Sydney Entertainment Centre
August 24, 2009
Alice Cooper’s ‘Theatre of Death tour’ was everything one would expect from a man who more or less single-handedly invented his own genre, shock rock. He was decapitated, hung, electrified and lethally injected, usually by a deranged nurse, played by his real-life daughter. He murdered (by strangling), murdered (by stabbing with a mike stand,) necrophiled, threw money and diamonds into the crowd while brandishing a sword and played with a very true-to-life model of his own head. His costumes included an outfit with 7 extra, spindly metal arms, a straightjacket, and a blinding suit completely covered in glittering silver sequins, with matching cane and hat. And all this decadent cavorting took place under huge, hovering letters spelling alice.
Naturally, the music was at least as good as the spectacle of a stage show – the ‘seated’ section of the crowd surged to their feet and head banged like crazy as Alice (whose real name is the even more gothic cool Vincent Damon Furnier,) growled out tune after classic tune. He deviated between sludging, shaking guitar in songs like ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ and ‘Cold Ethel,’ to soulful crooning, even *gasp* sitting down for ‘Only Women Bleed.’ Thankfully, he didn’t make the mistake many of his contempories have in trying to focus on more recent material, and dedicated himself instead to his roots, with a nice helping of Billion Dollar Babies, School’s Out, Killer and so on served up with a smattering of more recent releases, that didn’t sound overly out of place amongst the old school anthems. The band was superb, slicing out the rock with professionalism, while at the same time sounding like they were having fun – it takes a mighty fine combination of musicians to take the stage with Alice, and they did it with finesse.
The support band, Electric Mary, were annoying, sending forth wave after wave of indistinguishable rock which hailed to the great, classic rock n roll of the 70’s but didn’t quite get there. The front man was either wasted or acting wasted, the latter seeming more likely, as he told jokes that weren’t funny and tried a little too hard to impress us with how Aussie and cool he was.
I was a little worried pre-concert about the prospect of watching someone who has lived nearly 6 decades stagger about the stage – the fact that the majority of the audience were in the 40+ age bracket did nothing to disperse this – but I had nothing to worry about. The heavy lines accumulated over the past 59 years only added to Alice’s leering, Goth/serial killer look, and this man is one example of ageing, if not gracefully, then at least with style – even if it was slightly ironic to hear him belt out “I’m eighteen! I don’t know what to do!” The concert started, and finished, with the fiendishly catchy rock anthem ‘School’s Out’ - the oldies in the crowd even sung along! Alice Cooper proved to Sydney tonight that he truly is one of the great rock institutions.
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