📰 Alice Pushes Shock Rock – Feature : Feb.1974

Music Scene Magazine, February 1, 1974 This three‑page feature in Music Scene magazine examined the rising theatrical arms race in early‑’70s rock, spotlighting how Alice Cooper continually escalated his stage shock tactics to stay ahead of audience expectations. The article framed Alice as both innovator and provocateur, emphasizing the creative pressure to push boundaries while shaping the era’s most sensational live spectacles.

The Shock That Hit Music Scene

The three-page feature in Music Scene magazine (February 1, 1974) examined the escalating theatricality in rock, focusing on Alice Cooper’s need to go further each time to maintain shock value. His act ended with his own gruesome beheading (shown above) as the nasty penalty for nastiness, while Gary Glitter returned to simpler Hollywood glam theatrics, filling the stage with choreographed girls for the finale (top centre) and his own fantastic presence. The article noted that the term ‘rock theatre’ was being tossed around a lot, but theatricality in rock was nothing new — flamboyance had been integral since the genre’s earliest days, with success requiring someone to be good or weird, or ideally both.

Article Overview

Publication Details

Magazine: Music Scene (UK).

Date: February 1, 1974.

Format: Three-page feature article.

Full Supplied Text

Alice Cooper had to go further each time to maintain the shock of his performance. His act ends with his own gruesome beheading (above) - the nasty penalty for nastiness. Gary Glitter returned to the simpler Hollywood theatrics of glamour and sparkle, filling the stage with choreographed girls for the finale (top centre) and his own fantastic presence.

THE TERM 'ROCK THEATRE' is getting tossed around a lot these days, but there's nothing very new about theatricality in rock. Anyone who wants to make it in rock and roll has to be either good or weird or, better still, both. Flamboyance has been an integral part of the attraction of rock music since its earliest days.

American singer Screaming Jay Hawkins had a good voice and his version of "I Put A Spell On You" deserved the success it achieved back in the fifties, but his habit of climbing out of a coffin to sing the song did help things along a little.

Our own Dave (Screaming Lord) Sutch has rather more limited vocal abilities, but he managed to keep his career staggering along for some years by using similar if slightly more ghoulish gimmicks as a part of his stage act.

The James Brown Show (where Mr. Dynamite struts his stuff in front of a row of male dancers sashaying their way through the intricacies of the sideways pony with the disciplined precision of a team of robots) relies as much on spectacle as sound for its effect.

The 1967 psychedelic explosion helped to emphasize the theatrical possibilities of rock. The guitar smashing and smoke bomb throwing of the Who, the Move, and Hendrix may seem a little daft looking back, but at the time the effects were shattering. And who could forget the awe-inspiring spectacle of Arthur Brown, robed, painted, head ablaze, being lowered into the middle of his Crazy World by a crane? Even the lighter side of rock has had its theatrical moments, as anyone who ever saw the lunatic Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band can easily testify.

Rock music at the moment seems to be in the doldrums, and one of the ways in which current chart toppers like Gary Glitter and the Sweet have attempted to combat this lethargy is by an increased emphasis on spectacle in their stage acts. Their obsession with glitter hasn't yet affected the basic hard-rock formula of their music enough to be worth examining closely, but there are two current superstars, Alice Cooper and David Bowie, who have begun to explore the theatrical possibilities of rock in some depth.

When Frank Zappa first signed Alice Cooper for his own label, Straight Records, in 1968, it was not so much a tribute to the band's musical abilities (which in those days were a bit limited) as a recognition of the enormous stage possibilities of Cooper's obsession with the freakier and more ghoulish aspects of contemporary America.

By the time the band moved to Warner Bros. to cut their third album, "Love It To Death", in 1971, their music had improved out of all recognition, but the change in the music was at least partly the result of Cooper's development of his own bizarre notions of stage performance.

While the Beatles, with their Sergeant Pepper LP, were the first rock band to produce a 'concept album by its themes, Alice Cooper was the first rock musician to explore the possibilities of albums that were designed as accompaniments to planned, tightly-structured theatrical performances.

Alice Cooper's London debut at the Rainbow in November 1971 was a revelation

to the British audience. Arthur Brown, who was number t.vo on the bill, had already got as far as ritual on-stage crucifixion but his act lacked conviction. The contrast between Brown's toy posturing and Alice Cooper's bizarre and nihilistic trip to the centre of the demonic void

was staggering.

The act that Cooper was performing at that time was based directly on the "Love It To Death album and the whole stock of ghoulish effects that Cooper was then using (boa constrictor, hammer, sword, straight jacket, culminating in his ritual execution in an electric chair) enabled him to create a characteristically macabre stage act that was totally convincing.

