Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The master looks down from the pulpit on high and sees the heaving throng, the swelling mass of humanity, writhe in a perpetual rhythm before him, and the scene registers visibly as one to make experienced eyes well up with pride. For Alice Cooper, the veteran of the shock rock musical hall extravaganza, this may have been the only performance in the U.K. during the whole of 2016 but it was one that was steeped in glory, in beauty and dripping with excitement from the off.
The Saturday of the inaugural Stone Free Festival was one that could only be finished in truth by the ringmaster, the man who made the music stand up and be counted, who took the stage presence expected of him and made it be the monster that it always was, not so much created but formed in the destructive burst of a neutron star and arriving fully functional inside the o2 Arena. This was the culmination of a day of high blues and rock standards, of a missed opportunity and one of the greatest ever all meeting to kick a weekend of music into the open field and it was one that Alice Cooper and his sensational band relished in.
Whether you were of the inclination to having seen Alice Cooper a hundred times or this was your first foray into the genuine spectacle, the feast of a thousand pulsing waves of indestructible sanity narrated by your worst nightmares, by the maniacal voice of Vincent Price and carried to the laurels of success by arguably the finest showman of them all.
With the set comprising of songs such as No More Mr. Nice Guy, the brilliant Billion Dollar Babies, Woman of Mass Distraction, the undisputable Poison, heralded by a stunning solo by the fantastic Nita Strauss, Only Women Bleed and Feed My Frankenstein, Alice Cooper not only wanted the best for the crowd gathered underneath the pulpit but delivered it with style, true, furious luminosity that shone like a beacon across darkening London skies.
The high priest of Rock, the man of a thousand nightmares, is in the end, a mortal man who triumphs because he cares and it is to the audience inside the o2 that benefitted from that sense of the genuine.
Ian D. Hall