14 October 2025

Alice Cooper and Judas Priest: Rock for The Faithful | Mountain View | 10.14.25

ARTICLE CONTRIBUTED BY GABRIEL DAVID BARKIN | PUBLISHED ON October 14, 2025

Judas Priest and Alice Cooper shared the bill at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on Tuesday night. While Judas Priest was the first among equals on the bill, and they closed the show, I wasn’t the only one who went primarily to see Alice.

It wasn’t easy to tell the fans apart, and there were undoubtedly lots of fans of both acts. Tons of black eyeshadow. Black heavy metal concert tees. Neck tats. (And sitting front row, one “Be Kind” tie-dye sweatshirt.) But if the eye shadow was “leaking” or there was a top hat perched on someone’s head, I knew they were on Team Cooper.

Alice loves his props, even at 77. He started the show dancing with a long sword like a swashbuckling pirate. Then he swapped that for a cane and strutted the stage in welcome-to-the-big top fashion. (He threw the cane to an audience member when the song was over.) He brandished a crutch like it was an Uzi for “I’m Eighteen.” Shook maracas shaped like shrunken heads. Tossed out beads of plastic pearls.

His three guitarists and bass player all made ample use of the multi-tiered stage, which was designed to resemble a stack of books. Magical how-to-raise-the-dead books, no doubt. Totally on brand and (if I’m being honest) possibly a hedged bet in case the aging rocker took a spill. Raise the dead indeed.

Not to worry. The man has been playing this role on stage for over fifty years. He knows his lines, his steps, his flourishes. This is theater after all, akin to a KISS or Taylor Swift “Eras” performance. Alice Cooper is a de facto tour de force, as comfortable in the role as Laurence Olivier was in Hamlet. A closer comparison might be an amalgamation of Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. He deserves a lifetime achievement award for doing his schtick first and keeping it up for so long.

Alice is larger than life – so much so that a 12-foot-tall puppet “Alice” walking around the stage during “Feed My Frankenstein” seems small in comparison to the lead actor standing in the spotlight.

There were frequent acts of mayhem and murder throughout his 80-minute set, of course. One fun bit during “Hey Stoopid” resulted in an onstage camera operator who got too close getting skewered by Alice’s microphone stand. What larks!

The touring band was dressed appropriately in black studded leather to do their rock and roll thing. They strutted from one side of the stage to the other and frequently coalesced to stand side by side with their leading man in various combinations of poster-perfect poses. Some wicked guitar solos too, you don’t get to tour with Alice if you ain’t got the chops.

The iconic top hat came and went, like an elderly band mate who needed to rest between songs. But unlike his aged hat, Alice never flagged. Despite some wrinkles (which actually helped to make his face look even more skeletal, which we’ll call a fringe benefit of septuagenarianism), the impresario is still in command of his big top.

He wore a frilly pirate shirt. A vampire cape. And of course, he got strapped into his fabled straitjacket for “Ballad of Dwight Fry.” Seriously, he’s quite the clothes horse.

Alice asked the crowd to “raise your hands if you’re poison!” Survey says: about thirty percent of the crowd were poison. (Presumably, the remainder were there instead for “Breaking the Law” with Judas Priest.)

Despite all the fun, I felt serious discomfort (to say the least) when Alice physically abused a life-sized rag doll woman during “Cold Ethyl.” Really, dude, in this day and age?! The misogyny was tasteless and ugly in a show that was otherwise fun and frightfully frolicsome. Launching into his sad domestic violence hit “Only Women Bleed” next, he resurrected the rag doll as a live dancer – played by his wife Sheryl Cooper – offering a moment of hope and redemption until Alice killed her off.

But the “murder” of course led to a no-trial guillotining, the wronged woman releasing the blade to chop off Alice’s head. She paraded it around held high by his long black hair. So maybe it was just a morality play after all? I’m not sure that end justified the spousal abuse bit. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about it. I’m guessing Alice feels like he made a statement that beating up women isn’t cool, but I’m equally sure the lesson is lost on dudes who just think it’s all funny. That shit just ain’t funny to me.