Over the last two years Cooper's, recorded output has come to depend more and more on his need for fresh theatrical elements that could be introduced into his stage performance. "Killer" coincided with the replacement of the electric chair finale by a yet more gruesome ritual hanging. "School's Out" (with its obvious overtones of punk-rock and West Side Story gang culture) heralded a new phase of switch blades and imitation street fighting. "Dead Babies" introduced the thoroughly revolting dismemberment of a baby doll and the now notorious climax to the act where Cooper is guillotined on stage.

It is now becoming more and more obvious that the revamping of the stage act is determining the directions in which the music is develop-ing, rather than the other way round.

The basic formula is simple enough. Alice Cooper spends most of, the act proving what a thoroughly nasty young man he is and at the end of the show he pays for his nastiness with his life.

Rock and roll is essentially teenage music and teenagers weighed down in all directions by adult controls and rules tend to harbour repressed fantasies, many of them violent or sexual. Watching these violent or sexual fantasies enacted by Cooper on a stage and having the guilt that inevitably accompanies them purged by his ritual execution at the end of the act is, arguably, a potent way in which many young people can defuse these repressions.

Alice Cooper may well be doing a grand job of helping young people to come to terms with some of the more intense feelings that they carry within themselves but the importance of theatrical performance in his stage act has already started to detract from the quality of the band's music. Cooper's most recent album, "Billion Dollar Babies", was the weakest thing the band had produced since their first two albums. Cooper is now forced to be more theatrically. extreme on stage to sustain his earlier shock effect on audiences and the music is becoming more of a sound track tomhis antics and less exciting in itself. The emphasis on theatricality which gave Cooper such enormous freedom at first is now, ironically enough, developing into a straitjacket from which he can't escape.

David Bowie, Cooper's main rival for the 1973 Freak Superstar Title

approaches stage performance in a totally different way. Bowie's chequered career before making it to superstardom (including a spell in Lindsay Kemp's mime troupe and a period founding and running the Beckenham Arts Lab.), the depth of his insights both into the nature of external reality and of his own role as performer and his very substantial talents both as a composer and a lyricist have put him in a position where he can make effective use of theatrical devices onstage without having to sacrifice his music for dramatic effects.

Certainly Bowie is well aware of the importance of spectacle. On his last British tour he was changing costumes a dozen times in a two hour set and each costume change was carried out in a brief thirty-second black out between numbers.

Perhaps surprisingly considering his early association with noted set designer Sean Kenny and his obvious affection for the lavish Busby Berkeley Hollywood musicals of the

thirties and forties, Bowie rarely uses elaborate stage sets. However, unlike most rock stars, he does write his own lighting scripts and the attention he devotes to this aspect of his stage act does a lot to enhance the glamour of his performance.

Even now it's still possible to detect many early influences in Bowie's act. His admiration for Anthony Newley. Iggy Stooge, Andy Warhol and Lou Reed (one time member of Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable mixed-media roadshow) are all reflected in his stage presentation. But the most obviously theatrical aspect of Bowie's performance is his use of mime.

While he makes considerable use of his hands at all times (on his last tour he appeared for the first time without his traditional 12-string guitar) he only extends the mime on two numbers. On "Width Of A Circle" from "The Man Who Sold The World" LP he mimes fellatio on guitarist Mick Ronson and on "Time" from "Aladdin Sane" he brilliantly enacts a more complex mime of a man who is a captive, finds a closed door and attempts to work his way through it (a routine that is reputedly ripped off from famed french mime Marcel Marceau).

Unlike Cooper, Bowie is more concerned with sexuality than violence which puts him squarely in the hip-grinding mainstream tradition of Presley and Jagger.

More important

he has never allowed the theatrical elements of his performance to dominate his music and while Cooper has become increasingly clichéd in his music, Bowie has continued to break new ground. It's worth remembering that at the end of his 1973 British tour Bowie claimed to be retiring from live performances.

Bowie obviously has an enormous future even if he limits himself to studio work whereas Alice Cooper's career without the impact of his live shows would probably run into ins tant difficulties.

Performance and spectacle have always been an integral part of rock music and the recent popularity of Bowie and Cooper has shown a healthy movement away from the potential aridity of the studio-orientated rock and roll avante garde.

At the same time the problems that Alice Cooper is now running into clearly demonstrate the difficulties of extending the dramatic scope of rock music beyond a certain point. As Bowie has realised, good live rock and roll music requires sustained concentrated effort from the per-formers. The implicit theatrical elements in rock can profitably be exploited but if that exploitation comes to dominate the performance it is inevitable that the music itself will ultimately suffer as a result.

John Brown