On stage, the lead singer of a rock band, a young man named Alice Cooper, has taken off his silver jump suit to reveal black leotards and panty hose. Now he has a live boa constrictor and is wrapping it around his arm.

Henry Edwards, the author of “Harlan Smythe Grossfeld,” a novel about the contemporary La Doice Vita of New York, is in a back row on the edge of his seat screaming “We love you, Alice!"

Now Alice is wrapping the snake around his neck. “We love you. Alice!"

Henry's friend, writer Lorraine Alterman, turns to him. "Maybe the snake will strangle him," she says.

“That's too much to hope for," he mutters, then returns to what he was doing. "We love you, Alice!"

Another freak show. This one has a message, or says that it has, but we will set this annoying fact aside for a moment. Alice Cooper is a rock band and also the assumed name of its lead singer.

Alice wears female clothes and makeup, and has a great many female affectations. He also has a good many violent affectations, wherein lies much of the appeal of the classic freak show.

This particular performance took place recently in Town Hall. It was Alice Cooper’s first major concert in the city. Word was out ahead that Gerard Melanga, the Warhol superstar, was going to perform a whip dance with Alice. This didn’t work out, but it was enough to bring out New York Pop Society, that curious amalgam of rock people, writers, various weird off-off Broadway people, and the Warhol camp.

So the Alice Cooper concert was a certified event. "Everybody who is anybody is here," somebody actually said in the lobby. This is how the concert went.

The group came out on stage wearing skin-tight silver jump suits. Later, Alice did a strip dance from the jumpsuit, revealing leotards slit to the navel, and the panty hose. The group began a long, loud and generally undistinguished set. They’re good, professional and capable of building excitement musically, but like so many hard rock bands, there is no particular melody and it all seems pretty much a background for the lead singer.

Alice, unlike most boys in girls' clothing, is fairly unimpressive facially. In his more grotesque moments, he looks a bit like Tiny Tim. He is thin and slinks around stage, but does not slink well. He coyly exposed a shoulder and one breast and sang a few songs.

Then a woman in costume came onstage and led him off. She returned a few minutes later with Alice in a straitjacket. "They said they'd let me out of here,” he sang. Then he did another strip, removing the straitjacket.

He played with a hammer, a plastic rod, the boa constrictor; then some stagehands carried out an electric chair. Alice sat down and, at the crucial moment of electrocution, a lot of lights ringing the chair flashed on and off.

It would be nice if this were just a good old freak show. But as McLuhan supposedly said, "Art is whatever you can get away with."

So this is art and Alice has a lot of explanations. The members of the group see themselves as surrealists, exaggerating such choice American concerns as sex and violence. The name of Salvador Dali comes up often in their press handouts. He supposedly asked that his painting. "Geopoliticus Child," be used as a future Alice Cooper album cover.

The male-female confusion in the act is deliberate. Alice says. "People are both male and female, biologically, he explained "The typical male American thinks he is all male -- 100 per cent, but what he has to realize is that he's got a feminine side."

The familiar genetic fact -- that a male has both a male and a female chromosome -- is mentioned as evidence of this. So Alice tries to show Americans what they really are.

"We act as a mirror." he said. "People see themselves through us. Many times they react violently because they don't like what they see."

True, a bunch of motorcycle people tried to stomp them once. True, an entire audience walked out on them in Los Angeles. True, the group used to con audiences into such a fervor that they would come on stage and kill rabbits; a clever social-psychological trick.

So this is all very serious, you all. Newsweek called Alice Cooper "Dada rock,” and wrote "The element of esthetic and social satire which is basic to rock is carried to its ultimate logical absurdity."

A few days later and after three serious discussions of Alice's "work,” I ran into Henry Edwards.

"Alice Cooper is the Judy Garland of rock,” he said. "You know how people used to yell 'We love you, Judy?’" Alice Cooper is the first soul sister of the 1970s.”
-30-
(c)1971 Mike Jahn; all rights reserved.

April 7-8, 1973

Following is my April 7-8, 1973, column, "New York Offbeat," which replaced "Sounds of the Seventies" when I began adding encounters with non-rock celebrities. The original headline was "Alice and His $1 Million"

'Alice has worn female clothing, used whips, killed chickens, decapitated dolls, kissed a boa constrictor, assaulted members of the band, and attacked mannequins -- all while singing'

By Mike Jahn

"To be honest, I was a little worried about the guillotine," Alice Cooper says. "The safety doesn't work too well, and, well, there was that blade hanging up there."

Alice was speaking in the lobby of the Penn Central Inn in Philadelphia where, the night before, he gave the first concert on his 1973 tour, "Billion Dollar Babies." This tour of 100 concerts will net Alice more than $1 million, which is only a nice Easter present as all five members of the rock band are long When he is since millionaires anyway.

They earn all this by presenting the most bizarre show in rock, which as a whole is a fairly bizarre enterprise. At times, Alice has worn female clothing, used whips, killed chickens, decapitated dolls, kissed a boa constrictor, assaulted members of the band, and attacked mannequins -- all while singing onstage. The three times I've seen him, he has ended his show by faking electrocution, hanging himself and finally, at the Philadelphia concert, having his head chopped off.

Doing this has sold millions of tickets and records. But such an act is not without its difficulties. One time, about a year ago, he nearly did hang himself. There is that problem with the guillotine.

And, of course, there is the personal matter; that is, Alice Cooper has come to be thought of as a weirdo.

Nothing can be further from the truth, as we can see at the Philadelphia hotel. Alice is standing in the lobby, his hand wrapped around a bottle of Budweiser, not onstage pretending to kill himself, he spends his time propped in front of a TV with a six-pack. He lives with a model named Cindy, who is a beautiful lady. There is not the slightest hint of mint in Alice's voice, just the clean and friendly tones of a midwestern boy, the son of a preacher, who is enthusiastic about his career; that is, thinking up stage shows which are amusing, entertaining and -- most of all -- financially rewarding. Alice Cooper is not his name. He uses it because it's part of the bit, and because he wants to protect his father, whose congregation might not understand.

This to me is the best part of the show; the most bizarre aspect of all. Alice Cooper, the current king of the weird, is as straight as a Boy Scout. Well, almost. He wears a beer can opener on a string around his neck, is more devoted to Budweiser than is Ed McMahon, and is honestly a nice guy to talk to. The rest is all image; more or less like Dean Martin's routine about drinking. Alice's managers and agents cling to that image feverishly. Once, when I proposed an article on Cindy, the manager turned it down. "It's not time for Alice to be thought of as a normal human being with a girlfriend," he said. "We don't want to burst the bubble just yet."

And so Alice gets onstage, as he is doing for this grand tour, and plays a man in a sado-masochistic frenzy.

"Do you anticipate running out of things to do?" Alice was asked.

"No," he said. "The kids keep getting weirder and weirder. There will always be something else."

After his head was chopped off in Philadelphia, his body apparently was cannibalized by the other members of the group.

But in the lobby of the hotel, as he is waiting for the trip to his private jet for the flight to the next engagement, an underground press writer comes up. Across the street is a sex equipment shop where he had purchased, for $12.95, an item which I would love to describe but cannot, save to say that it's outrageous. He shows it to Alice, who arches his eyebrows quizzically and pokes it tentatively with a finger.

"That's really sick," Alice Cooper says, and walks off.

-30-

Text and photos (c)1973 Mike Jahn; all rights reserved

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