What better venue than the Playhouse Theatre for the Alice Cooper show with its resident ghost, Arthur, knocking about on the ninth floor?
Opening act Bobbie Dazzle kicks the night into action with a platform boot and some foot-stomping British glam rock at 7:30pm prompt. During Flowers On Mars, there’s an immediate and positive reaction from the audience for the act’s first time in Edinburgh. Fronted by Siân Greenway, the cat-suited show-woman sings joyfully about all that glitters and is gold during Revolution, with its power-chorus and chords to match. Back To The City contains an infectious Mott The Hoople-style intro that turns into another infectious earworm. A cover of Abba’s Watch Out is a good fit for the band and clearly connected with what this Edinburgh audience loved about the early 1970s.
It’s not long before two plague doctors walk across the stage in front of a massive banner that reads ‘Banned in Scotland! Alice Cooper! In a top hat and spider eyes, Cooper bursts out to the crunching riff and sing-along chorus of Lock Me Up that runs into Welcome To The Show. His trio of guitarists and bassist Chuck Garrick line up behind him like a gang of rock vampires, as the track suggests, they look like they have just been let out of a cage. A veteran in the front row catches Cooper’s cane after he launches it into the manic front row, she lets out a shriek of glee after catching it and guards it with her life. It’s not long before Alice digs into his bounty of hits and jukebox classics, the irresistible guitar hook of No More Mr Nice Guy cranks up as Cooper points his sword into far the stalls.
Perhaps there would have been no Sex Pistols without Cooper’s I’m Eighteen, the song Johnny Rotten performed when asked to audition for the band. During the performance, Cooper still subtly captures the tension, attitude, and anxiety of being a teenager. Another theatrical high point is He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask), the track has a life of its own and a cult following due to its synth leanings and the fact that it was also the theme for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. During the performance, the original shock rocker produces another moment of memorable theatre when a supposed fan runs on stage to take pictures, at Cooper’s instruction, Jason slits the fan’s throat, blood spurts, and the Coop’s goons remove the body from the stage.
Bass player Chuck Garrick bumps and stomps along on bass and delivers the groove as Cooper shakes a handful of yellow maracas during the funky, comic-horror 1976 cut Go To Hell. The unmistakable riff of his late 80s pop-rock classic Poison finds Alice return to the stage in a purple tunic while stalking the stage. A melodic Ballad of Dwight Fry finds Alice breaking free of a straitjacket to overcome his tormentor during another big-show number. It features his wife, Sheryl, a dancer and choreographer who has been part of Cooper’s show on and off for 50 years. She sends her husband to the guillotine during a singalong of I Love The Dead. The show ends with his 1972 classic School’s Out, as the riff begins, massive colourful balloons bounce out onto the crowd’s heads and burst, showering them with confetti. A final encore of Feed My Frankenstein finishes with a Cooper version of the monster thrashing around the stage. At the end, there’s a fitting tribute to another rock titan, Ozzy Osbourne, who passed away the day before. Alice leads the Edinburgh crowd for a chant of “Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy Ozzy”.
Cooper remains a master of his craft and one of rock n’ roll’s greatest survivors.
