Brighton Centre, 5th December 2009
“Merry Christmas and bah humbug!” Cooper’s cynicism towards the fast approaching festive season, which is probably symptomatic of the fact that he turned sixty-one last February, was the only fleeting indication of his age while on stage at the Brighton Centre.
“Bah humbug” brought to a close a night that essentially felt more like a theatre production than a live rock concert. With a culmination of four or five onstage executions, kinky nurse stripteases and several interchangeable leather suits, it all felt a bit like the inspiration for comedy acts like Spinal Tap.
However, who said that any of this was a bad thing? The fact is that Cooper has never been any different ever since the release of his first hit single (and UK number one, I might add) ‘Schools Out’ all the way back in summer of 1972. For these long thirty-seven years Cooper’s onstage antics have made him notorious with audiences all over the world, in actual fact it was this stage madness that appealed to then-record producer Frank Zappa who consequently signed Cooper to his label Straight Records.
The burning irony behind all of the onstage self-destruction and death is of course that Vincent Damon Furnier (better known by his stage name Alice Cooper) seems to never stop. His act just will not relent in all of its ritual slaughtering glory.
Unsurprisingly though, he seems to have teamed up with several younger musicians for this tour, thus maintaining the burning musical aggression and enthusiasm in the heavy rock guitar sound which made him so popular all those years ago.
His voice, though not as booming and piercing as in times past, still remains surprisingly in tact. This seems to be quite an achievement when considering how other acts of similar age now sound, the obvious example being Bob Dylan whose vocals are now wearing thin at best.
The standout tracks were almost inevitably the anthems ‘Poison’ and ‘Schools Out’, the latter of which Cooper actually played twice, to open and close his act.
Despite the more than middle-aged audience (several members of which actually dropped off halfway through the gig), the slightly tired stage antics and the fact that school has been out for nearly forty years, Alice Cooper is still rocking.
And what is more he is doing so without dancing like a dad at his children’s birthday parties, all of which makes this an act worth catching, if you can get a babysitter of course.
Words by James Rowland
alicecooper.com
What did you think of the gig?
Lyndsey: 9/10 “I thought it was awesome but the only complaint if any was that he didn’t play enough of his classics”
