Pop Talk by George Varga

Trick or treat?

For Alice Cooper and Maynard James Keenan, there may be no difference.

Then again, given their shared penchant for performing eye-popping stage shows on a regular basis, Halloween just might be the most anticlimactic day of the year for these two charismatic rock singers and songwriters.

"We're going to dress like insurance men," shock-rock pioneer Cooper quipped. "Since every night is Halloween for us, we wear Brooks Brothers suits on Halloween."

Really?

"No," Cooper said. "But we like it when the audience comes totally dressed up, especially on Halloween. We're usually underdressed that night."

Keenan, who performed at least part of one Los Angeles concert this year made up as actress Milla Jovovich, also is looking forward to Halloween.

"We have a few tricks up our sleeves," he said. "We have a special set planned."

By coincidence, both Cooper and Keenan will perform in San Diego on Halloween night.

Cooper brings his "Theatre of Death" tour to the Open Sky Theater, at Harrah's Rincon, on Saturday. Keenan, best known as the lead singer in the bands Tool and A Perfect Circle, performs Saturday and Sunday at San Diego's Spreckels Theatre with his latest group, Puscifer.

"I loved Halloween as a kid," Cooper said. "I was always Zorro. I had that sword and the dark, swashbuckling look, and there is a little part of that in Alice. But I was never the hero; I was always the villain."

And Keenan?

"Halloween was a chance to become someone else," said the singer, who with Tool performs behind a large scrim, accompanied by projections of beastly animated figures.

"Having moved around a lot as a kid, I found — as the new guy at school — that Halloween opened up a door to reinvent yourself. So when somebody asked your name, you could say, 'Elmer Fudd.'"

Their music is markedly different, but Keenan and Cooper have several things in common. Both have pushed the rock 'n' roll envelope in very distinct ways. Both live in Arizona (Cooper in the Phoenix area, Keenan in Jerome, population 300). Both, unlikely as it may seem, were star runners on their respective high-school cross-country teams.

"I was recruited to West Point for cross-country," said Keenan, who served in the U.S. Army for three years but declined his appointment to West Point. "I hardly ever broke a 4-minute, 15-second mile."

"That's fast!" Cooper said. "I graduated from high school in 1966, and we ran two- and three-mile races, but it was a sprint."

For rock fans more inclined to sit or stand, both of Puscifer's San Diego concerts include the option of a pre-show wine tasting (for fans 21 or older).

Each will promote Keenan's two award-winning Arizona wineries, Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards.

"Being in a wine cellar a lot, I push boxes and do a lot of lifting," Keenan said. "But all the wine tasting has gained me a pear-shaped quality."

That's not the case with Cooper.

A happy teetotaler, he became sober — and a devout Christian — in the late 1970s, after years of notorious alcohol abuse.

"I golf every day and still have a runner's body," said Cooper, who jokes he "traded one addiction" (booze) "for another" (golfing). "My show is two hours, five nights a week, so I tend to lose 2 inches around my waist on tour."

Does touring also produce weight loss for Keenan, 45 (who is 16 years younger than the seemingly ageless Cooper)?

"A little bit, just because of all the traveling," Keenan said. "But idle hands find ... chocolate!"

Cooper and Keenan never had talked together before this joint phone interview. They quickly bonded over their shared running backgrounds and their affinity for going against the grain.

"My first musical discovery as a kid was Kiss," Keenan said. "Then my uncle introduced me to (Cooper's 1971 album) 'Love It to Death.' And that discovery, through music, of who you are — and having some reinforcement of that — is so important.

"If you have a moment when you get validation of being an individual, it really helps you to project your identity — if you have the stamina and the willpower to not listen to other voices and to follow your own."

"That's true, and I applaud anybody who can do that," said Cooper, the son of a minister. "Theologically, I don't agree with everything Marilyn Manson does. In fact, we couldn't be more opposite. But after considering that he spent so much time developing his show and image, I went, 'All right!' You gotta give it to him."

Both Cooper and Keenan stress the importance of humor — however dark — in their work, although Keenan laments that audiences don't always get when he's trying to be funny.

"We just finished up a sketch where we have Hitler as a (dancing) cookie chef for Puscifer," he said. "So that's where I'm at — Hitler as a ballerina."

"My show doesn't exist without a punch line," Cooper said. "Alice might slit your throat, but he'd slip on a banana peel a few minutes later. I think I'll go down as the warped Busby Berkeley of rock 'n' roll."

"I'll take the Jim Nabors of rock," said Keenan, a Gomer Pyle fan.

"If you can sing like Jim Nabors," Cooper said, "I'd be very impressed."

To find out more about George Varga and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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