Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948), is a rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans four decades. With a stage show that featured guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood and boa constrictors, Cooper drew equally from heavy metal, horror movies and vaudeville to create a theatrical brand of rock music that would come to be known as Shock rock.
He's 59!
"Alice Cooper" was originally a band name with frontman Vincent Furnier portraying the lead persona. In 1974 Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and launched a successful solo career. Since their first single release in 1966, when the band was known as "The Spiders", the original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1972 hit "School's Out" and reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album "Billion Dollar Babies". Cooper's solo career began with the popular 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare. Expanding from his Detroit garage rock and glam rock roots, over the years Cooper has experimented with many different musical styles including: conceptual rock, Hard rock, Pop rock, Disco, Experimental rock and Industrial rock. In recent times he has returned more to his garage rock roots.
Alice Cooper is known for his social and witty persona offstage. He is universally recognized as one of the most influential artists in rock music, and he helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal and punk rock. He is also credited as being one of the first to bring story lined theatrics to the rock/pop concert stage in the late 1960s. Away from music Cooper is a film actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur and, since 2004, a popular radio DJ with his classic rock shows "Breakfast With Alice" and "Nights With Alice Cooper".
Vincent Furnier was born in Detroit, Michigan to Ether Moroni Furnier and Ella Mae McCart. His grandfather, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an ordained Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite). Vincent's father was an ordained Elder. Vincent has some distant French Huguenot ancestry; the remainder of his ancestry was English and Scottish. After a series of childhood illnesses, Vincent and the Furniers moved to Phoenix, Arizona.
As a teenager Furnier attended Cortez High School in Phoenix. In 1965, Furnier was eager to take part in the local annual "Letterman's" talent show and gathered fellow cross-country teammates from the school to form a group for the show. They named themselves "The Earwigs", and as they didn't know how to play any instruments at the time, they dressed up like The Beatles and mimed their performance to Beatles songs. As a result of winning the talent show and loving the experience of being on stage, the group immediately proceeded to learn how to play instruments. Furnier could sing and would learn the harmonica, Glen Buxton - guitar, Dennis Dunaway - bass guitar, and Jim Speers - drums. Musically, the group were inspired by British bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Pink Floyd, and in particular The Yardbirds.
In 1966, Furnier and his band members graduated from Cortez High School and renamed themselves "The Spiders". With the addition of new member Michael Bruce, the band scored a local #1 radio hit with "Why Don't You Love Me", an original composition from their first single release. In 1967 the band renamed themselves "The Nazz" and drummer Jim Speers was replaced by Neal Smith. However, upon learning that Todd Rundgren also had a band called The Nazz, the band were again in need of another stage name. Furnier recognized that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage. He subsequently chose the band's name to be "Alice Cooper" and adopted this stage name as his own. Early press releases claimed that the name was agreed upon after one of Cooper's Ouija sessions, and learning that he was a reincarnation of a 17th century witch of the same name. However, Cooper in later interviews has said the name actually came out of thin air conjuring an image of "a cute, sweet, little girl with a hatchet behind her back." It was once said to be an inside joke associated with a Mayberry RFD character. Nonetheless, at the time Cooper and the band figured that the concept of a male playing the role of an androgynous witch, wearing tattered womens' clothing and make-up would definitely have the potential to cause quite a social controversy.
A Bit of Trivia:
- Melody Maker magazine once published a satirical concert review of Cooper in the form of a mock obituary, causing confused readers to think he had died. Once he had been tracked down, Alice Cooper reassured them: "I'm alive, and drunk as usual".
- Alice Cooper performs "Welcome To My Nightmare", "You and Me", and "School's Out" in The Muppet Show (episode # 3.7) 28 March 1978. He brings what many believed to be his own monster puppets (Cooper later stated in a radio interview that these were created by the Muppeteers for the show, not brought by him) and plays one of the devil's henchmen trying to dupe Kermit the Frog and Gonzo into selling their souls.
- Cooper became part of Kyle MacDonald's one red paperclip project when he agreed to offer an afternoon with himself as a trade for one year of rent for an employee at his restaurant.
- Alice Cooper has said that "I look at Mick Jagger and they're on an 18-month tour and he's six years older than me, so I figure, when he retires, I have six more years. I will not let him beat me when it comes to longevity."
- In May 2004 Cooper received an honorary doctoral degree from Grand Canyon University.
- Is referred to in the song "Planet Earth" by Devo: I saw a man on a stage / scream, "Put me back in my cage!" / I saw him hanged by his tie / I saw enough to make me cry.
- For quite some time during his peak in the 70's, there was a rumor floating around that Cooper was Eddie Haskel from "Leave it to Beaver."
- The Cortez High School track coach, Emmit Smith, who also was the journalism teacher, is made reference to as "The Reverend Smith" in No More Mister Nice Guy.
- Cooper's song 'I Am The Future' was the theme song of the cult film Class of 1984.
- On the UK rock channel, Kerrang!, Cooper presented the show; "The Ten Commandments of Rock"
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Natalie Imbruglia-Singer/Tom -32
Oscar De La Hoya-Professional Boxer -34
David Brenner-Comedian -62
Rosa Parks-Civil Rights Activist -94
Published 2/4/07 by
Allie Is Wired
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