Alice Cooper in Bologna: rock becomes horror the scene

“Alice Cooper Banned in Italy“, I scream the newspaper page of the fictitia” The Italian Gazette “, printed on a huge tarpaulin that dominates the center of the stage and hides its scenic heart. It is the signal that the show is about to start. From the image, the artist’s eyes, surrounded by its unmistakable black poured black makeup, fix the crowd of spectators, while the members of the band start to animate the scene. The darkness of the evening has now taken over the Park of the Red Barracks of Bolognathat on the evening ofJuly 8th It hosts the only Italian date of the “Too Close for comfort” tour, as part of the summer review Sequoie Music Park. The rain has passed, allowing the public to enjoy the concert in peace, but also leaving a very different climate from the previous days. The atmosphere warms immediately, though. The guitars tear the silence, the battery enters frenetic, and the shadow of Alice Cooper appears behind the tent that jokes with the collective memory, recalling the times when, in the early seventies, its shows were banned in some countries because of its performances considered “primitive, barbaric and deviant”. The artist, today 77 years old, tears in two the news that has been curtain, to take the center of the scene. “I’m back in Your Dreams / You Can Take My Head and Cut It Off / But You Ain’T Gonna Change My Mind / If You Don’t Like It You Can Lock Me Up”: The subversive verses of “Lock me up“, from the album” Raise Your Fist and Yell “of 1987, dictate the beginning of the concert, and the musicians tighten around Cooper to amplify its theatricality. The stage of the Sequoie Music Park turns into a place of dark narratives, provocative challenges and disturbing visions, perfectly in tune with the style that has made Alice Cooper an icon: between horror, iron. real performance. Here the rock becomes the theater of horror.

With its characteristic cylinder in the lead and black leather pants, the corrosa voice from time but intact in the spirit, Alice Cooper recalls Ghosts and memories. But there is no room for nostalgia, only History and presentfor a journey in his ultra -fifty years of career. “Welcome to the show”, from the recent “Road” of 2023, is an invitation to let go of spectacularization. The audience, enchanted more than participating, remains poised between fiction and truthwhere rock stops being only music and makes language and vision. Next to Cooper the formation that has long been on tour has been lined up on tour, while the stage, with two side ladders and megahritis in the background, is built to allow continuous movements. By the guitarist Nita Strauss to Tommy Henriksento the most historical Ryan Roxie And Chuck Garricup to the drummer Glen Sobeleach member of the band contributes to animate the space by participating in the story staged. There is no static nature, everyone becomes a character and the songs follow one another in favor of the show. For an hour and a half in concert, with 24 songs in the lineup, Alice Cooper leverages the most significant pieces of her repertoire. “No More More Mr. Nice Guy” immediately leaves room for “I’m eighteen”, in which the “godfather of shock rock” wraps a crutch. “He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)” sees an interpreter appear in the role of an intrusive tourist or an out of control fan, who chases Cooper with a camera. His insistence costs them dear: he is slaughtered by a masked figure, released by an old horror film, complete with fake blood that it showers them conspicuously from the neck. At another moment of the show, inevitably, Alice then brings Ethyl on stage, her natural -size doll, for the classic “Cold Ethyl“, Recreating this historic dialogue between two lovers, one still in the kingdom of the living, the other now beyond. After so many years it is still a disturbing quarrels that it always be able to hit, but – fortunately – the doll tends to be so ridiculous in appearance as to dampen the tension. As in every act by Alice Cooper. But sometimes, it is better not to reflect on it too much.Go to hell“, which immediately leaves room for one of the most loved songs,”Poison“. The famous Vincent Price monologue taken from the 1975 TV special” Spirit of the Nightmare “gives a break to performers and musicians, ready to recover the scene immediately after the solo of Nita Strauss.

The show with the timeless “Ballad of Dwight Fry“, in which Cooper, narrow in a shirt of force, interprets another disturbing moment capable of leaving its mark even after fifty years. Thus we move on to the notorious moment of the guillotine on “I Love the Dead”, with Alice Cooper who is symbolically beheaded. The execution is by the artist’s wife, Sheryl Cooper, already seen in action, in his dazzling dancer form still at 69 years old, in “Go to hell“. Dressed like Marie Antoinette, Sheryl has fun in the well -tested performance showing on stage the severed head of Alice, closing the theatrical part of the show. After another change of dress, as a real transformist, with a coordinated white and cylinder suit, the artist reports all in the spotlight for the ending with another song loved by the public,” “School’s out“. The closing of the piece always leaves room for the famous jokes of” Another Brick in the wall, part 2 “of Pink Floyd, before the scene is invaded by a giant monster for”Frankenstein feed my“And leave Alice Cooper and his band definitively healthy Bologna.

Here is the lineup:

Lock me up
Welcome to the show
No More More Mr. Nice Guy
I’m eighteen
Under My Wheels
Bed of Nails
Billion Dollar Babies
Snakebite
Be my lover
Lost in America
He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
Hey Stoopid
Drum Solo
Welcome to My Nightmare
Cold Ethyl
Go to hell
Poison
“The Black Widow” Segment from Alice Cooper: The Nightmare (registered)

O’clock only
Black Widow Jam
Ballad of Dwight Fry
Killer
I Love The Dead
School’s out

Encore

Frankenstein feed my