Aug. 30, 2018

Alice Cooper On His 50 Years As A One-Man Nightmare Factory

 

Long before Travis Scott had ’em “stage diving out the nosebleeds.” Long before Drake deployed flying Lamborghinis and synchronized drones on his Aubrey And The Three Migos tour. Long before Kendrick Lamar battled ninjas onstage during his DAMN tour. Long before Kanye West wore custom jeweled Margiela masks and mounted ice volcanos on the Yeezus tour.

Long before anyone really considered what it meant to bring spectacle to a live concert, there was Alice Cooper. With his ominous array of boa constrictors, guillotines, gallons of fake blood, inflatable set pieces, and signature black face paint, the horror rock icon helped define the very concept of a concert as something more than just a way to watch your favorite performer play your favorite songs at hazardous volume. He made the experience into a real show. Something you’d tell your friends about for weeks after it happened. Something you’d never forget as long as you lived. Something that’d haunt your dreams.

“[When] that curtain goes up all of a sudden I am not that same guy,” Cooper told me recently about his onstage transformation from Vincent Furnier into the man we all love and fear as Alice. “I become that character and the game is on. And that character is a villain and he goes out there with absolutely no attitude of ‘Gee, I hope you like us tonight.’ He goes out there with the attitude of grabbing ’em by the throat and shaking them for an hour and a half.”

Cooper’s latest throat-grabbing endeavor is a live album titled A Paranormal Evening At The Olympia Paris that was recorded in December 2017 at the end of his last tour. With several live albums and concert films to his name already you might wonder why he’s decided to roll out another one. Well, the answer is pretty simple. “This band just clicks every single night and I said, ‘Well, when you’ve got that kind of a band, record it live,’ because I knew that every night the show was really good,” he explained. “Our drummer Glen Sobel was just voted best drummer in rock and roll. Our lead guitar player Nita Strauss was just voted Best Female Guitar Player in Rock and Roll… I just surrounded myself with the best players.”….

Read the full interview with Uproxx HERE