“This is weird … even for me,” declares legendary singer Alice Cooper about his current stage show.
Cooper is revered for helping to create the shock rock genre in the early 1970s. He did so by uniting edgy music with an intense, theatrical performance featuring mock executions, oversized props and more.
However, with his extravaganza reconfigured by an outside choreographer for this current stint — dubbed The Gruesome Twosome Tour — even The Coop has been thrown off his game. By his own doing, mind you.
“I think that after directing the show for so many years, people knew what to expect,” Cooper reveals about feeling his concerts had become complacent. “(Fans) could anticipate where I’d be going or what might happen. I wanted to take that away so I took my hands off the production and gave the reins to someone else.”
Without revealing too many details, Cooper points out that the results of hiring a director/choreographer for the show are clearly outside his comfort zone, forcing him to come to terms with the new script.
“They have me doing things I never expected. At one point, I’m standing on a garbage can with a noose around my neck dressed in a nurse’s outfit. At first, I was like, ‘You want me to do what? I don’t know if I like that idea.’ But that’s what Alice Cooper is about: Unnerving you and doing the unexpected. So even Alice had to accept it.”
The Coop is starting to warm up to this fresh approach even if it is mockingly begrudgingly.
“Yeah, I had to get used (the new show) but now I like it,” he concedes cheerfully. “This is the most intense show I’ve done in years, it has so many new parts. It’s quite exciting and somewhat invigorating.”
At that, Cooper notes how touring with Rob Zombie is equally stimulating. A colleague and obvious understudy with his own overtly animated and stunning, carnivalesque performances, the two have much in common. It leads one to wonder why a production of this sort is only happening now, 20-something years into their friendship.
“You know, I wondered the same thing,” he smiles. “But at least it’s happening. It’s like a double-feature because Rob and I are quite similar, yet I think what we do is different enough to be complementary.”
“In a horror movie context, I’m using old school physical effects while he’s CGI, so we cover a wide berth. My show is quite cerebral; a tongue-in-cheek Vaudevillian theatricality with props and choreography. His features video and pyrotechnics while he’s up there dancing around like a Voodoo high priest that just crawled out of a swamp … He’s like a younger brother to me. It’s fun.”
