Alice Cooper, born Vincent Damon Furnier on February 4, 1948 in Allen Park, Michigan, is the larger than life American rock singer and songwriter whose incredible career began in the 1960s. Alice Cooper tickets have been sold ever since the band and Furnier took the same name.
Originally, Alice Cooper began as a letterman's talent show act by a group of cross country athletes. Then the group played far more like the Beatles than the progressive heavy metal act they would eventually become. In 1966 the cross country athletes (Furnier, Glen Buxton, John Tatum, Dennis Dunaway, and John Speer) graduated high school and pursued a musical path, beginning as The Spiders.
The Spiders, with Furnier on lead vocals, Buxton on lead guitar, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dunaway on bass, and Speer on drums, began to score hits on local radio and traveling to Los Angeles on weekends. Alice Cooper would come a couple of years later after the group had renamed themselves the Nazz, only to discover the Todd Rundgren already had a band with the name. So, Alice Cooper and the on stage persona came out of the search for a new name and a new angle.
Alice Cooper took to the stage as a group of demonic, androgynous rockers. The group tried to capitalize on the changing views of the world and the opportunities that opened on stage. Controversy and a new brand of hard rock catapulted this group to the forefront of the music world. Well, that and a little help from Frank Zappa. Zappa had seen Alice Cooper drive away an entire audience in Venice, but Zappa saw the potential for stardom and signed them to his newly created record label Straight Records.
During this period, under the tutelage of the legendary Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper refined their stage act and look. The shock rockers made headlines when the lead singer tossed a live chicken into the crowd in Toronto, only to have the crowd tear the flightless bird apart. The national media took the story and helped Alice Cooper sell albums and concert tickets for decades to come. The media also happened to embellish the story, reporting the lead singer bit the head off the chicken, squirting the bird's blood all over the stage. Taking Zappa's advice, Alice Cooper did not deny the allegation.
All of this early buzz could not make the raucous live band a chart hit. The first two albums (Pretties for You released in 1969 and Easy Action in 1970) failed to reach any kind of album certification.
It took the help of a legend in the studio to turn the now psychedelic and hard rockers into a commercial hit. Love It to Death came out in 1972 with the help of Bob Ezrin. The producer helped make the album a platinum certified hit. The recently transplanted band, now in Detroit after failing to conquer the soft rock loving West Coast, began a period of unparalleled success for the group. Three platinum-certified concept albums followed (Killer in 1971, School's Out in 1972, and Billion Dollar Babies in 1973). The group endured internal strife driven by non-stop work in the studio and a life lived almost exclusively on the road. This led to one final album, the gold-certified Muscle of Love. After the album the group split indefinitely.
