Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Furnier February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood and boa constrictors, Cooper drew equally from horror movies, vaudeville, heavy metal and garage rock to create a theatrical brand of rock music that would come to be known as shock rock. He was ranked #20 on VH1's Greatest Artists of Hard Rock program.

Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway played bass guitar, and Neal Smith as drummer. Vincent Furnier portrayed the lead persona. In 1974, Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and launched a solo career. Since their first single release in 1965, when the band was known as "The Spiders", the original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with 1971's monster 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. Cooper's solo career began with the 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, art rock, hard rock, pop rock, 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, The Rolling Stone Album Guide going so far as to refer to him as the world's most "beloved" heavy metal entertainer. He helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal. He is also credited as being one of the first to bring storylined 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 "Nights with Alice Cooper" and "Breakfast with Alice".

Early life and career

Cooper was born Vincent Damon Furnier in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Ella Mae (née McCart) and Ether Moroni Furnier. While in Detroit, Furnier attended Nankin Mills Middle School, which is now Lutheran High School Westland. His grandfather, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ based in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Vincent Furnier's father was an Elder in The Church of Jesus Christ. Vincent Furnier has some distant French Huguenot ancestry; the remainder of his ancestry is English and Scottish.

After a series of childhood illnesses, Vincent Furnier and his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. After Washington Elementary School, Vincent attended Cortez High School in northern Phoenix. Furnier was a member of the Order of DeMolay.

In 1964, 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 onstage, the group immediately proceeded to learn how to play instruments they acquired from a local pawn shop and soon renamed themselves The Spiders: Furnier on vocals and harmonica, Glen Buxton - lead guitar, John Tatum - rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway - bass guitar, and John Speer - drums. Musically, the group were inspired by artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, The Who, The Kinks, Pink Floyd, and The Yardbirds.

By 1965 The Spiders, still in school, performed regularly around the Phoenix area with a huge black spider's web as their backdrop, the group's first stage prop. That year they also recorded their first single "Why Don't You Love Me", originally performed by The Blackwells, with Furnier learning the harmonica for the song.

In 1966, the members of The Spiders graduated from Cortez High School. With North High School footballer Michael Bruce soon replacing John Tatum on rhythm guitar, the band then scored a local #1 radio hit with "Don't Blow Your Mind", an original composition from their second single release.

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

In 1968, upon learning that Todd Rundgren also had a band called 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. Alice Cooper is also the name of Betty Cooper's mother in the Archie comic strips. Nonetheless, at the time Cooper and the band figured that the concept of a male playing the role of an androgynous witch, wearing tattered women's clothing and make-up would definitely have the potential to cause quite a social controversy.

The classic Alice Cooper group line-up consisted of singer Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier), lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith. With the exception of Neal, all of the band members were on the Cortez High School cross-country team, and many of Alice Cooper's stage "effects" were inspired by their cross-country coach, Emmit Smith, who also was the journalism teacher. One of Smith's class projects was to build a working guillotine for slicing watermelons. Cooper, Buxton and Dunaway were also art students, and their admiration of the works of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí would further inspire their future stage antics.

One night, at a gig at a Venice club called The Cheetah where the band managed to scare the entire room of patrons empty after playing just 10 minutes, they were approached and enlisted by manager Shep Gordon, who ironically saw the band's seemingly negative impact that night as a power that could be steered towards a more positive direction. Shep then managed to strike an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign up bizarre music acts for his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition, Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock," and the band mistakenly assumed he meant 7:00 AM. Waking Zappa up from his slumber, a band that was willing to play that particular brand of psychedelic rock at 7 in the morning, a time unbeknownst to most in the rock music world, impressed him enough to sign them to a three-album deal. Alice Cooper's first album Pretties for You was released in 1969 and, though it touched the US charts for one week at #193, was ultimately met with critical and commercial failure.

Even though the band incorporated theatrics into their stage act from the outset, they were also influenced by another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs. After an unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper and a live chicken garnered some attention from the press, the band decided to capitalize on tabloid sensationalism, creating a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the "Chicken Incident", which took place at the Toronto Rock 'n Roll Revival concert in September 1969, was in fact an accident. A chicken somehow made its way on stage during Alice Cooper's performance. Not having any experience around livestock, Cooper thought, "Chickens have wings, so they must be able to fly." He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting the chicken to fly away. The bird plummeted into the crowd and was reportedly ripped to shreds by the rowdy audience.

