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Alice's Show
The singing isn't much, but the action and reaction are
"Anybody here like Richard Speck?" asks Alice Cooper of a roomful of newsmen. "Man, I'd lick his knife for you guys."
The news guys act amused. They've heard all about Alice, the malevolent androgyne rock singer rumored to have sucked the blood of live chickens during his triumphant European tour, and this wasted guy talking about the Chicago multiple slayer isn't nearly so formidable. Besides, the booze had been flowing like water for nearly an hour before Alice showed up.
Alice doesn't look like much. One of those guys who looks 50 and is probably 30. Has an alarmingly ugly body and a face to match. Five o'clock shadow. Dressed in a nicely tailored red-and-green plaid suit. Gripping a beer; they say he drinks a case a day.
"My audience is much sicker than I am," Alice says. "Everybody here wants to chop a doll up. Last night in Cincinnati, somebody threw a dead rabbit on the stage. It was a real trip. No, we didn't eat it, we smoked it."
Later, Alice talks about Yvonne, the fat boa constrictor he uses in his show.
"The image of the snake is immediately sexual," he says. "Whether it makes you laugh or vomit, whether it makes you scared or sexy, it makes no difference. I help my audiences to get closer to their own fantasies... I don't feel any responsibility for an audience. I didn't ask them to come. I'm just there."
Somebody asks if Alice takes anything, anything at all, seriously. He replies that he takes alcohol very seriously, and a couple of women — "But even they're jokes, really." He confides that he made $64,000 in Cincinnati. Mysteries start clearing up.
With Flo and Eddie, a couple of rock musicians who share the bill with him, Alice launches into a bent version of an old favorite: "Wherever we go, whatever we do, we're gonna go through it together..." What they're going through is a 100-day tour across America. What they're selling is a new aesthetic, an aesthetic of disgust.
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Thousands of kids are jammed into the Convention Center, filling it, and it seems as if at least half of them are 14 or younger. I keep hearing a familiar television voice: "Do you know where your children are?" It's festival seating, which means that several thousand kids are sitting on the floor, jammed together, kicking and elbowing. The unmistakable bouquet of marijuana is in the air.
Flo and Eddie, whose real names are Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, lead off and get hte kids ready for Alice, with burlesque routines, sexual gestures, and improper suggestions.
Finally Alice appears onstage, wearing a white tailcoat, skin tight white trousers, and a pair of four-inch-platform leopard skin over-the-knee boots that look like they come from a low budget Errol Flynn skin flicks.
As soon as he appears, the crowd loses all shreds of sanity. I'm down behind a wooden shield, between the stage and the audience, taking pictures. As soon as Alice comes on stage, I'm showered with spittle. Alice spits into the audience, and thousands of kids spit back.
The real power of Alice's show is its dramatic effect. The kids are out of their minds. They shriek with perverse hunger as Alice lies onstage and strokes himself. This is very definitely not "My Friend Flicka." The 8- and 9-year-olds tear their hair; tears course down their cheeks; they shove until the wooden barrier seems ready to collapse.
Two years ago, when Alice first appeared in Louisville, he was strapped into an electric chair. Last year he was hanged. This year's gimmick was a guillotine.
The cheap magic trick drew gasps from the crowd; the executioner reached into the wicker basket that ostensibly caught Alice's severed head and pulled out his two blood-covered hands. Alice and his group sang:
"I love the dead before they're cold,
They're bluing flesh for me to hold.
Cadaver eyes upon me see nothing.
I love the dead before they rise,
No farewells, no goodbyes..."
Alice was resurrected, of course. When he reappeared, the kids threw things at him. One of the missiles was a switchblade knife; it stuck in the floor of the stage.
Later, Alice taunted the crowd, "I haven't been insulted yet tonight. Let's hear you say the dirtiest thing you can say."
They showered him with abuse, none of it original, none of it interesting, none of it really dirty.
But Alice loved it. He stood in the spotlight, basking in the invective the way other performers stand soaking in the applause of loving fans. The kids really tried to impress him, but failed. Then he took hold of an axe and told the crowd that he enjoys the thought of cutting up 15-year-old girls. There was no shortage of volunteers.
They unfurled the American flag, and passed sparklers all around as the strains of "God Bless America" echoed in the big auditorium. And it was over.