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A Tired Nightmare Show Revitalized for Casino Gig

ALICE COOPER could tell right away that he had hit the big leagues.

For, instead of the usual tiled dressing room with all the personality of a meat locker, he had the entire 15th floor of the hotel at his disposal. Plus guards, a Lear jet, and a mansion by the lake with three chefs working around the clock.

This was the wonderland that Cooper entered when he brought his $450,000 Welcome To My Nightmare show to the Sahara Tahoe for a week's run. As booking agent Johnny Todell boasted of Cooper and his 43-member entourage (including actor Vincent Price): "Man, we own this town. We own every waiter, every croupier, every bartender, hooker and cabbie. They're all wearing Alice Cooper buttons!"

The coupling of Cooper and the Sahara isn't as crazy as it may seem. While a pioneer of ambisextrous images and horror-show staging, Cooper's off-stage life seems to contain many of the trappings of Middle America: Game shows, golf, Ozzie and Harriet, and beer.

Whatever, the long lines of red-eyed youths snaking through the casino before each show were surely a sight for dollar-sign eyes. The sell-out crowd of 1,500 shelled out $5.50 each to get inside. They greased the palm of the maitre d' if they wanted a good seat.

"He must have been doing good business," said a young mechanic who had driven 600 miles from Los Angeles. "We tipped $25 to get to the fifth row, and everybody else around us paid at least $5 to $10 to get to that area."

What the mechanic and the others saw was a trimmed-down version of the Nightmare show, which clocked in at a neat 75 minutes. Management has the losses in the casino figured if the act stays on one extra minute.

The audience also saw a rejuvenated Cooper and troupe. The idea of pulling Nightmare from its deep sleep for one more run-through had hardly excited Cooper and company. But playing before such an intimate crowd with their man-sized spiders, 10-foot Cyclops, movie screens, pyramids and other huge props somehow made powerful a show that the band had long grown tired of.

The back-up band sounded the same as ever, playing as subtly as crashing trees. But the crowd didn't seem to hear or notice, for their eyes stayed mostly on non-stop Cooper, who swept from side to side in his white tie and tails or orange tights, darting about his skeleton and spider-disguised dancers and snarling into his cordless microphone.

The audience ate it up, hurling war whoops and, later, glasses and other odds and ends.

Backstage, manager Shep Gordon was excited because the audience had noticed the subtle theatrics — "for once."

"All through the last tour, we'd get together after the show and have the same conversation," Gordon explained. "Alice would say: 'Well, we killed ourselves again. And they just wanted the hits." This was the first time we felt appreciated for the show we put on."