The next day, the incident made the front page of many national newspapers. Zappa phoned him shortly afterwards to ask if the story, which reported that Cooper had bit the head off the live chicken and drank 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." Zappa considered that kind of publicity priceless for the band. "The Chicken Incident" ranked #12 in VH1's 100 Most Shocking Moments in Rock and Roll in 2001. The incident also was parodied in Ray Stevens' "The Moonlight Special" where the second verse features Agnes Stoopa (a takeoff on Cooper) and his pet chicken.

Despite the infamy the band received from the Chicken Incident, their stronger second album, Easy Action, released in 1970, met with the same fate as its predecessor. Music label Warner Bros. Records then purchased Straight Records from Frank Zappa and the Alice Cooper group was set to receive a higher level of promotion with this major label. It was around this time that the band, fed up with the Californians' indifference to their act, relocated to Cooper's birthplace, Detroit, where their bizarre stage act was much better received. Detroit would remain their steady home base until 1972. "LA just didn’t get it. 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..."

1970s

By mid-1970, after two failed albums, the Alice Cooper group was teamed up with fledgling producer Bob Ezrin for their third album, the last in their contract with Straight Records, and the band's last chance to create a hit. That hit soon came with the single "Eighteen", released in November of 1970, which reached number 21 in the Billboard Hot 100. The album that followed was "Love It to Death", released in February 1971, which proved to be their breakthrough record, reaching number 35 in the US Billboard 200 album charts. Love it to Death would be the first of eight Alice Cooper group and solo albums produced by Ezrin, who is credited with having helped create and develop the band's definitive sound. The band's trailblazing mix of glam and increasingly violent stage theatrics stood out amongst bearded, denim-clad hippy bands. Sporting tight sequined costumes by the prominent rock fashion designer Cindy Dunaway (sister to band member Neil, and wife to band member Dennis) and stage shows that involved mock fights and Gothic torture modes being imposed on Cooper, the androgynous stage role now presented a villainous side which posed a potential threat to modern society.

With Cooper needing to be punished for his immoral ways, the first execution instrument was incorporated into the show was the Electric Chair. Cooper's outspoken views on the Vietnam War stood out no less as he was always staunchly pro-war — in stark contrast to the vast majority of musicians at the time, who were rebelliously anti-war. The success of the band's single, the album, and their tour of 1971, which saw their first tour of Europe to massive success (audience members reportedly included Elton John and David Bowie), was enough encouragement for Warner Bros. to offer them a new multi-album contract.

The follow-up album Killer, released in late-1971, continued the commercial success of "Love It To Death" and included further singles success with "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover" in early 1972, and "Halo Of Flies" which was a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands. Thematically, "Killer" expanded on the villainous side of Cooper's androgynous stage role with its music more becoming the soundtrack to the group's morality-based stage show, which by then featured a Boa Constrictor hugging him onstage, the murderous axe chopping of bloodied "dead babies", and the choice of execution had developed into death by hanging - The Gallows (which would eventually end because of an incident in which Cooper was almost hanged for real - see below). By mid-1972 the Alice Cooper show had become infamous, but what the band really needed was a big hit single.

That summer saw the release of the appropriately-titled single School's Out. It went Top 10 in the US, was a #1 single in the UK, and remains a staple on classic rock radio to this day. Their hit had arrived. School's Out the album reached #2 on the US charts and sold over a million copies. The band now relocated to their new mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. With Cooper's on stage androgynous persona completely replaced with brattiness and machismo, the band's traveling carnival of filth and terror cemented their success with their subsequent US and European tours, winning over idol fans in droves while horrifying parents and outraging the social establishment. Beneath the surface, however, the repetitive schedule of recording and touring had begun to take its toll on the band. By then, Cooper, who was under the constant pressure of "getting into character" for that night's show, was consistently sighted nursing a can of beer.

