There are some casting decisions that make perfect sense.
Then there are casting decisions so ridiculously perfect that you wonder why nobody thought of them sooner.
Alice Cooper as King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Come on, mun. 😂🤘
The king of shock rock. The bloke who built a career around guillotines, snakes, blood, theatrical villains and enough eyeliner to keep Boots in business for several decades… appearing in one of the most famous rock operas ever written?
SIGN. US. UP.
And when Alice Cooper finally swaggered onto the stage during NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert in 2018 to perform “King Herod’s Song”, he didn’t need half an hour to make an impression.
He needed about three minutes.
Three gloriously camp, sinister and completely Cooper-esque minutes.
🎭 JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR GOES LIVE
On Easter Sunday, 1 April 2018, NBC broadcast Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert from the Marcy Avenue Armory in Brooklyn, New York.
And they weren’t messing around with the cast.
John Legend took on the enormous role of Jesus Christ.
Sara Bareilles played Mary Magdalene.
Brandon Victor Dixon delivered a powerhouse performance as Judas Iscariot.
And then lurking among all those musical-theatre heavyweights was a name every rock fan immediately recognised.
Alice bloody Cooper. 😈
Cooper was cast as King Herod, and if you’ve ever seen Alice perform live, you’ll know this wasn’t exactly asking him to venture too far outside his comfort zone.
Play an eccentric, sinister, larger-than-life ruler who treats his appearance like his own personal cabaret show?
Mate.
That’s practically Tuesday afternoon for Alice Cooper.
👑 ENTER KING HEROD
King Herod doesn’t dominate Jesus Christ Superstar.
In fact, he’s only around for a relatively short period.
But that’s exactly what makes “King Herod’s Song” such a brilliant moment in the musical.
After all the tension, betrayal, politics and emotional devastation surrounding Jesus, suddenly the audience gets this bizarre, sarcastic slice of vaudeville-style theatrical madness.
And then NBC handed it to Alice Cooper.
Beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful. 😂
Cooper emerged wearing a spectacular orange suit, armed with a skull-topped cane, looking somewhere between a Las Vegas casino owner, Batman villain and the world’s most dangerous wedding entertainer.
Around him were dancers.
There was choreography.
There was swagger.
There was camp.
There was menace.
And right in the middle of everything stood Alice Cooper looking like he’d been waiting his entire career for somebody to hand him this exact role.
🎤 “PROVE TO ME THAT YOU’RE NO FOOL…”
Herod’s role in the story is essentially one enormous piece of mockery.
Jesus has been sent before him and Herod has heard all the stories.
Miracles.
Healing.
The supposed Messiah.
So Herod decides he wants a demonstration.
The entire song becomes a sarcastic challenge, with Herod treating Jesus less like a prisoner and more like some disappointing magician who has turned up without his props.
And Cooper absolutely revels in it.
He doesn’t need to scream.
He doesn’t need the guillotine.
He doesn’t need a massive rock band exploding behind him.
Instead, Alice leans into the theatrical side of the character.
The raised eyebrows.
The sly grin.
The deliberate movements.
The unmistakable voice.
Every gesture feels like classic Cooper.
You can almost imagine Herod finishing the number, wandering backstage and immediately launching into “Welcome to My Nightmare.”
😂🤘
🔥 ALICE COOPER WAS BUILT FOR MUSICAL THEATRE
It’s easy to think of Alice Cooper purely as a rock star.
But that massively undersells what the man has been doing for more than half a century.
Alice Cooper has always been theatre with electric guitars attached.
His concerts aren’t simply gigs.
They’re productions.
Characters appear.
People get murdered.
Alice gets executed.
Alice comes back.
There are monsters, props, costumes and elaborate sets.
Depending on the tour, you might see guillotines, electric chairs, straightjackets, giant creatures and enough fake blood to make the cleaning crew consider another profession.
Underneath all of that, though, is something incredibly important.
Alice knows how to play a character.
The Alice Cooper we see on stage isn’t simply Vincent Furnier singing songs.
He’s a theatrical creation.
A villain.
A ringmaster.
A horror host.
A rock ‘n’ roll pantomime baddie.
So dropping him into Jesus Christ Superstar wasn’t stunt casting.
It actually made enormous sense.
🤯 AND THIS WASN’T ALICE’S FIRST TIME AS HEROD
Here’s where things get even more interesting.
Alice Cooper’s relationship with “King Herod’s Song” didn’t begin in 2018.
