Alice Cooper BY MARK DOLEJS Tuesday night, Alice Cooper brought his Alice’s Closet Tour to the Durham Performing Arts Center. It was on...
BY MARK DOLEJS
Tuesday night, Alice Cooper brought his Alice’s Closet Tour to the Durham Performing Arts Center. It was one hell of a night. The house was packed and the walls were bangin’ from the volume.
The night started off with “Who Do You Think We Are,” Spark In The Dark,” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy.” And, it just gets better and better after that.
Cooper is the prince of shock rock, and even at age 78, he rocks the stage just like he did when he was younger. Most of the night, he either had a saber or dagger in one hand and a microphone in the other.
He surrounds himself with three fantastic guitarists, Anna Cara, Ryan Roxie, and Tommy Henriksen. Rounding out the band is drummer Glen Sobel and Chuck Garric on bass. Cara has big shoes to fill and she fills in for Nita Strauss, who is taking a break to have her first child.
Theatrics are the name of the game for Cooper. During “Ballad of Dwight Fry,” he sang dressed in a white straight jacket. Two songs later, during “Only Women Bleed,” his wife Sheryl danced around the stage and eventually he stabbed her with a knife, which later lead to her dying on stage. But not before Cooper was beheaded in a guillotine, at the encouragement of his wife.
With several costume changes throughout the night, he came back out on stage for “School’s Out” decked out in a white top hat and tails. This song was quite the anthem, with a snippet from Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall.”
One of the most impressive things about this night was the energy. Cooper lives and breathes the part for the whole set, never leaving character. And, they move from one song to the next with every movement choreographed to perfection.
The show was pretty much sold old. Most of the fans were probably my age or older. Impressively, they stood on their feet for the entire show. No sitting down. Singing along, fists pumped in the air, especially during songs like “Poison,” “Feed My Frankenstein,” and “Billion Dollar Babies.”
The first album I every bought (in the 1970s), a double album compilation called Heavy Metal, has Cooper’s song “I’m Eighteen.” Ever since then, I’ve always wanted to see him in concert, but the opportunity never happened. Until now. I am so stoked that I was able to check this one off my concert bucket list.
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- MARK DOLEJS
Photography is an avenue that
Mark Dolejs uses to learn about the people and places that cross his path. After more than 30 years as a photojournalist, Mark enjoys concert, macro, and roadside photography. Follow Mark on Instagram at @solidrockpix.
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