PHOTOS — Alice Cooper 2025 ⋆ Shows I Go To | 🎤 Florida Concerts, Festivals, & Giveaways

PHOTOS — Alice Cooper 2025

Alice Cooper • February 8, 2025 • The BayCare Sound, Clearwater, FL • Photos by Randy Cook

Alice Cooper | February 8, 2025 | The Baycare Sound, Clearwater, FL

When additional dates got added to Alice Cooper’s “Too Close For Comfort” tour, the local show in my area fell on my sister’s (Debby) birthday and she had always wanted to see Alice Cooper, so we enjoyed a sibling outing to the beautiful waterfront venue in downtown Clearwater, FL on a fantastic mid 60 degree Saturday night. Adding to the familial element of the adventure my great nephew (Dom), my sister’s grandson, was also able to join us for the show.

Having just turned 77 four days prior to our show, the legendary Mr. Cooper showed no sign that Father Time had any effect on his slowing down his performance or diminishing his voice. While his live shows are known for elaborate and theatrical stage productions, it is the tunes that transform the crowd back to their younger days as the evening’s festivities move through a twenty-four song set which span an astonishing twelve of his twenty nine studio releases. With a musical catalog like that there was no opening band. From the moment the show started it was a visual and auditory feast for the senses and was a fantastic blend of classic hits and deep cuts.

Merging macabre theatricality with hard rock, Alice Cooper is credited as a pioneering force in shock rock and being a major influence across multiple musical genres. His writing such anthemic, rebellious songs such as ‘School’s Out’ and “I’m Eighteen” helped propel his career into stardom and have solidly held their place in rock history for over FIFTY years.

The show was on the verge of being sold out and many in the crowd were adorned in Alice Cooper shirts of both recent and of tours past. Being fascinated by people watching, my interest in the demographics of the crowd for the Shows I Go To was as expected. The crowd this evening skewed older and more couples than singles was my observation. Most of the younger faces I noted were with their parents, which I think is great to see music crossing generations, of which I got to experience with my family.

Ominous evil looking bell ringers crisscross the stage before a newsprint like headline appears on the stage covering curtain. The silhouette of Alice Cooper appears behind the curtain as the band has already began the first song and the crowd is voicing their approval. Alice emerges center stage and welcomes us to the show and his creepy persona is already on full display sneering at the audience and obviously loving his audience engagement.

As what always seems to happen, my time in the photo pit was over in what felt like an instant and I made my way back to my seat to take in the visuals that I could not see in their entirety being up so close during those first four songs. After the show both Debby and Dom said that they could feel the anticipation in the air in the moments before the show started and then that thrill when show starts. Debby said she could feel the music the way her seat vibrated with both bass and drum hits. It was her first time seeing Alice Cooper and her first concert in over thirty years and hearing the music of her youth she said exactly that, how it was a walk down memory lane for her.

With the blistering triple axeman attack fronted by Tommy Henriksen, Ryan Roxie along with special guest, Gilby Clarke (filling in for Nita Strauss) have bassist Chuck Garric and percussionist Glen Sobel keeping the band in perfect time step and we all agreed the band sounds perfectly tight and crisp. I love how you would be hard pressed to tell who is playing which solo from just an auditory perspective and with all of the elaborate theatrics unfolding on stage I tend to try to follow the ‘story being told’ more than the musicians themselves.

During two different songs there were staged photographers making their unwanted way on stage and the first one had her throat ceremoniously slit and was then limply dragged away and the second one was impaled through the stomach with Alice’s cane and dragged off stage still snapping away. The production value is exceptional with impressive lighting which made not only me, but other photographers on hand in our reviewing section wishing we could have still been snapping away. Not only is the lighting and theatrics that captivating, I seemed to realize after the fact as I write this the whole show tells a story.

While two of his biggest hits were played early while I was in the photo pit, ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’ and ‘I’m Eighteen’, once I had made it back to my seat it was the song ‘Be My Lover’ that I first noticed signs of people getting up and dancing in the aisles. The on-screen projections behind the band added an enhancement to the visuals along with Alice Cooper’s signature props, the result is a fully immersive experience for the audience. Every aspect of the show is designed to rock, shock, awe, and entertain equally.

There were several on hand in the audience that I saw had plush toy snakes wrapped around their necks and Alice Cooper did not disappoint playing ‘Snakebite’ with a live snake coiled around his body, and it made me wonder in the moment how many times that particular snake has been on stage. What initially looked like elevated platforms at either side of the stage were eventually turned around at the beginning of ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ and were in fact staircases with a landing at the top. With piped in creepy smoke flowing down the staircase Alice Coper stood atop on the platform and played the part of ‘conductor’, directing his four stringed instrument performers into a semi-circle below him.

The performance of the song ‘Cold Ethyl’ proves to me that to this day Alice Cooper is still the reigning godfather of shock rock. Not being familiar with this song and being captivated by his antics on stage with a life-sized stuffed doll, I was sort of taken aback when I discovered the subject of this song and then after the show felt it was the perfect segue into the song ‘Go to Hell’, complete with a black leather-clad temptress with a whip. And people say rock and roll/heavy metal is just noise. Look at the thought that went into the construction of the setlist for the storyline for this show!

Props to the live-feed camera team for the visuals and angles in the segment that made Alice’s escape from a straitjacket so sinister and creepy only for him to have his real-life wife guillotine his head clean off and parade it around the stage. Alice re-appeared on stage to sing his biggest hit, School’s Out’ with a snippet of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2’. The entire show had progressed with no in-between song chit chat, it was near the end of this medley was the only time Alice spoke to the crowd while not in song. He introduced the band and thanked us all for coming before a very brief pause and then the encore and final song of the evening ‘Feed My Frankenstein’ closed out the night, complete with a giant Frankenstein on stage and then a final bow by the entire group.

Debby, Dom and I saw nothing but happy faces as we people watched the crowd leave and then talked on the drive home how great of a show it was, with each of us enjoying that we were able to experience this together. In his mid-70s, Alice Cooper performed at a such a high level that I strongly encourage anyone who may be on the fence to attend one of his future shows to experience a master at his craft of both audio and visual entertainment.

Alice Cooper set list – February 8, 2025:

Lock Me Up
Welcome to the Show
No More Mr. Nice Guy
I’m Eighteen
Under My Wheels
Bed of Nails
Billion Dollar Babies
Snakebite
Be My Lover
Lost in America
He’s Back (The Man Behind the Mask)
Hey Stoopid
Drum Solo
Welcome to My Nightmare
Cold Ethyl
Go to Hell
Poison
Guitar Solo (Welcome to the jungle snippet)
Black Widow Jam
Ballad of Dwight Fry
Killer
I Love the Dead
School’s Out / Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2