More than 20 years earlier, Cooper had already recorded the song.
In 1996, he contributed a recording of “King Herod’s Song” connected with a studio recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.
So when Alice appeared in NBC’s production in 2018, this wasn’t some random celebrity being dropped into a musical for a bit of publicity.
He already knew Herod.
He’d already tackled the song.
Now he finally got the opportunity to go full Alice Cooper with the character in front of a massive television audience.
And naturally…
he smashed it.
👏 THREE MINUTES. MASSIVE REACTION.
One of the brilliant things about Cooper’s appearance is how little time he actually needs.
Some performers require an entire show to establish themselves.
Alice Cooper walks on stage and within seconds you’re thinking:
“Yep. That’s King Herod.”
The performance received a huge reaction, including a standing ovation.
And it became one of those moments where rock fans who might never normally sit down for a television musical suddenly had a reason to pay attention.
Because this wasn’t Alice Cooper awkwardly attempting musical theatre.
This was musical theatre wandering directly into Alice Cooper’s natural habitat.
🎸 JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR HAS ALWAYS BEEN ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
Of course, Alice appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar shouldn’t really seem strange at all.
The clue has been sitting there since the beginning.
It’s a rock opera.
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical began life as a concept album in 1970, packed with electric guitars, huge vocals, dramatic arrangements and enough rock DNA to make it stand apart from traditional musical theatre.
The original concept album featured Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan as Jesus, for crying out loud.
That’s not exactly The Sound of Music, is it? 😂🤘
Over the decades, Jesus Christ Superstar has continued attracting performers from the rock world because the material lends itself perfectly to big voices and larger-than-life personalities.
And few personalities come larger than Alice Cooper.
💿 THE 2018 SOUNDTRACK
The performance was also captured on the official soundtrack.
Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert – Original Soundtrack of the NBC Television Event arrived on 6 April 2018, just days after the live broadcast.
Alice Cooper’s version of “King Herod’s Song” clocks in at around three minutes and 22 seconds.
Not exactly an epic.
But sometimes you don’t need 15 minutes and six guitar solos to steal the show.
Sometimes all you need is an orange suit, a skull cane and Alice Cooper.
😈 THE PERFECT HEROD?
There have been countless interpretations of King Herod over the decades.
Some lean heavily into comedy.
Others make him darker.
Some go full cabaret.
Alice Cooper somehow manages to combine practically all of it.
He’s funny without turning Herod into a complete joke.
He’s sinister without becoming terrifying.
He’s camp without losing the character’s authority.
And underneath everything sits that instantly recognisable Alice Cooper voice.
It’s exactly the sort of performance that reminds you why Cooper has survived every musical trend thrown at him.
Glam.
Punk.
Disco.
Hair metal.
Grunge.
Nu metal.
Whatever came next.
Alice simply carried on being Alice.
🤘 ROCK MUSIC AND MUSICAL THEATRE ARE CLOSER THAN WE THINK
There’s sometimes a strange divide between rock fans and musical-theatre fans.
But productions like Jesus Christ Superstar prove how silly that divide can be.
Big choruses?
Yep.
Huge voices?
Absolutely.
Ridiculous costumes?
Have you SEEN an Iron Maiden concert?
Pyro?
Metal bands practically buy the stuff by the shipping container.
Characters, storytelling, dramatic lighting and enormous stage productions?
Sounds suspiciously like half the arena tours we’ve ever attended.
Rock and musical theatre have always had more in common than either side sometimes wants to admit.
And Alice Cooper’s King Herod sits right in the middle of that glorious crossover.
👑 ALL HAIL KING ALICE
Alice Cooper’s appearance in Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert might have been brief, but it remains one of the production’s most memorable moments.
No giant Frankenstein monster.
No guillotine.
No snake.
No gallons of stage blood.
Just Alice Cooper walking onto a musical-theatre stage and reminding everyone that theatrics have always been part of rock ‘n’ roll.
It was camp.
It was creepy.
It was funny.
It was swaggering.
It was unmistakably Alice.
And frankly, mun, if you’re going to cast King Herod in a rock opera, why wouldn’t you phone the bloke who’s spent half a century behaving like rock music’s resident supervillain?
Long live King Herod.
Long live Alice Cooper. 👑😈
And long live those gloriously bonkers moments when rock ‘n’ roll and musical theatre collide.
🤘🔥🎭
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