With that part of Alice’s story cycle over, we finally got to hear “School’s Out Forever.” Giant balloons filled with confetti colored the stage. Sing-a-long audience fun. Perhaps Alice’s Adventures in Nightmare-Land was all just a dream? What did we learn, kids?

After a break, Judas Priest closed the show.

Judas Priest is Birmingham UK’s second most famous heavy metal band. (Perhaps you’ve heard of Black Sabbath?) On this tour, Priest is honoring Ozzy Osbourne, recently deceased singer of their Birmingham betters in lifetime album and tour revenues, by playing “War Pigs” over the PA before banging on their own guitars. The entire audience sang along to the first verse. Me too. Nice.

From there on, it was Priest all the way.

It’s mostly about Rob Halford these days. He and bassist Ian Hill are the only vets left from their early days. Halford’s falsetto screams remain mostly intact. He paces the stage like an old man, a bit herky-jerky between taking statuesque lead singer spotlight poses. Both he and Ozzy have always had this sort of odd old-mannish mannerism, maybe it’s a Birmingham thing? Even so, Halford is a boss, clearly in charge of the whole shebang.

The guitar slots were filled by Richie Faulkner, who has been playing with Priest since 2011, and Andy Sneap. Sneap replaced long-time guitarist Glenn Tipton on tour in 2018, though Tipton still contributes to the band’s recordings. To quote a wise fictional record producer who once said about TV character, Greg Brady (when he was recruited to record as “Johnny Bravo“ on an episode of “The Brady Bunch“): “You’ve got the look we want – you fit the suit.”

These guys fit the suit.

The Teutonic guitar duo could play twins on television’s “Vikings” series. That’s not just because of their complimentary leather studded pantsuits and affinity for “Flying V” guitars. They’re also well-honed practitioners of heavy metal stagecraft, with flashy solos and rock star poses that are somewhat interchangeable. (What is it about metal that makes guitarists feel a compulsion to stand like they’re “on their marks” and about to get set? Emulating Sagittarius the archer seems to be a requirement for the role.)

Scott Travis has been on the drums for Priest for several decades, but he doesn’t go as far back to the classic hit-making days either. So only two out of the five are longtime members who actually sat in on the recordings of their big hits. Which is about par for the course for a band that has been around as long as Priest these days. And of course, Halford had a hiatus somewhere in there during which, a la Journey, the band hired some dude from a Priest cover band to play the part.

But seriously, Priest is one of the major templates of the heavy metal genre. Iron Maiden. Def Leppard. Metallica. (Many ’80s “hair bands” like Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister and Cinderella owe an equal debt to Judas Priest for musical influence and Alice Cooper for theatrical appearances.) Hits like “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'” and “Breaking the Law” are fun FM radio staples, and the crowd ate them up like Pop Rocks, exploding with fists pumping when their favorites were played. The old guys and newbies alike give their people what they want – serious speed-metal ass kicking laced with artful screams and frenetic solos. God love ’em, the Priest helped to invent this stuff, and they’ve got the patents to prove it.

The opening slot was filled by Corrosion of Conformity. COC has been around since the early ’80s, when they burst on the scene as one of the first of a breed of punk-metal fusion. They’ve got a whiff of Southern rock in their genes; imagine if Molly Hatchet had been a speed metal band. (Sorry to plant that seed in your mind.)

The North Carolina quartet only has one through line to their founding days — lead guitarist Woody Weatherman is still up there doing his thing. Late ’80s veteran Pepper Keenan plays rhythm guitar and takes the vocal leads. Newcomer Bobby Landgraf kicked off the set with some mean bass licks.

Among recent alumni (a bizarre fit, but a gig’s a gig) is Galactic drummer Stanton Moore. Darn it though, John Green is drumming on this current tour. I was hoping for Stanton. Green’s hair doesn’t stop flying the entire time he’s banging the skins.