Real ’80s rocker versus ‘Rock of Ages’

A few things they have in common: Willingness to show abs. Arena rock. Music videos. Hair metal.

One thing they don’t: Hair.

Colt Prattes of course wears a peroxide blond wig when he steps onstage as Stacee Jaxx in “Rock of Ages,” the campy Broadway musical which simultaneously spoofs and celebrates the Sunset Boulevard rock scene of the 1980s.

“Before they even see me they know what they want me to look like,” Prattes says of the audience. “Before I’m anywhere near that stage they know what they want to see.” And he does not disappoint.

Robin McAuley says he always had long hair, and still does for singing in “Raiding the Rock Vault.” But at one point in the ’80s, he had hair extensions all the same. “I didn’t need them but I remember (bandmate Michael) Schenker going, ‘If I have to have them, you have to have them.’

“It was very dangerous to sit close to me in those days. My hair was about 10 feet tall and 10 feet wide. If you were to light up standing beside me it would be combustible because there was so much hair spray.”

The McAuley Schenker Group — or MSG, as most people called them — had more musical credibility than the Cinderella or Poisons of the day, thanks to Michael Schenker’s legacy as a guitar shredder and McAuley’s solid belting.

Still, when the group opened for Whitesnake in Wembley Arena, a reviewer of the day wrote that they “hit the stage like a hairdresser’s nightmare,” McAuley recalls with a chuckle.

McAuley, who turns 62 on Jan. 20, is the scene-stealer — or is that song-stealer? — of “Rock Vault,” the Tropicana’s classic-rock tribute show. As one of his fellow performers told him, “You don’t show up for the first 20 minutes, but then you never leave.”

Prattes, 29, is the scene-stealer by design of “Rock of Ages,” which celebrated the start of its third year at The Venetian on Dec. 18. His rock-god character is a cross between Brett Michaels “in his looks” and Axl Rose “in his tortured, melodramatic, selfish … ‘It’s about me’ way.”

But Prattes didn’t come in total anonymity when he joined the Las Vegas cast in November. He is also known as the ripped, ballroom-dancing fantasy man in Pink’s 2012 “Try” video, and she took him on tour as a dancer for “The Truth About Love” tour.

In other words, he’s not a rock star, but he hung out with one. Which helps him play one.

“Every time I come out and that light comes out behind me, it reminds me of the beginning of the (Pink) show,” Prattes says. “I got so blessed to have that experience before I came here.”

Prattes and another male dancer were preloaded into an upside-down position above the stage to make their grand entries when the concert started. The first night, “We just looked at each other” as the screaming became “so unbearably loud” before Pink’s voice came over the speakers.

“Every night I get to relive that little moment in my head, that selfish little moment of missing that tour family but getting to play that center role. It’s nice.”

Prattes got his first big break in the 2009 Broadway revival of “West Side Story.” He started dancing because he “heard most of the guys (in his school dance program) were gay and girls didn’t have a lot to choose from. I started it to meet girls and then just kind of fell in love with it.”

When McAuley shows up in “Rock Vault” to wail “All Right Now,” there is no questioning the authenticity of a man who can still pull off the military-band jacket with no shirt and chrome-studded boots.

McAuley grew up in Ireland as one of 10 kids in a house without running water. His first foray into rock was as a drummer, but he found more success in pub bands as a singer.

He liked punk rock, but instead ended up in an American rock-styled group called Grand Prix, and eventually the second go-round of MSG. (Thanks to his last name starting with “M,” they were able to preserve the initials of the Michael Schenker Group.)

The group had its fans, but never moved up from rock’s second tier. “I think we should have done more than three albums in six or seven years, but we didn’t,” McAuley says.

Once Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album came out, pop-metal “got the proverbial boot,” he says. “It was, ‘Go away and cut your hair and never come back again.’… The record industry at large thought, ‘That’s it, they’re gone. It’ll never come back.’ ”

But come back it did, at least in “Rock of Ages.” The musical has played in New York since 2009, but closes there Jan. 18. At that point The Venetian will host the only stationary version of the play.

And McAuley forges on with two other 60-somethings — singer Paul Shortino and guitarist Howard Leese — in “Rock Vault,” though they play the certified classics instead of now-obscure singles such as MSG’s “Gimme Your Love.”

You wouldn’t confuse one torso with the other when you see McAuley and Prattes without shirts in their respective shows. Yet few would argue McAuley on the verge of 62 is a fair comparison to Prattes on the verge of 30.

The latter is out to make a side business of his cross-training; he and his wife, Angelina, launched a Web venture called Ripped Together (currently dormant while they shop it to different companies). The two are advocates of responsible farming and sourcing their food.

“You know, I love waking up in the morning,” McAuley says when asked about the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle that swirled around him (alcohol became a big problem for Schenker in latter years). “I saw a lot of guys who were my friends who did not make it through the fog.”

But for him? He shrugs. “I had a good family upbringing, good sisters, good brothers. It may sound boring but it never fazed me.”

Gina, his wife of a quarter-century, “forbids weight and bellies, thank God.” When the two first met, “she said, ‘You know you’d be so much better off if you didn’t eat red meat.’

“I said, ‘I’d be so much better off if you didn’t smoke.’ So we shook on it,” and both kept their promise. “In my opinion, I won.”

One more thing they have in common.

“I love a drink,” Prattes says. “You gotta enjoy your life, but at the same time you gotta make sure that you got a life to enjoy.”

“I said I didn’t eat red meat. I didn’t say I didn’t drink,” McAuley, who has thus far sipped coffee backstage, says of the bottle of Jameson in his shared dressing room.

And so, a cross-Strip toast to abs and Sunset Boulevard.

“We were all crazy. It was a crazy time. But it was also a really fun time,” McAuley says. “I remember lines of people for the Marquee and the Roxy and the Whiskey in L.A. You did not see that when alternative and grunge came out.

“Everyone got teased up on a Saturday night and it was a blast. There were limos up and down Sunset Strip just having fun. And I think that just went away.”

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.