ALICE Cooper closed the first night of the Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth in typically theatrical style.

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The godfather of shock rock brought his barmy and brilliantly over the top Theatre of Death show to the grounds of the gothic stately home last night (Friday).

After electro-pop pioneer Gary Numan, suitably dressed in all black, had slotted in classic Cars mid set and then closed with chart-topper Are ‘Friends’ Electric?, American glamster Alice Cooper wasted no time getting the large Saturn crowd on his side.

Against a backdrop of 30ft high glittering red letters spelling out his own first name, the veteran make-up clad rocker opened with rebellious anthem School’s Out before launching into No More Mr Nice Guy.

His gruesome and gory 90-minute set, featuring Feed My Frankenstein, perfectly captured the mood of the evening’s Rocky Horror Show theme.

The singer put his head in a guillotine, was tortured in various ways and had a huge hypodermic needle plunged into his stomach at the climax of Poison.

Vincent Furnier’s alter-ego waltzed on stage near the end waving a Union Jack for Elected before closing with an encore of seminal chart-topper School’s Out.

Earlier in the evening, Knebworth festival-goers attempted to break the world record for the number of people doing the Time Warp at the same time.

With more than 6,000 people participating – a large number in Rocky Horror costumes – Sonisphere smashed the current record set at 4,000.

However, the only problem is that in all the excitement no one actually counted and the person supposed to be doing the video was so busy performing their own pelvic thrusts while filming they clean forgot to turn the camera on the crowd!

Finnish metal band Turisas and Swedish hard rockers Europe also performed last night.

German industrial metallers Rammstein will literally torch Knebworth tonight (Saturday) with their explosive UK festival debut.

The stage was still being constructed last night – all 200 tonnes of kit and 22 tonnes of pyrotechnics.