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Halloween. What better time for Alice Cooper, who plays the Orpheum tomorrow [Sunday, Oct. 29], to come to town?

Alice Cooper didn’t used to spend Halloween skewering baby dolls, getting beheaded and the other scary things he’s known for doing onstage. You might have seen Alice Cooper trick or treating out with his kids, if you lived in Phoenix 10 years ago.
‘‘I went out as Zorro a couple times, and I must say I made a pretty dashing Zorro,” he recalled by phone last week.

‘‘And one year I did a full-on Michael Myers. I’d have a little button with the theme music playing, and when the kids were getting their bags filled I’d just stand by the door staring. I figured out that you can scare people pretty good that way; if you just stand there not talking it really gets them going. Especially if you come back later and stand outside their window.”

Alice is back to dressing as Alice, now that his kids are grown, and during the past decade, his Halloween tours have become dependable.

‘‘For us it’s Halloween every night,” he said, ‘‘but this is the one time of year when the audience dresses up better than we do. I like it when they come dressed as characters from the show, like the executioner or the nurse.”

Since ‘‘Poison” in 1992, he hasn’t had a hit single, though Alice has lately made a musical comeback. Alice Cooper had gone through arena-rock and speed-metal phases but his last two albums, ‘‘The Eyes of Alice Cooper”‘ and ‘‘Dirty Diamonds,” marked a return to the rougher garage sound of his ’70s discs.

‘‘I was listening to the White Stripes, the Strokes, Jet and thinking,
“Why does this sound familiar to me?” he said. ‘‘Of course! It’s 1968 Detroit garage rock. I was tired of getting drunk on technology, and now I could go back to playing with a great bar band. We made the last album in 16 days. If somebody dropped a bass line, I’d say, “Good. That’s what a live band sounds like.”

‘‘There’s not much difference between me and someone like Aerosmith. I’m sure I listened to the Yardbirds as much as they did.”

Alice did some new songs yesterday, but fear not: You could have still counted on him to get guillotined midway through the show.

‘‘That’s by popular demand,” Alice said. ‘‘There are so many kids out there now who’ve heard about it but never seen it. Thanks to the Internet, kids nowadays are more educated about music than they’ve ever been. I guarantee that if you see 10 kids in a mall, seven of them will be wearing classic-rock T-shirts. They find out about Ozzy and Led Zeppelin, and the more demented ones like us.”

You probably would have to be closer to the 58-year-old Alice’s demographic to recognize one of his inspirations for the show.

‘‘There will be things flying off the stage,” Alice said. ‘‘It’s a mix of serial killer and Rip Taylor.”