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Originally Posted by Justin101  By the way, why was the tour so controversial? |
'In The Flesh' was the title of the tour that promoted the 'Raise Your Fist And Yell' album and the dates that were playing in Europe turned out to be extremely controversial for the graphic depiction of violence onstage. Most of the more violent acts were heavily inspired by the horror movies of the time, including the impalement gag from John Carpenter's
'Prince Of Darkness' and large amounts of stage blood. The tour was considered to be so violent that when Alice played in Germany, the shows were censored, with various parts of the concert having to be removed. In addition to that, people under the age of 18 were turned away from the doors
In England, the Daily Mirror from April 1988 ran a story stating:
'An outraged MP last night called for the a ban on shock rock star Alice Cooper after his first British gig at which young fans fainted, threw up and were splattered with buckets of blood.
Outspoken Sheffield politician David Blunkett stormed: "I'm horrified by his behavior - it goes beyond the bounds of entertainment".
He added: "Its an indication of the sick society we're moving into and something drastic should be done to protect young people from paying for this sort of obscenity".
During the show there is a hanging sequence, a baby is torn apart, a mother sliced down the middle, and a beautiful girl has her throat cut.
At the climax of the one-and-a-half hour performance young fans in the front rows are soaked by gallons of theatrical blood.
But 40 year old Alice is unrepentant "Its nightmare In Elm Street [sic] put to music!" he said "Its a rollercoaster ride - a fast cheap thrill".
White Hot Club photographer Joe Bangay, who saw the opening night says: "I saw kids faint. Alice has gone too far".'
I suppose it's ironic that Mr. Blunkett has been blind since birth, and therefore could not have actually seen the show!
Meanwhile, a 1987 review from the Sam Houston Coliseum in Texas stated:
"Alice Cooper brought gore and more to the faithful at the Sam Houston Coliseum. There were plenty of bizarre and rather disturbing sights to behold, but perhaps the most humorous occurred after the concert, as Marty Racine wrote in the paper's Dec. 3 editions.
Women got stabbed and strangled. Human skeletons, dead babies and a giant black widow spider littered the stage. We bore witness to the beheaded and the bedeviled, the hunted and the haunted.
All the while, Alice the Malice Cooper sang the Executioner's Song to the delight of 3,000 rock 'n' ghoul fans at the Coliseum Saturday night.
It was an amusing night of horror, but the humorous part was in leaving the Coliseum, when the crazed fans, whooping and hollering like a college football team flashing from the tunnel before a big game, walked into a simultaneous exodus from the adjoining Music Hall, where the civilized set had attended the Houston Barbershop Singers' "The Magic of Christmas". From their perspective, it must have looked like the inmates had taken over the asylum.
The glory of life and the gory of death, only a city block apart.
On the UK dates, serious injury was narrowly avoided at a show at Wembley. Kerrang magazine reported:
[i]“Alice Cooper had a bad experience on the last night of his Wembley dates when the safety device failed on the gallows which Alice uses to perform on stage. A shaken and shocked Alice had to be cut free from the noose which had tightened around his neck and he suffered severe bruising on his neck as a result of the accident. Needless to say the man is such a professional that he continued with the full show despite his injury”[i/]
The basic setlist for this tour was:
- Teenage Frankenstein
- No More Mr. Nice Guy
- Billion Dollar Babies
- Is It My Body
- Eighteen
- Go to Hell
- Prince of Darkness
- Chop Chop Chop
- Gail
- Roses on White Lace
- Only Women Bleed
- Devil's Food
- The Black Widow
- Dead Babies
- Killer
- School's Out
- Freedom
- Under My Wheels