Cooper appeared on the first episode of ABC In Concert in 1972. Billion Dollar Babies, released in February 1973, was the band's most commercially successful album, reaching #1 in both the US and UK. "Elected", a 1972 Top 10 UK hit included on the album which inspired one of the first MTV-style story-line promo videos ever made for a song (three years before Queen's promo video to "Bohemian Rhapsody"), was followed by two more UK Top 10 singles, "Hello Hooray" and "No More Mr Nice Guy", the latter of which was the last UK single from the album; it reached #25 in the US. The title track, featuring guest vocals by Donovan, was also a US hit single. Due to Glen Buxton's health problems during Billion Dollar Babies, Mick Mashbir was added to the band, and also played on Muscle of Love without credit.

With a string of successful concept albums and several hit singles, the band continued their grueling schedule and toured the US once again. Attempts by politicians and pressure groups to ban their shocking act only served to fuel the myth of Alice Cooper and generate more audience interest. Their 1973 US tour broke box office records previously set by The Rolling Stones and raised rock theatrics to a new height. The multi-level stage show by then featured numerous special effects including Billion Dollar Bills, decapitated baby dolls and mannequins, a dental psychosis scene complete with dancing teeth, and the ultimate execution prop and highlight of the show—The Guillotine. The guillotine and other stage effects were designed for the band by magician James Randi, and during some of the shows, Randi appeared on stage as the executioner. At this point, the Alice Cooper group had reached its peak in every respect and were among the most visible acts in the industry. Cooper's stage antics would influence later bands such as Kiss, Blue Öyster Cult, GWAR, and W.A.S.P..

Muscle of Love, released at the end of 1973, was to be the last studio album from the classic line-up, and marked Alice Cooper's last UK Top 20 single of the 1970s with "Teenage Lament 74". A theme song was recorded for the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun, but a different song of the same name by Lulu was chosen instead. By 1974, the Muscle of Love album had not matched the top-charting success of its predecessor, and the band began to have constant disagreements. Cooper wanted to retain the theatrics in the show that had brought them so much attention, while the rest of the group thought it should be toned down so they could concentrate more on the music which had given them credibility. Due to this, the band decided to take a much-needed hiatus.

During this time, Cooper relocated back to Los Angeles and started appearing regularly on TV shows such as Hollywood Squares, and Warner Bros. released the Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits compilation album which performed better than "Muscle Of Love," reaching into the US Top 10. However, the band's feature film Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper (mainly concert footage with a faint storyline and 'comedic' sketches woven throughout), released on a minor theatrical run mostly to drive-in theaters, saw little box office success.

In 1975 Cooper released his first solo album, which marked the final break with the original members of the Alice Cooper band. Collaborating with producer Bob Ezrin and Lou Reed's guitarist Dick Wagner, and supported by Lou Reed's backing band, the project eventually resulted in Welcome To My Nightmare. Spearheaded by the US Top 20 hit "Only Women Bleed", a ballad, the solo album was released by Atlantic Records in March 1975 and became a Top 10 hit for Cooper. It was a concept album, based on the nightmare of a child named Steven, featuring narration by classic horror movie film star Vincent Price (several years before he guested on Michael Jackson's "Thriller"), and served as the soundtrack to Cooper's new stage show, which included more theatrics than ever (including an eight foot tall furry Cyclops whom Cooper decapitates and kills).

Accompanying the album and stage show was the TV special "The Nightmare", starring Cooper and Vincent Price in person, which aired on US prime-time TV in April 1975 and was regarded as another groundbreaking point in rock history as the first rock music video album ever made (it was later released on home video in 1983 and gained a Grammy Awards nomination for Best Long Form Music Video). Adding to all that, a concert film, also called Welcome to My Nightmare and filmed live at London's Wembley Arena in September 1975, was released to theaters in 1976. Though it failed at the box office, it later became a midnight movie favorite and a cult classic. Such was the immense success of this solo project that Cooper decided to continue as a solo artist, and the original band became officially defunct. It is during this time that he co-founded the legendary drinking club The Hollywood Vampires, which gave him yet another reason to indulge his ample appetite for alcohol.

