Alice Cooper: The Spectrum, Philadelphia

Ron Ross, Phonograph Record, April 1973

DIDN'T IT STRIKE you as strange, even back then before Peter and Gordon or the color series of Beatle cards, that they could call a monstrously ubiquitous single, ‘Can't Buy Me Love’? I mean, did you really think that there was anything the Beatles couldn't buy? And didn't strike you odd that Rod Stewart, after he became the biggest thing since white bread, had the balls to begin an album "Never been a millionaire"?

So BILLION DOLLAR BABIES, a new album and stage show by Alice Cooper, is notable if for no other reason than it is the first time a group has congratulated themselves on their own stardom and affluence, taking a great deal of trouble to initiate along the way as many press people as possible in the joys of rock and roll lubrication, a fine technique greased by champagne, roast beef, half hour rides on private planes, Billion Dollar Baby pillow cases, and press kits in the shape of a wallet. Bring together Stereo Review, Rolling Stone, 16, Creem, the New Yorker, and a number of freelancers, Tosches and Meltzer among them, for twenty-four hours of what is supposed to be living up to the rock and roll lifestyle, make the venue Philadelphia's Spectrum, gutted of orchestra seats and filled with thousands of Alice's constituents who have come to see what is not only the biggest show in town, but the only one, and what you have is an American microcosm every bit as relevant as ‘Let's Make a Deal’ or Gleem II.

In a period in which both Marc Bolan and reggae are happening trends, Alice Cooper, no wimpy bleeding heart singer-songwriter, says proudly "America First," cutting through dollar devaluations and presidential campaign funding scandals, to a basic truth: this is the only country in the world that could support hulahoops, Davy Crockett, Disneyland, and Alice Cooper, all of them in their time, mints, ya know. After toothpaste and toilet paper, pop's what we seem to gotta have next, and Alice isn't about to stress the sociological implications of necking a snake, when the financial, sexual, and aesthetic rewards are so self-evident.

In fact, all that freakiness was kinda getting in the way, keeping the Cooper's singles off a "good music" stations and even preventing them from playing Broadway, so the new Alice is more show-biz than killer, and the new stage show is a tri-color presentation of his greatest hits that is more like a television Spectacular than anything else. Joe Gannon, who designed Neil Diamond's Broadway debut, has put the band behind a blinking proscenium with go-go boy cages for Michael Bruce and Dennis Dunaway, with Neal Smith up and above them, and Alice in front on his own show-girl altar that leads down on either side via flashing stair-cases to a space completely removed from the band and roughly head-level with respect to the people. This gives Alice his best vantage point for throwing posters at the crowd or being raped by a glittery super-phallic dentist's drill during ‘Unfinished Sweet’, while James Bond moozic honks in the background.

The show features three costume changes from a white ensemble that places Alice as a pop star imagist somewhere between Tom Jones and Al Green, a black shroud that gives Alice plenty of elbow room to crawl through and molest a forest of doll's arms, heads, and legs, while singing ‘I Love the Dead’, and a finale in which the Coopers return to a mod red, perform their next single, ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’, and salute the largest American flag since Patton while a tape of Kate Smith singing ‘God Bless America’ sends the soporific masses back home better for the experience.

The only thing missing was Bob Hope as MC, and as it was, they had Kal Rudman, mysteriously omnipotent record tipster, on hand in a gear vest as the sixth Cooper. If rock and roll had gone to Viet Nam, this show despite ‘Dead Babies’ (or maybe because of it) would have passed inspection. It may be the first rock show to go to Red China, and the ping pong matches Alice has staged against Santa Claus and other celebrities would indicate that he is planning to meet the Chinks on their own ground. They probably eat snakes and never saw Lawrence Welk, so there'll be some changes made.

I miss the bubbles at the end during ‘Elected’, the garbage can knife fight, and the gallows, although a guillotine stunt is provided courtesy of the Amazing Randy, and Dali has executed a hologram of Alice's brain for his New York show. With all the guys generally behind Alice instead of around him, there is a bizarre contrast between the abstract mechanical televised staginess of the act and the milling shoving kids beneath. Alice is physically closer to the audience than the Stones, for instance, would allow, but he seems somehow even more abstracted and invulnerable. Except for certain musical highlights like ‘School's Out’ and ‘Elected’, there is more circus going on than rock and roll, yet such bits as Alice falling to the floor and slipping down the flight of stairs with Iggyish rubberiness during ‘Eighteen’ demonstrate that he's still got his Detroit together.

Flo and Eddie will cover the nation with Alice, and they are real interesting for two reasons. First they are not Slade or any of the other almost there groups that Alice could have put over the top with this tour, and second, they are as fluently eclectic a band as any English group going. They rock harder than the Mothers ever dreamed of, with Aynsley Dunbar on drums and Gary Rowles from Love on guitar, their Turtles' hits sound as sunny as ever, and they are funnier than the Faces and as obsequious to an audience as Grand Funk. All this makes them very commercial, and between their first single being the Small Faces' ‘Afterglow’ and Mark Volman's guitar moves resembling Marc Bolan interpreted by a cartoon hippo, they may be the first thing from America to approach the multi-musicality and ironic humanism of the Bonzos.

A dada evening all in all, and one that promoted Alice Cooper as slickly and absurdly as a made-for-television movie. The Coopers are everything that makes rock attractive with all but that one intangible aspect of excitement that makes for what we might blush to consider "Great Music." In a musical environment that makes tours and flash more newsworthy than records and music itself, Alice has got his game down. All three Philadelphia papers ran intelligent and accurate stories on the Cooper show before the New York music press even got into town, and with that kind of coverage in fifty-six cities, Alice Cooper could become as much a household phrase a Gardol or yo-yo. There's a sign outside of Philly that advertises Taystee-Cakes with the slogan "All the good things in one." I pretty much took that one for what it was worth.

Ruslan Katronov for Lost in Nirvana.