Artists: Alice Cooper, Primal Scream, The Meffs
Venue: Leeds, First Direct Arena
Date: 18th October 2024
"He seems to get better the older he gets. Astounding."
The blurb has read for a couple of years now, “They keep killing him, and he keeps coming back”. Fortunately the former isn’t true, and equally fortunately the latter is. Two years since his last visit here (only one if you include the Hollywood Vampires appearance last year), the Alice Cooper Shock Rock festival wheels back into town.
Before Alice however, we had two support bands, which has become a regular thing with Alice’s arena shows. This necessitates an early start to the evening however, which caused a problem tonight. Leeds is only about an hour away for us, which is not too bad, assuming the roads are OK. But as everyone knows, at the moment almost every major road or motorway has roadworks. This slows you down tremendously, which also means you hit rush-hour traffic coming into and out from cities. We arrived at around 6.30pm which, if you are normal, gives you thirty minutes to get over the road to the arena, which sounds like plenty of time, doesn’t it? If however you are diabetic and have been unable to get a meal since lunchtime, then things can change. I had to decide; do I find somewhere to eat, and definitely miss the first band and possibly the second, depending on how long it takes to get served, or do I bite the bullet and go straight in with the idea of getting food a little later. Well dear reader, I opted for the second choice, to get the option of providing a full report of the evening, after checking my glucose sensor, which read high enough for me to go ahead; didn’t it?
The first band then was called The Meffs. I had never heard of them, and when they first came on as a guitarist/ vocalist and drummer, I wondered where the rest of them were. But that was it, just the singer/guitarist Lily Hopkins and drummer Lewis (53). Two things to note about The Meffs. One, namely Hopkins, is pretty frantic and does not like standing still, and hits her Fender Telecaster with some venom. Naturally the music, is the same. Two, Lewis on the drums stays on his stool, but is, like Lily, quite frantic when hitting the drums. He also does vocals. They are a Punk duo from Essex, something which I am not sure they should announce, as boos echoed around as soon as they did. However, at the end of their set, which lasted around thirty minutes, they received a healthy round of applause from the crowd.
The next band on I had heard of, but still knew nothing about, other than they were from Scotland and had been around since the eighties. And I have to hold my hand up here and admit to missing a lot of their set, as the meter that had earlier said my glucose levels were OK was now screeching at me like a banshee in my pocket, so sustenance was imperative. I heard the set from where I was, and have to admit it wasn’t really my thing, the main question running through my head being why they had someone from the French Foreign Legion playing saxophone for them.
And so, on to the main attraction. At seventy-six, this man astounds me. He’s been running around the world for fifty years now, never seems to slow down, and even the aging process seems to have given up the fight against him. After a spoken introduction, the curtains parted slightly showing a huge newspaper front page on which someone did shadow puppets of a two-handed heart on the right side, and a birds head on the left (which I have a feeling wasn’t actually part of the show), before the curtains parted fully and the band came on, but not Alice. Next thing, Alice’s shadow could be seen, on the front page, before he “cut” it with his sword and walked through while doing a short section of ‘Lock Me Up’. He threw the sword, point down, into the stage, but it didn’t stick and bounced up before lying on the floor. The evening started properly with a new song from latest album ‘Road’, ‘Welcome To The Show’ (which I just knew he would when I first heard it), before doing three solid classics of ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’, ‘Eighteen’ and probably my all-time favourite ‘Under My Wheels’, all sounding excellent. He then did another favourite, ‘Bed Of Nails’, which I hadn’t heard for a while. And it was only at this stage that I noticed there was less structure on stage than normal, no castles, no boxes of toys, no corpses, just two staircases on either side, but not in use, and the video screens across the back.
The evening progressed in the usual Alice tradition, the old classics mixed in with the later ones. ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ was preceded by a short drum solo, and the Alice dollars are now distributed from a canon rather than the sword and the snake is back for ‘Snakebite’. One camera wielding “fan” had her throat cut during ‘He’s Back’ which was immediately followed by a press photographer being run through with the mike stand in ‘Hey Stoopid’. A longer drum solo heralded the use of the staircases for ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’, while ‘Cold Ethel’ was thrown from the top. “Frankie” turned up for tea and Alice was fitted with the straight jacket for ‘Ballad Of Dwight Fry’, after which his wife Cheryl came on to witness his demise by guillotine which concluded with the end section of ‘I Love The Dead’, another all-time favourite. The evening concluded with glitter filled balloons for ‘Elected’ followed by ‘School’s Out’, which counted as the encore without them leaving the stage. During ‘School’s Out’ he remarked “Alice Cooper finally speaks to you”, before introducing the band and at the end, as it was close to Halloween, hoped that all our nightmares were horrific.
Alice is still a master entertainer, there were people there who even I thought were old, and it’s good to see that new generations are also attending these shows; the little girl fully decked out in Cooper gear and eyeliner being proof of that, which is great. If I have one criticism, it’s that the music had too much lower end, the bass sounds drowning out the vocals, even Alice’s. I usually enjoy an Alice show, and despite that I really enjoyed this one. Oh, and the light-show was very impressive too. He seems to get better the older he gets. Astounding.
Review: Andy B./Lou C. Photo’s: Andy B.
Gallery. All photos © Andy B (used with kind permission)
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