Alice Cooper – A Godfather of Shock Rock in Copenhagen, Denmark

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and the Godfather of Shock Rock – Alice Cooper visited Copenhagen during his ‘Ol’ Black Eyes Is Back Tour’ on the last Thursday evening in Copenhagen’s Royal Arena. As a supporting act for this leg of the tour Alice Cooper invited well known and liked hard rock group Black Stone Cherry.

BSC entered a half opened stage (the back of it was already blocked with the hidden from audience equipment of the main act) but taking into consideration the size of the stage they still have had enough space for ‘acrobatic’ performances of Ben Wells and Jon Lawhon. The band showed up on stage accompanied by the sound ‘Bullshit Anthem’ of Fantastic Negrito to quickly pull the strings of their guitars and fill in thearena with their southern guitar rock sound of ‘Burnin’.

When Black Stone Cherry played ‘Me and Mary Jane’ and the fans were enouraged by Chris Robertson and John Fred Young to clap in the rhythm of music the proper jumping and dancing started for real both on stage and in the audience. Ben Wells was jumping around with his guitar and encouraging fans to join him and John Fred Young was pulling the show on his drums playing it while standing at the moments. Fans started to enjoy themselves with the rhythm of next tracks played by the band including ‘White Trash Millionaire’ or ‘Cheaper to Drink Alone’ to close the whole set with a ‘Family Tree’. Black Stone Cherry provided a solid warm up and received a loud cheer from the audience. Then the stage got covered by a huge curtain with Alice Cooper eyes on the castle wall and the preparation for the main act started.

The show was ready when the ‘Years Ago’ followed by ‘Nightmare Castle’ were played from the tape and the eyes on the curtain started to shine with red lights. The curtain was dropped down revealing an amazing stage construction with the castle in the back and cages on the sides. Alice Cooper entered the stage throught the castle’s door to the first notes of ‘Feed My Frankenstein’ wearing the black top hat and black stick in his hand giving a signal to start the show to shortly move to a hit song ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ which was loudly applauded by the audience. Band members enouraged by the reaction also started to deliver an amazing show – Nita Strauss as always posing with her guitar and showing not only her skills but also guitar tricks and great as always Chuck Garric squeezing all he got from the bass.

The show itself consisted of all famous moves known from Alice Cooper shows – swordfighting, knights, soap bubble machines and whatver imagination of Father of Shock Rock can bring to life.

The most interesting part of the show started with ‘Dead Babies’ which was a small spectacle itself – long story short – evil nurse brought the dead baby in pram which is being stolen by Alice Cooper, as a consequence his head is decapitated and it all finishes with a huge toddler breaking from the cage , picking up the head and parade with it all over the stage. This macabre performance was both creepy and funny way to close the main part of the show. Cooper then left the stage to come back after two minutes to close the show with ‘School’s Out.

Alice Cooper show was amazing combination of music and creepy spectacle characteristic for shock rock. It was a good overview of Cooper’s career filled in with many hits like ‘Poison’ or ‘Raped and Freezin’ to mention only a few. To be honest – I hope I will have as much energy as 71 year old Alice.

Coverage by Kasper Pasinski