Two legendary rockers who just happen to have homes a fairly short drive from the venue and each other brought their co-headlining tour to Phoenix on Wednesday, Oct. 22, for a bit of a homecoming bash at Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre.
Alice Cooper discovered his love of entertaining in the Cortez High School cafetorium, returning to the Valley in the ’80s after finding fame and fortune as the rock star most likely to inspire sleepless nights for the sheltered parents of Boomers Gone Wild.
The man who gave the world “Alice Cooper Goes To Hell” has lived in Paradise Valley with Sheryl, the wife he met when she auditioned as a dancer for his “Welcome to My Nightmare” tour, for more than 40 years.
On Nov. 15, he’ll play another hometown gig — the 23rd Annual Alice Cooper’s Christmas Pudding, whose proceeds benefit the free afterschool programs at Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Center in Phoenix, Mesa and Goodyear.
Rob Halford thanked ‘my Phoenix heavy metal community’
Rob Halford of Judas Priest divides his time between his hometown of Walsall, England, and Paradise Valley, where he bought a home in 1986, by which point he was fronting one of heavy metal’s most successful — and important — bands.
He did not go to high school here. It would’ve been a rough commute from the West Midlands. But he did take a moment as his portion of the evening was nearing its conclusion to address what he referred to as “my Phoenix heavy metal community” before taking a seat.
“I’d like to sit down at this point, because I’ve been making heavy metal for 56 years, man,” he shouted, with a smile.
“That’s a lot of time, but it doesn’t seem like it. That’s the power of metal. The power of music. It’s good to be home. I’ve spoken to Alice backstage. This is where we’re from and we love to be with our hometown crowd. Thank you so much for your love and support.”
Metal God Rob Halford is still somehow in his 30s at 74
Now, when Halford said, “It doesn’t seem like it,” I’m pretty sure he didn’t necessarily mean “it doesn’t seem like it” when you hear him hit those high notes like the Metal God he’s known to be and a 56-year veteran of this culture we call heavy metal at 74.
But, just as the metal fan directly to my right did after hearing Halford lean into the high notes on “Hell Bent for Leather,” can we maybe take a moment to reflect on how remarkable it is that he can do that after all these years?
I think we should.
That voice defies — or “breaks,” as some would sing — the laws of science, a point made abundantly clear from the moment he started the concert by wailing the opening notes of “All Guns Blazing” a cappella before the band came crashing in.
It was a very heavy set — unrelentingly so, which is exactly what a Priest fan would’ve wanted.
Judas Priest remain the kinds of twin guitar heroics — somehow
There were plenty of the twin-guitar heroics that have been a hallmark of their sound for decades, since Glen Tipton joined the fold and started harmonizing with K.K. Downing, the iconic departed guitarist the great Richie Faulkner replaced in 2011.
And it wouldn’t have hit with such intensity if bassist Ian Hill and drummer Scott Travis weren’t up to the challenge.
The setlist touched on all their most beloved hit singles, from “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” to “Breaking the Law,” while leaving ample space for new material (two songs from last year’s “Invincible Shield”) and deeper album cuts.
After bringing the set to an electrifying climax with the title track to 1990’s “Painkiller,” they left the stage, allowing Halford to make a grand re-entrance on his motorcycle to kick off the encore with “Hell Bent For Leather.”
Because of course he did. He’s Metal God Rob Halford.
Speaking of “Hell Bent For Leather,” one would be hard pressed to name a band that could boast of a higher amount of black leather per capita than Judas Priest. And it definitely suits them.
Judas Priest has been closing the concerts on this co-headlining tour.
Alice Cooper is as heavy metal as he wants to be
And Alice Cooper definitely rose to the occasion with a set that found him playing to his heavy-metal bona fides, with three songs each from “Trash,” the late-‘80s comeback drive that extended his cultural footprint by courting the Headbangers Ball demographic, and its early-’90s follow-up “Hey Stoopid.”
Cooper got even heavier on the industrial-metal title track to “Brutal Planet,” a dystopian concept album that deserved a bigger audience.