Following the 1976 US Top 20 hit "I Never Cry", another ballad, two albums, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell and Lace and Whiskey, and another ballad hit, the US Top 10 "You and Me", it became clear from regularly shambolic performances on his US tour of 1977 that the musician was in dire need of specialized help with his alcoholism. Following the tour, Cooper had himself hospitalized in a New York sanitarium for treatment, during which time the live album The Alice Cooper Show was released. At his alcoholic peak it was rumoured that he was consuming up to two cases of Budweiser and a bottle of whiskey a day. His experience in the sanitarium was the inspiration for his 1978 semi-autobiographical album From The Inside, which Cooper co-wrote with Bernie Taupin. The release spawned another US Top 20 hit "How You Gonna See Me Now", yet another ballad based on his fear of how his wife would react to him after his spell in hospital. The subsequent tour's stage show was based inside an asylum, and was filmed for Cooper's first home video release, "The Strange Case of Alice Cooper", in 1979.

Around this time, Cooper performed "Welcome To My Nightmare," "You and Me," and "School's Out" on The Muppet Show (episode # 3.7) on March 28, 1978. He played one of the devil's henchmen trying to dupe Kermit the Frog and Gonzo into selling their souls. Cooper also led celebrities in raising money to remodel the famous Hollywood Sign in California. Cooper himself contributed over $27,000 to the project, buying an O in the sign in memory of friend and comedian Groucho Marx.

1980s

Cooper's albums from the beginning of the 1980s, Flush the Fashion, Special Forces, Zipper Catches Skin, and DaDa, were not as commercially successful as his past releases. Flush the Fashion, produced by Queen producer Roy Thomas Baker, has a thick, edgy musical sound that was so unexpected as to have been truly baffling to long-time fans, but yielded the US Top 40 hit "Clones (We're All)". The album Special Forces featured a more accessible form of New Wave style, and included a new version of "Generation Landslide". The following album, Zipper Catches Skin was a more power pop-oriented recording, with lots of high-energy guitar-driven quirky songs. These albums continued with the experimental "New Wave" sound with energetic results, while 1983 marked the return collaboration of producer Bob Ezrin and guitarist Dick Wagner with the haunting epic DaDa, the final album in his Warner Bros. contract.

In 1983, after the recording of DaDa, Cooper was re-hospitalized for alcoholism. In a deathly state of health, he relocated back to Phoenix, Arizona, to the support of family and old friends and to save his marriage from falling apart. Alice was finally clean and sober by the time "DaDa" and "The Nightmare" home video (of his 1975 TV Special) were released in the fall of that year, however both releases performed under expectation. Even with "The Nightmare" scoring a nomination for 1984's Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video (he lost to Duran Duran), it wasn't enough for Warner Bros. to keep Cooper on their books. In 1984 Alice Cooper was, for the first time in his career, a free agent.

After over a year on hiatus, during which time he spent being a full-time dad while perfecting his golf swing everyday on the course and also finding time to star in a Spanish B-grade horror movie production Monster Dog, Cooper sought to pick up the pieces of his musical career. In 1985 he met and began songwriting with guitarist Kane Roberts. Cooper was subsequently signed to MCA Records, and appeared as guest vocalist on Twisted Sister's song "Be Chrool To Your Scuel". A video was made for the song, featuring Cooper donning his black snake-eyes make-up for the first time since 1979 and for the first time sober, however any publicity it would have given to Cooper's return to the music scene was cut short as the video was promptly banned due to its graphically gory make-up, by Tom Savini, of the innumerable zombies which starred in it and their appetite for human flesh.

