Aunt Alice is back

In 1974, a year after releasing Billion Dollar Babies, a hugely successful album considered one of the greatest rock records of that decade, the band Alice Cooper came to perform in Brazil. It was the first time the country had hosted a mega international rock concert.

The repertoire of the shows held in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro was basically made up of songs from Billion Dollar Babies and Muscle of Love, also released in 1973 – and which would be the band's last. Shortly after the anthological tour, the group broke up.

On Saturday the 14th, Alice Cooper, who is 77 years old and carries the insignia of the father of shock rock, due to his impactful and unusual performances, returns to São Paulo. He will perform a unique performance at the Best of Blues and Rock 2025 festival, which ends on Sunday the 15th, at Ibirapuera Park.

Next month, the artist will release The Revenge of Alice Cooper, an album featuring the classic line-up of the band created in 1967, which had its first hit with the song I'm Eighteen (1970) and was formed by Cooper, Michael Bruce (guitar), Dennis Dunaway (bass) and Neil Smith (drums). Guitarist Glen Buxton, who was part of the group at the beginning, died in 1997.

Marked by horror theatrical performances, the band's central element of the tour in Brazil was a guillotine. It was used to decapitate dolls, mannequins and even the lead singer.

The presentation in the capital of São Paulo, which attracted more than 100,000 people to Anhembi – a very significant number at the time – was accompanied by moments of confusion and pushing and shoving, and was even interrupted. Behind the scenes, Cooper's rebellious image bothered the military in power at the time.

In addition to the repressive political context and the unprecedented nature of that type of performance, what contributed to the tour becoming a landmark was the fact that the band broke up shortly after it.

One of the sources of friction was, precisely, the excessive performances of Vincent Furnier, the lead singer born in Michigan, in the United States, who, after the separation, adopted the band's own name as his stage name: Alice Cooper.

He would only return to the country 20 years later, in 1995, a decade in which Brazil would establish itself as a route for international shows. At the time, he performed at the Monsters of Rock festival in São Paulo, which also featured Ozzy Osbourne, another heavy metal icon.

But between his first and second shows in Brazil, the musician experienced ups and downs. With the release of his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare (1975), Cooper would go even further with the horror. With his second solo album, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell (1976), he would maintain his popularity.

Soon after, however, his career began to decline, with unsuccessful albums. At that point, the market was less receptive to heavy rock. In addition, excessive alcohol and drug consumption began to interfere with his performance as an artist. In 1983, Cooper checked himself into treatment. In the 1980s, he began to appear in trashy horror films.

The comeback came with the albums Hey Stoopid (1991) and the conceptual The Last Temptation, released a year before his second visit to Brazil. Five years later, Alice Cooper would make his third appearance in the country, with the British Rock Symphony, an orchestral version of rock, in which he sang four classics of the genre - only one, School's Out, being from his repertoire.

The tour 50 years ago was a landmark due to the unprecedented nature of the performance, which included decapitations, and the discomfort it caused among censors.

In 2003, he was inscribed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and when he returned to Brazil in 2007 for shows in Curitiba and São Paulo, starting the Psycho Drama Tour, he was already known as “Aunt Alice” because of his age. The shows maintained the theatricality of horror rock.

On his fifth visit to Brazil, in 2011, he continued with his grotesque presence and performative performance, performing classics such as No More Mr. Nice Guy, Only Women Bleed and Feed My Frankenstein.

His last two appearances in the country were at Rock in Rio in 2015, with the band Hollywood Vampires, which also featured actor Johnny Depp and Joe Perry (guitarist for Aerosmith), and in 2017. In this last show, solo, he performed songs from Paranormal, one of his best albums of this century.

The fact that Cooper has participated in two consecutive editions of the biggest music festival in Brazil reveals the existence of a captive audience for his performances.

A year earlier, in 2016, he had launched his candidacy for President of the United States with the slogan “a troubled man for troubled times”, in a dig at the polarized moment of the dispute between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

In fact, Alice Cooper had first declared himself a candidate when he made the song Elected, with lines like: I never lied to you, I've always been cool / I wanna be elected ("I never lied to you, I've always been cool / I wanna be elected").

At the time, the satire was aimed at Richard Nixon, who ended up being reelected in 1972 – having been removed from office two years later, in the emblematic Watergate Affair. Cooper repeated the jocular gesture of symbolically running for President of the United States in 2020 and 2024.

Alice Cooper's new show in Brazil should once again be theatrical and macabre, with the now classic fake blood, but less shocking. Now, after all, the audience, already trained in his performance, is more interested in sharing time, live, with an artist who helped write the history of hard rock.

Published in issue no. 1366 of CartaCapital , on June 18, 2025.

This text appears in the printed edition of CartaCapital under the title 'Aunt Alice is back'