and had already been guillotined, electrocuted and attacked by three black widow spiders onstage, you might hang it up.

But not Alice Cooper.

The superstar was not only hammered into a graveyard coffin by four ghouls at the Coliseum last night, but he was also machine-gunned by five-foot chickens.

He jumped onto the stage through a 40-by-40-foot mock TV screen. And film clips of many of the bizarre sketches were shown on a screen as they happened to him onstage.

Cooper not only came back with Angel, his 6-foot-2 boa constrictor, but $400,000 woth of equipment and 30 tons of light and stage props.

This was something of a retrospective show. Some of the sketches had been seen in his previous concert, "Welcome To My Nightmare."But the magic screen and four excellent dancer - Sheryl Stoddard Cooper, his wife of 14 months; Yuichi Sugiuama, Clifford Allen and Rosa Aragon - added punch and power to the show.

The first act, Jay Ferguson, was booed when he left. That was because there wasn't time for an encore. The former keyboard player/singer of Spirit and Jojo Gunne gave such a fast-moving and hard-hitting show that he brought, the 15,000 fans to their feet asking for more. One of the best songs was his "Alone in the End Zone." Among his players was a Cleveland area guitarist, Bob Webb, who had played with Joe Walsh's Barnstorm.