In 1986, Alice Cooper officially returned to the music industry with the album Constrictor. The album spawned the hits "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" (the theme song for the movie Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives) and the fan favorite "Teenage Frankenstein". The Constrictor album was a catalyst for Cooper to make (for the first time since the 1982 ‘Special Forces’ tour) a triumphant return to the road, on a tour appropriately entitled ‘The Nightmare Returns’. The Detroit leg of the tour, which took place at the end of October 1986 during Halloween, was captured on film as The Nightmare Returns, and is viewed by some as being the definitive Alice Cooper concert film. The concert, which received rave reviews in the rock music press, sees a reborn Cooper who is leaner, meaner, fitter and in imperious form, and demonstrating a complete mastery over the stage and his music, in a series of meticulously choreographed and flawlessly executed songs that span his career up to that point, and which feature his full repertoire of stunts, special effects, horror and gore. The Constrictor album was followed by Raise Your Fist and Yell (1987) which had an even rougher sound than its predecessor, as well the Cooper classic "Freedom". The subsequent tour of Raise Your Fist and Yell served up a similar shocking spectacle as its predecessor, and courted the kind of controversy, especially in Europe, that recalled the public outrage caused by Cooper’s public performances in America in the early 70s. In Britain, the Labour member of parliament David Blunkett called for the show to be banned, saying “I’m horrified by his behaviour – it goes beyond the bounds of entertainment”. The controversy spilled over into the German segment of the tour, with the German government actually succeeding in having some of the gorier segments of the performance removed. It was also during the London leg of the tour that Cooper met with a near fatal accident during the hanging execution sequence at the end of the show. Needless to say the attendant publicity served only to increase public interest and ensure that the tour was completely sold out.

Constrictor and Raise Your Fist and Yell were recorded with lead guitarist Kane Roberts and bassist Kip Winger, both of whom would leave the band by the end of 1988 (although Kane Roberts played guitar on Bed Of Nails on 1989's album Trash). Roberts would continue as a solo artist while Kip Winger would go on to form Winger.

Also in 1986, Megadeth were asked to open for Alice Cooper for dates on his US tour. After noticing the hardcore drug and alcohol abuse in the band, Cooper personally approached them to try and help them control their "demons"; he has stayed close to front man Dave Mustaine ever since. Mustaine considers him his "Godfather" (source: VH1 Behind the Music, 2001). Megadeth would later cover the song "No More Mr. Nice Guy" for the soundtrack to the film Shocker.

In 1987, Cooper made a brief appearance as a vagrant in the horror movie Prince of Darkness, directed by John Carpenter. His role had no lines and consisted of menacing the protagonists and impaling one of them with a bicycle frame. Cooper also appeared at WrestleMania III, escorting wrestler Jake "The Snake" Roberts to the ring. After the match was over, Cooper got involved and threw Jake's snake Damien at The Honky Tonk Man's manager Jimmy Hart. Jake considered the involvement of Cooper to be an honor, as he had idolized Cooper in his youth and was still a huge fan.

In 1988 Cooper's contract with MCA Records expired and he signed with Epic Records. Then, in 1989, his career finally experienced a real revival with the Desmond Child produced album Trash, which spawned a hit single "Poison", which reached #2 in the UK and #7 in the US, and a worldwide arena tour.

1990s

In 1991, amidst the grunge rock explosion, Cooper's album Hey Stoopid was released to a mediocre response, as well as the home video documentary "Alice Cooper: Prime Cuts" which chronicled his career story up to that point. He also appeared on the Guns N' Roses album Use Your Illusion I, singing backup on the track "The Garden", and made a brief appearance as the abusive stepfather of Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare On Elm Street film Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). Cooper toured USA, headlining the pre-OzzFest concept "Operation: Rock n' Roll" festival tour.

In 1992, Cooper made a famous cameo in the movie Wayne's World, in which he discusses the history of Milwaukee in some depth, after a performance of the song Feed My Frankenstein. The movie's main characters Wayne and Garth, who held Cooper in extremely high regard, knelt and bowed reverently before Cooper while chanting "We're not worthy!"

In 1994, Cooper released The Last Temptation, a concept album dealing with issues of faith, temptation, alienation, and the frustrations of modern life. Concurrent with the release of The Last Temptation was a three-part comic book series written by Neil Gaiman, fleshing out the album's story. Music Videos were made for "Lost In America" and "It's Me", the two singles off the album. This was to be his last album with Epic Records.

In 1994 he appeared in A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who, also known as Daltrey Sings Townshend. This was a two-night concert at Carnegie Hall produced by Roger Daltrey of English rock band The Who in celebration of his fiftieth birthday. In 1994 a CD and a VHS video were issued, and in 1998 a DVD was released.