When he wants to be metal – or metal-adjacent – the man has proven that he knows exactly what it takes to reach across that aisle. And having a shredder as likely to melt your face as Nita Strauss on board to trade off leads with Ryan Roxie, who can more than hold his own as the only lead guitarist on that stage, is all but guaranteed to move the needle.
Here’s the thing, though. Cooper’s greatest strength may be his willingness to chase whatever sound he happens to be chasing at that moment and to find his own voice in that new equation.
That’s why 1980’s “Flush the Fashion” is a quirky New Wave classic.
Alice Cooper does the ballad because no one else was gonna do it
To his credit, Cooper’s setlist on the Judas Priest tour offset those metallic moments with a handful of surprises and the closest any artist came to offering a ballad – “Only Women Bleed.”
Cooper opened with “Who Do You Think We Are,” the track that opens “Special Forces,” the album that followed “Flush the Fashion” in the early ’80s. He hadn’t done that song in more than 20 years before this tour.
He also did “Caught in a Dream,” the opening track on the album that introduced him to the masses, “Love It To Death.” That song has only made one setlist since 2001 before this year.
And there were several staples of his set that would’ve held their own in any Alice Cooper set, regardless of whose audience he may have felt deserved an olive branch, from “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Muscle of Love” to “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out,” which followed the singer’s death by guillotine.
Alice Cooper was beheaded. Sheryl Cooper rose to the occasion
The shock-rock theatrics that made Cooper famous were in full effect, from the towering Frankenstein monster in an Alice Cooper mask that terrorized the stage on the ’80s metal triumph “Feed My Frankenstein” to the singer in a straitjacket losing control on “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” and the eventual beheading that followed the sociopathic theatrics of the necrophiliac “Cold Ethyl” and the surprisingly sensitive narrative of “Only Women Bleed.”
Sheryl Cooper emerged to pluck his severed head from a basket and do unspeakable things that were technically only unspeakable because it was a severed head.
The execution/resurrection scene was followed, as it tends to be, by “School’s Out,” on which Cooper and his touring band were joined by Michael Bruce, a founding member of the Alice Cooper group who played with Cooper at the VIP Club in the ‘60s as a member the Spiders and wrote or co-wrote any number of their most iconic songs, from “I’m Eighteen” to “Be My Lover,” “Desperado,” “Under My Wheels” and “No More Mr. Nice Guy.”
Michael Bruce joined Alice Cooper on a raucous ‘School’s Out’
Bruce was clearly thrilled to be there, squeezing out a scrappy little solo with a grin that said it all. Cooper was clearly enjoying the moment, so much so that he lost his place just long enough to flub the greatest lyric in the history of rock ‘n’ roll – “We can’t even think of a word that rhymes.”
It was the kind of flub you love to see because it felt like bearing witness to an artist you admire getting so caught up in rock ‘n’ roll that he can’t even think of “We can’t even think of a word that rhymes.”
The singer recently released his first new album with the three surviving members of the Alice Cooper group in more than 50 years, a triumphant reunion effort titled “The Revenge of Alice Cooper.”
There were no songs from that album in the mix, which is a shame. But Cooper and those other three surviving members of the group that did so much to shape the culture of their generation reconvene on the rotating stage of the historic Celebrity Theatre in November.
Chances are, they’ll focus on their greatest hits. But having seen them focus on their greatest hits, I’m not sure that’s a problem.
Corrosion of Conformity are the stoner-rock messiahs we needed
The stoner-rock messiahs of Corrosion Of Conformity were two songs deep into dispensing with a master class in Sabbath-worthy sludge when Pepper Keenan took a moment to address the crowd.
“You guys like heavy (expletive)?”
As luck would have it, yes, they did like heavy (expletive), and that’s exactly what Corrosion of Conformity delivered as they rocked their way through such headbanging highlights as “King of the Rotten,” “Seven Days,” “Who’s Got the Fire” and “Clean My Wounds.”
They also dedicated “Albatross” to a legend.
“This song goes out to Ace Frehley,” Keenan said. “None of would be here without that guy.”
Ed has covered pop music for The Republic since 2007, reviewing festivals and concerts, interviewing legends, covering the local scene and more. He did the same in Pittsburgh for more than a decade. Follow him on X and Instagram @edmasley and on Facebook as Ed Masley. Email him at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com.