Cooper’s fans welcome his nightmare

RIO RANCHO – It’s been said, “When we were in our 20s, it was the ‘70s. Now, it’s the ‘20s and we’re in our 70s.”

That might be a great way to describe the crowd at the Rio Rancho Events Center the evening of oct. 20, when the third music legend to take the stage there in the past year was the first to keep his fans on their feet for 90 minutes.

Following in the footsteps, but with tons more energy, of James Taylor and Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper gave thousands of fans more than music — this was a theatrical funfest: Wielding a cane and later a foil, once wearing a live boa constrictor around his neck and another time stumping for votes atop a podium — Cooper kept them all standing.

Oh, yes — there was a guillotine, too, with Cooper beheaded and his head waved around on the stage. And before that, he was clad in a straitjacket.

Other than “Only Women Bleed,” perhaps the slowest song in Cooper’s repertoire, every other tune was high octane — there were four guitarists and a drummer, who, of course, did the obligatory drum solo while there was a set change. And for one song, Cooper showed his skill on the harmonica.

Once the curtain dropped — it had a message with a headline from “The New Mexico Times,” “BANNED IN NEW MEXICO: ALICE COOPER” — Cooper belted out “Welcome to the Show,” and then with barely a pause, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” a former No. 1 hit; “Under My Wheels,” with Cooper then wearing a black leather vest with an English D, no doubt showing his loyalty to the Detroit Tigers, as he was born in the Motor City.

“Billion Dollar Babies,” “Snake Bite,” “Be My Lover,” “I Ain’t Got a Car,” “Hey Stoopid,” “Welcome to My Nightmare,” “Poison,” “I Want to be Elected,” and a handful of others were in the mix, with — of course — an encore.

That had to be “School’s Out for Summer,” which cleverly segued into Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” with its lines, “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave them kids alone.”

Late in the show, some huge air-filled balls were being bounced around the arena, and when they floated near Cooper, he popped them.

The night of the concert, the Observer asked for comments on its Facebook page. Among them: “Awesome,” “Wonderful” and “Great,” plus, from Pirate Pest Control, “a generation landslide.”

Keep in mind, just as there weren’t many fans younger than 50, and the bulk were probably in their 60s and 70s, so, too, is Cooper: 75 years young. And he found time earlier that day to play nine holes of golf at Santa Ana.