Location: Ljubljana / Hala Tivoli / Slovenia
Date: 12.06.2016
On the very day the worst mass shooting in US history rang out around the world, the godfather of shock rock, Alice Cooper, paid Ljubljana’s Hala Tivoli a visit, ending a long drought of rock events worth mentioning in that venue. The legendary maestro of shock and creepiness had gathered an impressive band around him, and the loudest applause of the night from the Tivoli crowd went to the superb guitarist Nita Strauss, whose gorgeous stage presence also drew plenty of looks from the male half of the audience. The fiery blonde, who spends most of her musical career playing with the all-female band The Iron Maidens, performing Iron Maiden covers, is without a doubt one of the best guitarists currently walking the face of this planet, and she handles vocal harmonies nicely too. Nita also has some pretty fancy musical roots, by the way, as she’s a distant descendant of the famous Austrian composer Johann Strauss Jr.
Alice’s band also deserves a shout-out for the brilliant drummer Glen Sobel, who shone during his solo spot, and for bassist and backing vocalist Chuck Garrick. The other two guitarists, Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen, did a decent job on their instrumental duties and are respected session players, but Strauss with her virtuoso playing overshadowed them quite a few times. As expected, the setlist was built from Alice’s beloved classics, especially the ones from the seventies. His solo debut “Welcome to My Nightmare” (1975) was more than decently represented, with the opener “The Black Widow” coming straight from it, where Alice marched onto the stage wrapped in a black cloak. He soon cast it off and appeared in a suit and top hat, looking like a cross between a circus ringmaster and an undertaker. The dandy cane, naturally, soon went flying into the crowd. Among the (side) stage characters that evening we also spotted a dwarf and freaks in gas masks.
The stage design, as befits an innovator and icon in this field, was at an outstanding level the whole time. Alice, who changed outfits fairly often, carried (fake) dollar bills on a sabre during the golden standard “Billion Dollar Babies”, which comes from the early days of his career, when he was still part of a band called Alice Cooper, and shook them out over the crowd. Among the early classics, “No More Mr. Nice Guy”, “Cold Ethyl”, “Ballad of Dwight Fry” and Alice’s most beautiful ballad, “Only Women Bleed”, were all there too. The first peak of the night was the mega-hit “Poison”, where once again the excellent backing vocal harmonies deserved endless praise. With them, Alice Cooper, or Vincent Furnier, as his real name goes, which doesn’t sound even remotely as mystical, did a pretty good job of covering his somewhat fading voice, which still has that distinctive style to it.
After “Poison” came perhaps the biggest surprise of the night, the avant-garde rock track “Halo of Flies” from the album “Killer” (1971), from which they later played the title track as well. It’s one of the few creations in Alice’s career that could loosely be called progressive rock. The second big peak, especially when it comes to stage design and all-round fun, was the brilliant performance of the horror evergreen “Feed My Frankenstein”, during which Alice was strapped to an electric platform. After sparks flew all around and a big cloud of smoke billowed up, a giant, monstrous figure suddenly stomped onto the stage in the form of a grotesquely enlarged and disfigured Alice Cooper and ‘rocked out’ the rest of that classic. Next to the gigantic Alice, Iron Maiden’s Eddie is a mere toddler. Some who had already seen Alice live grumbled that there are usually more of these horror bits than what he showed at Tivoli that night.
Still, the stage masquerade hit its high point with “Guilty”, where Alice, in a straitjacket, succumbed to the injections of a sadistic nurse who looked a bit like a goth version of Harley Quinn, the Joker’s crazy sidekick from Batman. For the “Guilty” finale, masked weirdos wheeled a guillotine onto the stage and chopped Alice’s head off, while one of the creatures held his head high in the air. Of course it was only a clever illusion, and the real Alice was doing perfectly fine. Much to some people’s disappointment, he didn’t have a chat with his severed head this time. In the last stretch of the show, Alice surprised us with four covers in honor of late rock legends. First he remembered the unforgettable drummer Keith Moon, to whom a really fun version of The Who classic “Pinball Wizzard” was dedicated. Then, somewhat predictably, he honored the memory of Jimi Hendrix with a cover of the beloved classic “Fire”, and plenty of people figured Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin would be next, which would have been very predictable and cliché. Luckily, Alice had other plans.
