Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer whose career spans over five decades. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by many music journalists and peers to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock". He has drawn equally from horror films, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre and theatrical brand of rock designed to shock audiences.

Originating in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1964, "Alice Cooper" was originally a band with roots extending back to a band called the Earwigs, consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, and Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar and backing vocals. By 1966, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar joined the three and Neal Smith was added on drums in 1967. The five named the band "Alice Cooper", and Furnier eventually adopted it as his stage pseudonym. They released their 1969 debut studio album with limited chart success. Breaking out with the 1970 single "I'm Eighteen" and the third studio album '' Love It to Death'', the band reached their commercial peak in 1973 with their sixth studio album, ''Billion Dollar Babies''. After the band broke up, Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and began a solo career in 1975 with the concept album '' Welcome to My Nightmare''. Over his career, Cooper has sold well over 50 million records.

Cooper has experimented with a number of musical styles, mainly hard rock, glam rock, heavy metal, and glam metal, but also new wave (1980–1983), art rock (on ''DaDa''), and industrial rock (on '' Brutal Planet'' and '' Dragontown''). He helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal, and has been described as the artist who "first introduced horror imagery to rock'n'roll, and whose stagecraft and showmanship have permanently transformed the genre". He is also known for his wit offstage, with ''The Rolling Stone Album Guide'' calling him the world's most "beloved heavy metal entertainer". Away from music, Cooper is a film actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur, and, since 2004, a radio DJ with his classic rock show ''Nights with Alice Cooper''.

Early life

Vincent Damon Furnier was born on February 4, 1948, in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Ether Moroni Furnier (1924–1987) and his wife Ella Mae (''née'' McCart; born 1925). He was named after his uncle, Vincent Collier Furnier, and the writer Damon Runyon. His father was an evangelist in The Church of Jesus Christ, informally known as "Bickertonites", and his paternal grandfather, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an apostle (from 1917) in and president (1963–1965) of that church.

Cooper was active in his church at ages 11 to 12. Following a series of childhood illnesses, he moved with his family to Phoenix, Arizona, where he attended Cortez High School. In his high school yearbook, his ambition was to be "A million record seller".

Career

1960s

The Spiders and Nazz

In 1964, 16-year-old Furnier was eager to participate in Cortez High School's annual Letterman's talent show, so he gathered four fellow cross country teammates to form a group for the show: Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, John Tatum, and John Speer.Cooper describes in detail in his first autobiography, ''Me, Alice'', how he was tasked with organizing an act for the show. They named themselves the Earwigs.''Super Duper Alice Cooper.'' Dir. Reginald Harkima, Scott McFayden, and Sam Dunn. Banger Films in association with Eagle Rock Entertainment, the Movie Network, and Movie Central. 2014 – documentary They dressed up in costumes and wigs to resemble the Beatles, and performed several parodies of Beatles songs, with the lyrics modified to refer to the track team: in their rendition of "Please Please Me", for example, the line "Last night I said these words to my girl" was replaced with "Last night I ran four laps for my coach". Of the group, only Buxton knew how to play an instrument—the guitar—so Buxton played guitar while the rest mimed on their instruments. The group got an overwhelming response from the audience and won the talent show. As a result of their positive experience, the group decided to try to turn into a real band. They acquired musical instruments from a local pawn shop, and proceeded to learn how to play them, with Buxton doing most of the teaching, as well as much of the early songwriting. They soon renamed themselves the Spiders, featuring Furnier on vocals, Buxton on lead guitar, Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dunaway on bass guitar, and Speer on drums.

In 1966, the Spiders graduated from Cortez High School, and after North High School football player Michael Bruce replaced John Tatum on rhythm guitar, the band released their second single, "Don't Blow Your Mind", an original composition which became a local hit, backed by "No Price Tag".

By 1967, the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles to play shows. They soon renamed themselves Nazz and released the single "Wonder Who's Lovin' Her Now", backed with future Alice Cooper track "Lay Down and Die, Goodbye". Around this time, drummer John Speer was replaced by Neal Smith. By the end of the year, the band had relocated to Los Angeles.

Name change to "Alice Cooper"

In 1968, the band learned that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, and found themselves in need of another stage name. Furnier also believed that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage. They chose the name "Alice Cooper" largely because it sounded innocuous and wholesome, in humorous contrast to the band's image and music. In his 2007 book ''Alice Cooper, Golf Monster'', Cooper stated that his look was inspired in part by films. One of the band's all-time favorite movies was '' What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'' (1962) starring Bette Davis: "In the movie, Bette wears disgusting caked makeup smeared on her face and underneath her eyes, with deep, dark, black eyeliner." Another movie the band watched over and over was '' Barbarella'' (1968): "When I saw Anita Pallenberg playing the Great Tyrant in that movie in 1968, wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them, I thought, 'That's what Alice should look like.' That, and a little bit of Emma Peel from '' The Avengers''."

The classic Alice Cooper group line-up consisted of Furnier, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith. With the exception of Smith, who graduated from Camelback High School (which is referred to in the song "Alma Mater" on the album '' School's Out''), all of the band members were on the Cortez High School cross-country team. Cooper, Buxton, and Dunaway were also art students, and their admiration for the works of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí would further inspire their future stage antics.