In 1995, Cooper toured through South America for the first time since 1974. In 1996, Cooper sang the role of Herod on the London cast recording of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, and toured the USA for the first time in five years. He has continued to tour both in the USA and internationally every year from then on to the present day.

In 1997, the live album A Fistful of Alice was released, which was recorded the previous year at Sammy Hagar's "Cabo Wabo" club in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and featured guest performances by Slash and Rob Zombie as well as Hagar. Cooper also recorded the intro narration for the Insane Clown Posse album The Great Milenko.

In 1999, the four-disc box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper was released. It contained the definitive authorized biography of Cooper, [1] Alcohol and Razor Blades, Poison and Needles: The Glorious Wretched Excess of Alice Cooper, All-American, which was written by longtime Creem magazine Canadian Editor Jeffrey Morgan.

2000s

A pause between studio albums, lasting for five years, ended in 2000 with Brutal Planet. Brutal Planet was a return to horror-lined heavy metal, with a brutal injection of industrial rock, and with subject matter thematically inspired by the brutality of the modern world, but set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future. The accompanying world tour, which included Cooper’s first concert in Russia, was a resounding success, introducing Alice Cooper to a new audience and producing the live home video, Brutally Live, in 2001. During one memorable episode in Brutally Live, Britney Spears (being played by Alice Cooper’s real life daughter, Calico), and representing ‘everything that my audience hates - the softening of rock and roll…the sweetness of it’ is executed by Cooper.

Brutal Planet was succeeded by the sonically-similar sequel Dragontown, which has been described by Cooper as being "the worst town on Brutal Planet". Like The Last Temptation, both Brutal Planet and Dragontown were albums which developed out of Cooper's personal faith perspective (born again Christianity).

In 2003, Cooper again adopted a leaner, cleaner sound for his critically acclaimed album The Eyes Of Alice Cooper. Recognizing that many current bands were having great success with his former sounds and styles, Cooper worked with a somewhat younger group of road and studio musicians who were very familiar with his oeuvre of old. However, instead of rehashing the old sounds, they updated them, often with surprisingly effective results. The resulting Bare Bones tour adopted a less-orchestrated performance style that had fewer theatrical flourishes and a greater emphasis on musicality. The success of this tour helped support the growing recognition that the classic Cooper songs were exceptionally clever, tuneful, and unique. Cooper also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003 . The star is located at the corner of Orange Drive and Hollywood Boulevard.

On January 26, 2004, Cooper's radio show, Nights with Alice Cooper, began airing in several US cities. The program showcases classic rock, Alice's personal stories about his life as a rock icon, obscure rock history facts, as well as interviews and special segments like the "OffBEAT News" with his counterpart, Mistress Kitty. The show appears on nearly 100 stations in the USA and Canada, and has also been sold in the UK, Ireland, and Australia. In May 2004, Cooper received an honorary doctoral degree from Grand Canyon University.

In September 2004, Bongo Comics released the tenth issue of Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, a special "Monsters of rock" issue that included stories plotted by Alice Cooper, Gene Simmons, Rob Zombie and Pat Boone.

In 2005, Cooper released his 24th studio album, Dirty Diamonds, which saw a continuation of the songwriting approach used on The Eyes of Alice Cooper. Dirty Diamonds became Cooper's highest charting album since 1994's The Last Temptation,. The Dirty Diamonds tour launched in America in August 2005 after several European concerts, including a performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on July 12. Cooper and his band, including Kiss drummer Eric Singer, were filmed for a DVD released as "Alice Cooper Live at Montreux 2005".

On May 14, 2006, Cooper was given the key to the city of Alice, North Dakota. With a population of 60, Alice is located approximately 50 miles from Fargo, where Cooper was scheduled to give a concert on May 15 that year.

In 2006, Cooper's Nights with Alice Cooper radio show also began to appear as the Breakfast Show on the UK's DAB only Planet Rock. On June 10, 2006, it also started airing on Irish radio station Today FM.

