Alice Cooper with Man Raze at Glasgow Clyde Auditorium (25/11/09) review 4/5

The poster on the wall inside the Glasgow Auditorium on this rainy November evening reads ‘They keep killing him… and he keeps coming back!’. Which is very true; Alice Cooper has been performing for over four decades now (!), being - amongst other gruesome acts - hung, electrocuted, maimed, decapitated and strangled in his legendary live show, but is still going strongly, shocking and grossing-out adults and bores everywhere he goes. Even ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett called him ‘obscene’. What’s that? Oh, yeah, that is the same Mr. Blunkett who got caught shagging his married secretary and breaking ministerial laws for personal gain. But I digress.

First up are Man Raze, who can count Def Leppard’s Phil Collen and The Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook in their ranks. They’ve also got Simon Laffy from Girl on bass (I’d never heard of him either). They fare well tonight on their first Scottish show, with a nice hard rock sound and covers of The Stooges’ ‘Search And Destroy’ and The Jam’s ‘That’s Enterainment’. One very satisfied punter in the front row gives them a standing ovation after every song. Not the greatest of bands, but an enjoyable little act and a nice wee side project for the members nonetheless.

Then, off go the school bells, down falls the curtain, and there’s The Master himself, pointing his cane wildly during the stomp of opener ‘School’s Out’. Some oddly shaped… shapes hang from the ceiling, and it’s only after a close look you see that they’re letters spelling out ‘aLiCe’. But there’s enough going on below them to distract you from their garish sparkle - it’s only five songs in and Alice’s head is stuck in a guillotine, before a blade drops and cuts it clean off. He’s a nightmare, you just can’t take your eyes off him for a second without him doing something like this. Seconds later he appears from behind the morbid contraption, lifts his own head out of the basket and laments his actions in ‘Go To Hell’ (’for gambling and drinking alcohol constantly/for making us doubt our parents’ authority/for choosing to be a living obscenity/I have gone to Hell’).

‘Theatre Of Death’ is certainly an apt name for this show; after this spectacle, Alice watches dancer Tiffany Lowe’s shadow do a striptease from behind a screen, but then he decides to strangle her to death with a pair of tights instead. He’s not such a bad guy though; he then affectionally sits her corpse on his knee and serenades it with ‘Only Women Bleed’, before being led to the gallows, where he sings ‘I Never Cry’ - the last line of which is replaced by the sound of his neck breaking as he’s hung. Other deaths this evening include being injected with an oversized needle during rock classic ‘Poison’ and being put in an iron maiden while bassist Chuck Garric leads the band for a soaring rendition of ‘I Love The Dead’.

Whilst on the subject, one must not forget his backing group. While not as notable or tight as some of his previous line-ups (the last one featuring Kiss’ Eric Singer), they carry the music of the show in a relaxed fashion while Mr. Cooper indulges in all sorts of carnage around them.

After ‘Under My Wheels’ and another run through of ‘School’s Out’ (he only played half of it at the start, strangely), it’s time for him to go spread some blood and guts over the next city, but not before he’s threw some huge balloons over the audience and high-fived the first few rows. ‘Welcome to my nightmare/I think you’re gonna like it’, he sneers in that old favourite. Judging by the roaring of fans - young and old - here tonight, everyone really, really, really did.

Article by Andy McDonald