One night after an unsuccessful gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, Los Angeles, where the band emptied the entire room of patrons after playing just ten minutes, they were approached and enlisted by music manager Shep Gordon, who saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction. Shep then arranged an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock." The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of psychedelic rock at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough for him to sign them to a three-album deal. Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, who liked to "dress the Cooper boys up like full size Barbie dolls," played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look.Barry Miles's biography of Frank Zappa includes a vivid description of how the GTO's influenced Cooper to wear makeup and dress in drag onstage.

Cooper's debut studio album, ''Pretties for You'' (1969), was eclectic and featured an experimental presentation of their songs in a psychedelic context.

Alice Cooper's "shock rock" reputation apparently developed almost by accident at first. An unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper, a feather pillow, and a live chicken garnered attention from the press; the band decided to capitalize on the tabloid sensationalism, creating in the process a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the infamous "Chicken Incident" at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969 was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way onto the stage into the feathers of a feather pillow they would open during Cooper's performance, and not having any experience with farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by wheelchair users, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces.Cooper confirms this version of events in an interview in ''Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts''. The next day the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Zappa phoned Cooper and asked if the story, which reported that he had bitten off the chicken's head and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it."Five years later, the Chicken Incident would be parodied in the second verse of the Ray Stevens song "The Moonlight Special", with Cooper referred to as ''Agnes Stoopa''.

The band later claimed that this period was highly influenced by Pink Floyd, and especially their debut studio album ''The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'' (1967). Glen Buxton said he could listen to Syd Barrett's guitar for hours at a time.

1970s

Despite the publicity from the chicken incident, the band's second studio album, '' Easy Action'', produced by David Briggs and released in June 1970, fared even worse than its predecessor, entirely failing to dent the '' Billboard'' Top 200. Around this time, fed up with Californians' indifference to their act, they relocated to Pontiac, Michigan, where their bizarre stage act was much better received by Midwestern crowds accustomed to the proto-punk styles of local bands such as the Stooges and the MC5. Despite this, Cooper still managed to receive a cream pie in the face when performing at the Cincinnati Pop Festival. Michigan would remain their steady home base until 1972. "L.A. just didn't get it," Cooper stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."

Alice Cooper appeared at the Woodstock-esque Strawberry Fields Festival near Toronto, Ontario, in August 1970. The band's mix of glam and increasingly violent stage theatrics stood out in stark contrast to the bearded, denim-clad hippie bands of the time. As Cooper himself stated: "We were into fun, sex, death and money when everybody was into peace and love. We wanted to see what was next. It turned out we were next, and we drove a stake through the heart of the Love Generation".

In autumn 1970, the Alice Cooper group teamed with producer Bob Ezrin for the recording of their third studio album, '' Love It to Death''. This was the final album in their Straight Records contract and the band's last chance to create a hit. That first success came with the single "I'm Eighteen", released in November 1970, which reached number 21 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 in early 1971. Not long after the album's release in January 1971, Warner Bros. Records purchased Alice Cooper's contract from Straight and re-issued the album, giving the group a higher level of promotion.

''Love It to Death'' proved to be their breakthrough studio album, reaching number 35 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200 album charts. It would be the first of 11 See the Alice Cooper entry under ''List of albums produced by Ezrin'' at Ezrin's Wikipedia page Alice Cooper group and solo albums produced by Ezrin, who is widely seen as being pivotal in helping to create and develop the band's definitive sound.

The group's 1971 tour featured a stage show involving mock fights and gothic torture modes being imposed on Cooper, climaxing in a staged execution by electric chair, with the band sporting tight, sequined, color-contrasting glam rock-style costumes made by prominent rock-fashion designer Cindy Dunaway (sister of band member Neal Smith, and wife of band member Dennis Dunaway). Cooper's androgynous stage role had developed to present a villainous side, portraying a potential threat to modern society. The success of the band's single and album, and their tour of 1971, which included their first tour of Europe (audience members reportedly included Elton John and a pre-Ziggy David Bowie), provided enough encouragement for Warner Bros. to offer the band a new multi-album contract.

Their follow-up studio album '' Killer'', released in late 1971, continued the commercial success of ''Love It to Death'' and included further single success with " Under My Wheels", "Be My Lover" in early 1972, and " Halo of Flies", which became a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands in 1973. Thematically, ''Killer'' expanded on the villainous side of Cooper's androgynous stage role, with its music becoming the soundtrack to the group's morality-based stage show, which by then featured a boa constrictor hugging Cooper on-stage, the murderous axe chopping of bloodied baby dolls, and execution by hanging at the gallows. In January 1972, Cooper was again asked about his peculiar name, and told talk-show hostess Dinah Shore that he took the name from a " Mayberry RFD" character.

The summer of 1972 saw the release of the single " School's Out". It went Top 10 in the U.S. and to number 1 in the UK, and remains a staple on classic rock radio to this day. The studio album '' School's Out'' reached No. 2 on the US charts and sold over a million copies. The band relocated to their new mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. With Cooper's on-stage androgynous persona completely replaced with brattiness and machismo, the band solidified their success with subsequent tours in the United States and Europe, and won over devoted fans in droves while at the same time horrifying parents and outraging the social establishment. In the United Kingdom, Mary Whitehouse, a Christian morality campaigner, persuaded the BBC
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