On June 15, 2006, a campaign to get the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to induct him was begun by two German fans online at Myspace.com. This campaign was sparked by a column written on April 5, 2006 by Creem writer and official Cooper biographer Jeffrey Morgan in Metro Times Detroit. A previous attempt was made in 2004 by fan Robert Floto using an online petition which logged more than 2,700 entries before being mailed to the RRHF in July of that year. This earlier attempt was unsuccessful.

On August 26 to August 28 2006, Cooper took part in an annual celebrity golf version of the Ryder Cup called The All*Star Cup in South Wales, UK. Europe won the Cup for the 2nd year running. Cooper won his match on the first day, and lost his match on day two. The event was a big success, with large crowds attending, and the two main days of competition were shown live on UK television. The commentators made many references to Cooper being the best player and that he played six days a week back home in Arizona.

On August 30 2006, with the Dirty Diamonds album still fresh in the memory, Cooper announced on his web site that he would start working on his next album in January, and start its tour in 2007 afterward. His 2006 tour matched him with the Rolling Stones in a number of 40,000 plus seat venues in Canada at the Halifax Commons (on September 23 2006) and the US (Louisville, Phoenix). In 2006, he also appeared extremely briefly in an episode of the show Monk as himself.

Cooper revealed in an interview in 2007 plans for a new album entitled Along Came a Spider, however, the release date was delayed, and Cooper embarked on the Psycho-Drama world tour instead. In an interview in June 2007 for the Italian web site Rockol, Cooper stated that most of the songs had been written for the new album, and that it was planned for release in Spring 2008.

In 2007, Cooper also released a new book about golfing, in which his longtime manager, Shep Gordon, revealed that he was the one behind the chicken incident, which was a ploy to get publicity for the band. The book called, Alice Cooper,Golf Monster, was also partly an interesting autobiography.

On July 1 2007, Cooper performed a duet with Marilyn Manson at the B'Estival event in Bucharest, Romania. The performance represented a reconciliation between the two artists; Cooper had previously taken issue with Manson over his overtly anti-Christian onstage antics, which included tearing up bibles, and he had sarcastically made reference to the originality of Manson’s choosing a female name and dressing in women’s clothing.Both Cooper and Manson have been the subject of an academic paper on the significance of adolescent antiheroes.

On October 23, 2007, Eli Roth and Amy Lee presented the Rock Immortal award to Alice at the 2007 Scream Awards, before being joined by fellow artist's Rob Zombie and Slash to perform "Welcome to my Nightmare" and "School's Out".

In the spring of 2008, Alice returned to the Pacific region after years of anticipation from fans. Alice Cooper, flew from Melbourne, Australia, where he performed two successful concerts before continuing on to a huge rock Festival in Wellington, New Zealand called,Rock2Wgtn. Alice then flew over to Japan for two shows at Shin-Kiba Studio Coast Venue, March 25 in Tokyo and at the IMP Hall, Osaka on March 27. The Japan Times asked him on this latest theatrical tour, "Alice what took you so long to return?" Alice replied back, "Hauling the gallows around is pretty expensive." - Cooper recently has confirmed plans to tour cities in Europe and North America in 2008.

Influences

During an interview for the programme Entertainment USA in 1986, Cooper stunned interviewer Jonathan King by stating that The Yardbirds were his favorite band of all time. Perhaps King should not have been so taken aback, as Cooper had as far back as 1969 gone on record as saying that it was music from the mid-sixties, and particularly from British bands The Who, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, as well as The Yardbirds, that had had the greatest influence on him. In 1994 Cooper paid homage to The Who by appearing in A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who at Carnegie Hall in New York.

During an interview that Cooper himself conducted with Ozzy Osbourne on his radio show Nights with Alice Cooper in 2007, Cooper again affirmed his debt of gratitude to these bands, and to The Beatles in particular. During their discussion, Cooper and Osbourne bemoaned the often inferior quality of songwriting coming from contemporary rock artists. Cooper said that in his opinion the cause of the problem was that certain modern bands ‘had forgotten to listen to The Beatles’.

Fans

In a 1978 interview with Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan stated, "I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter."

In the foreword to Alice Cooper's CD retrospective box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper, John Lydon of The Sex Pistols—a fan of Alice—pronounced Killer as the greatest rock album of all time.