Quite unexpectedly, he also bowed to two cult musicians who left us not so long ago. Out of all the popular David Bowie songs there are to choose from, Alice and his crew played the not-so-famous “Suffragette City”, which came off really well, while Lemmy was remembered with the expected Motorhead ultimate standard “Ace of Spades”. It was sung commendably by bassist Garrick, who, not only in the color of his voice but also with his sideburns and outfit, vaguely resembled a young Lemmy from afar. Some probably grumbled a bit about Alice playing as many as four covers in a set only an hour and a half long, but all four came off really nicely. Alice Cooper’s show wouldn’t have been complete if he hadn’t finished with his most recognized and beloved rebel anthem, “School’s Out”. The Tivoli hall then made its biggest racket, while Alice started tossing huge balloons of various colors toward it, which he popped with his cane every now and then when they got too close to the stage, showering colorful confetti everywhere. Within “School’s Out”, Alice also deftly worked in the main motif of the Pink Floyd evergreen “Another Brick in The Wall – Part 2”, firing up the rebellious atmosphere that took over the hall even more.
For the encore, Alice and crew played the beloved “Billion Dollar Babies” classic “Elected”, during which, dressed as Uncle Sam with his dandy cane, he made fun of the current American presidential election, as two costumed actors appeared on stage playing the best-known Slovenian son-in-law and racist rabble-rouser, Donald Trump, and the currently most unlikable ‘woman’ in the world and war criminal, Hilary Clinton. The two grotesque figures, who still looked better than the originals, started brawling with each other, so Alice had to chase them off the stage fairly quickly. Mr. Cooper may be a ‘born-again Christian’, but his heart is still in the right place when it comes to political (in)correctness. As the show wrapped up, Alice’s crew also wowed us with a short fireworks display.
The shock rock heavyweight’s gig at Hala Tivoli was a hugely fun experience that delighted plenty of Slovenian classic rock fans, young and old. The old rock tomcat, with his crew behind him, threw an unforgettable rock party and took plenty of people back to the good old days, when rock was still fun to listen to and not the draining ordeal it all too often turns into these days. Sadly, there were far too few people in the hall to claim the show was a success financially too. Still, full credit to the selfless organizers for making Alice Cooper’s show happen at all, at a time when the (live) rock scene on our turf is dying in agony, while concerts by Jasmin Stavros and Jelena Rozga break attendance records. It’s really sad when a legend of Alice Cooper’s caliber fills only half of Hala Tivoli while turbo folk ‘stars’ sell out our biggest halls without breaking a sweat, but we’re used to that by now. As for Alice, who will turn seventy in two years and has weathered plenty of ups and downs since his humble beginnings, when the unforgettable Frank Zappa discovered him and his band in the late sixties, hats off: he still brims with youthful energy on stage, wows us with a fun stage show and, most importantly, still plays quality rock music. That’s also why we’ll gladly forgive him for playing only an hour and a half at Hala Tivoli instead of the expected two hours, which is also the only complaint about an otherwise hugely fun and memorable concert.
words: Peter Podbrežnik
photos: Sebastijan Videc
Setlist:
1. Black Widow
2. No More Mr. Nice Guy
3. Under My Wheels
4. Public Animal #9
5. Billion Dollar Babies
6. Long Way To Go
7. Woman of Mass Distraction
8. Posion
9. Halo of Flies
10. Feed My Frankenstein
11. Cold Ethyl
12. Only Women Bleed
13. Guilty
14. Ballad of Dwight Fry
15. Killer / Love Dead
16. Pinball Wizzard (The Who)
17. Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
18. Suffragette City (David Bowie)
19. Ace of Spades (Mötorhead)
20. 18
21. School’s Out
—encore—
22. Elected
