Alice Cooper
Alice
Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American rock
singer, songwriter, and musician whose career spans more than four decades.
With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa
constrictors, and baby dolls, Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies,
vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and violent brand
of heavy metal designed to shock.
Originating
in Detroit in the late 1960s, Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of
Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on
rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. The
original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with
the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album Love It to Death, which
was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972. The
band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies.
Furnier's
solo career as Alice Cooper, adopting the band's name as his own name, began
with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare; in 2011 he released
Welcome 2 My Nightmare, his 19th album as a solo artist, and his 26th album in
total. Expanding from his Detroit rock roots, in his career Cooper has
experimented with a number of musical styles, including conceptual rock, art
rock, hard rock, New Wave, pop rock, experimental rock and industrial rock.
Alice
Cooper is known for his social and witty persona offstage; The Rolling Stone
Album Guide has called him the world's most "beloved heavy metal
entertainer". Cooper is credited with helping to shape the sound and look
of heavy metal, and he is regarded as being the artist who "first
introduced horror imagery to rock'n'roll, and whose stagecraft and showmanship
have permanently transformed the genre". Away from music, Cooper is a film
actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur and, since 2004, a popular radio DJ
with his classic rock show Nights with Alice Cooper.
In
2011 the original Alice Cooper band was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame.
Birth
name: Vincent Damon Furnier
Born:
February 4, 1948 (age 64), Detroit, Michigan, United States
Genres:
Rock, hard rock, heavy metal, shock rock
Occupations:
Singer-songwriter, actor, DJ
Instruments:
Vocals, harmonica, guitar
Years
active: 1964–present
Labels:
Straight, Warner Bros., Atlantic, MCA, Epic, Spitfire, Eagle, New West.
Pictures:
Song:
Concert:
Alice Cooper ABC in Concert Pt. 1.
Album:
Alice Cooper - Love It To Death 1971.
Interview:
