I've been hearing this quite a bit on how
Alice Cooper is stealing the show away from Motley Crue farewell tour.
Maybe this is the reason Alice is delaying his latest release until the Fall.
It's posted again in "The Australian" May 15, 2015
"Alice Cooper steals the show over Motley Crue farewell tour"
In the early 1970s Alice Cooper described his band as “the dagger through the heart of the love generation”. If that’s accurate, Motley Crue must surely have spent its career copulating on the rotting corpse of peace, love and understanding.
But whereas Cooper traded nocturnal depravity and alcoholism for Bible classes and a golf addiction, Motley Crue took the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle to its depraved extreme, its musical legacy linked with titillating tales of sexual orgies, drugs and precious egos.
Cooper and Motley Crue have teamed up for what is billed as Motley Crue’s farewell tour.
Cooper’s set is replete with rock ’n’ roll. He twirls a cane in Department of Youth, throws cheap necklaces into the crowd in Dirty Diamonds, brandishes a crutch in I’m Eighteen and mutates into a ridiculous monster in Feed My Frankenstein. A psychotic zombie nurse torments Cooper in The Ballad of Dwight Fry; the song segues into I Love Dead, and Cooper loses his head in a mock guillotine execution. It’s corny but entertaining.
Save for the presence of two athletic and provocatively attired back-up singers, liberal use of pyrotechnics and Tommy Lee’s rotating, roof-climbing drum riser, Motley Crue’s live show lacks Cooper’s choreographed theatre. Vince Neil’s heavy frame betrays years of alcohol abuse, and his face is distorted by regular bouts of cosmetic surgery. Guitarist Mick Mars shuffles around the stage, battling the crippling arthritis that he has lived with for 30 years. Perversely, bassist Nikki Sixx and Lee are pictures of rude health.
What it lacks in theatrics, Motley Crue makes up in weary rock ’n’ roll attitude. The set list reflects the excess and decadence that has underpinned the band’s colourful career: Saints of Los Angeles; Shout to the Devil; Too Fast for Love; Dr Feelgood;Live Wire; Too Young to Fall in Love; Girls, Girls, Girls. A cover of the Sex Pistols’Anarchy in the UK imbued the band’s deviant libertarianism with a cheap and nasty political edge.
The finale drips with sentimentality: the band members walked across the floor to a second stage at the rear of the arena and Lee took to the piano to introduce Home Sweet Home. For at least the 50th time on this farewell world tour, Neil extended heartfelt thanks to the crowd for its enduring support. For Motley Crue, it’s been a wild ride.
