It's a retro glam weekend with Alice Cooper and 'Rocky Horror' 40th anniversary

Both Alice Cooper and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are back in town this weekend. Glittering, ghoulish, garish nostalgia is in the air.

Both are glam-rock-based phenomena comprising schmaltzy showbiz, pansexuality, and terror-monster movie aesthetics. Shock-rock originator Cooper is to play Friday with Mötley Crüe at the Wells Fargo Center. The 40th anniversary screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, starring Susan Sarandon, Tim Curry, and Meat Loaf, is Saturday at Theatre of Living Arts, which often screened the cult classic between 1975 and 1990.

Alice Cooper started even before the glam '70s, bending genders with a fey brand of psychedelic garage rock until producer Bob Ezrin pushed them into melodic, hit-making metal with "School's Out" and "Elected." Cooper's penchant for shocking display - his self-adornment in blood-soaked women's clothing, his "decapitation" via onstage guillotines, the urban-legendary stunt of biting the head off a chicken - pushed the band's theatrics over (in fact, obliterated) the edge. The band's shtick arose from the same lipstick-gore that birthed Rocky Horror. "For us," says Cooper, "they were in bed together: rock-and-roll, horror, West Side Story."

Jim Sharman's 1975 movie adaptation of Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror Show threw every glam-rock and terror-schlock cliché into the cauldron and stirred up a merry mess. The film hit the then-burgeoning midnight-movie scene and became a live spectacle. Attendees dressed as their favorite characters, recited lines along with the film, and reenacted scenes - for example, throwing rice during the wedding scene.

"Times change, and rice-throwing in the TLA isn't allowed anymore," Robert Drake said with a laugh. The WXPN DJ is producing the Saturday screening/performance. He once played the bespectacled Brad during those TLA midnight Rocky Horror screenings.

"Celebrating the 40th anniversary of RHPS is more than celebrating a movie," Drake said. "It's celebrating the experience: the freedom and release that audience members get, from outlandish costumes to interactive shout-backs and prop cues."

When it came to theatrical props in rock, Cooper wrote the book: guillotines, electric chairs, gibbets, lady's underthings. "What would be wrong with me wearing my girlfriend's slip? - but only if it was all torn up and had blood on it," he cackled. "People would have to ask, 'What just happened? There must be a story behind that.' We wanted people to talk about us beyond the music. Hey, three of the members of the band were art majors."

Ray Murray - currently the man behind the art-film distributor Artsploitation - wasn't a glam-rock kid, but rather a TLA projectionist in 1975. He eventually screened Rocky Horror more than 1,500 times at TLA, and he saw firsthand all the weird magic. "Never got sick of seeing it," Murray says, "especially as it paid our rent when we had 10 people in the audience for weekday screenings. It was revolutionary in its time, especially as a gay thing. It was great fun as entertainment, especially when it trickled down to high schoolers who used to hang on South Street. But as a gay thing, it was light-years ahead of what was being shown - a real celebration of alternative sexuality in all its glory."

You can see in Alice Cooper plenty of androgyny ("before I became Captain Hook?") and pansexuality. His antics paralleled those of David Bowie in Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. Was his playful, crazy cross-dressing part of a pop movement that furthered transgender acceptability? Or was it just a lot of loud, messy fun?

"I think we were more about the art than social justice - the art of chaos," Cooper says. "I don't know how truly sexual it was at all, but rather, just more of a way to make parents look at us - or you - sideways."

Rocky Horror's chorus-line klutziness and Alice Cooper's mascaraed terrors were totems of '70s pop excess. But they also had surprising theater connections. Before Rocky Horror, Curry belonged to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and O'Brien was an actor in the U.K. Fringe theater scene. Pierre La Roche, famed Bowie stylist, created the film's makeup.

Alice Cooper was inducted in 2011 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His newest album drops in September, featuring guest shots by Johnny Depp, Paul McCartney, and Joe Perry as Hollywood Vampires. He stresses the music over the makeup. "The difference between us and other bands heavy on costumes and drama then was that we could deliver musically," he says. "Show-wise, album-wise, we were it, beyond glam and shock. We had to work seven hours a day on the music, but we got there. The theatrics came easy."

PERFORMANCES

Alice Cooper and Mötley Crüe play at 7 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m., at the Wells Fargo Center, 3601 S. Broad St. Tickets: $20-$125. Information: 800-298-4200, www.comcast-spectacor.com.
The "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is 40! Screening and performances, 9 p.m. Saturday, Theatre of Living Arts, 334 South St. Tickets: $20. Information: 215-922-1011, www.phillyzombie.com.