The Flaming Lips are longtime Alice Cooper fans and used the bass line for "Reflected" (an early song from the 1969 release 'Pretties for You') for one of their early songs. They also covered "Sun Arise" for an Alice Cooper tribute album. (Although Alice's version was not in fact an original, but a cover of a Rolf Harris song)

In 1999 Cleopatra Records released "Humanary Stew: A Tribute to Alice Cooper", featuring a number of rock and metal all-star collaborations.

Alice Cooper claims on his "Welcome to my Nightmare" DVD that one of John Lennon's favourite songs was "Elected".

Non-musician fans included Groucho Marx and Mae West, who both saw the early Cooper shows as a form of vaudeville revue, and artist Salvador Dalí, who on attending a show in 1973 described it as being surreal, and made a hologram entitled First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain

Religion and Politics

Although he tends to shy away from speaking publicly of his faith, Cooper has confirmed in interviews that he is in fact a born again Christian. He has avoided "celebrity Christianity" because, as Cooper states himself: "it's really easy to focus on Alice Cooper and not on Christ. I'm a rock singer. I'm nothing more than that. I'm not a philosopher. I consider myself low on the totem pole of knowledgeable Christians. So, don't look for answers from me".

When asked by the British Sunday Times Magazine in 2001 how a rebellious shock-rocker could be a Christian, Alice is credited with providing this response "Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's real rebellion!"

Throughout his career Cooper's philosophy regarding politics is that it should not be mixed with rock music, and he has consistently kept his political views to himself, sometimes even speaking out against musicians who promote or opine on politics. Things took a slightly dramatic turn, however, in the run up to the 2004 presidential election, when he declared that the then crop of rock stars campaigning for and touring on behalf of Democrat candidate John Kerry were ‘treasonous morons’ . This outburst caused a certain amount of controversy, and led to Cooper releasing an official statement, clarifying and reiterating that the ‘treason’ concerned in the above label was not against the state but against the ethos of rock itself.

Personal life

In the period when the Alice Cooper group was signed to Zappa, Miss Christine of the GTOs was Alice's girlfriend for a while. Miss Christine had actually recommended Zappa to the group. She and the other members of the GTO's are said to have been influential in coming up with the Alice Cooper look. (Miss Christine (real name: Christine Frka) died on November 5th, 1972 of an overdose). Another long-time girlfriend of Alice's was Cindy Lang, with whom he lived for several years. They broke up in 1975. Lang sued Cooper for palimony and they settled out of court in the early 1980s.

In March 1976, Alice married ballerina instructor/choreographer Sheryl Goddard, who performed in the Alice Cooper show from 1975 to 1982. In November 1983, Sheryl filed for divorce, but by mid-1984, the couple had reconciled. They have three children: eldest daughter Calico Cooper (born 1981) is an actress, singer and has been performing in the Alice Cooper show since 2000; son Dashiel (born 1985) is an ASU student and plays in a band called Runaway Phoenix; and youngest daughter Sonara was born in 1993.

After conquering his alcoholism, Cooper became a noted golf enthusiast and has participated in several Pro-Am competitions (This was detailed in his book, Alice Cooper: Golf Monster). Cooper plays golf six days a week, has confessed to being completely addicted to the sport, and he plays off either a four or five handicap. . Since 1997, Cooper has hosted an annual golf competition, the Alice Cooper Celebrity AM Golf Tournament. All proceeds from the event go to Cooper's charity, the Solid Rock Foundation. In August 2006, he participated in the Northern Rock All Stars Cup event - a celebrity version of the Ryder Cup, for charity. Cooper has also appeared in commercials for Callaway Golf equipment, and he penned a brief foreword to the Gary McCord book, Golf for Dummies.

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.

On June 20, 2005, ahead of his June–July 2005 tour, Cooper had a wide-ranging interview with interviewer of celebrities Andrew Denton for Australian television's Enough Rope. Cooper discussed various issues during a revealing and frank talk, including the horrors of acute alcoholism and his subsequent cure, being a Christian, and his social and work relationship with his family.. During the interview Cooper also remarked "I look at Mick Jagger and he's 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".

Cooper hosts his own talk radio show from his home. The show is called, "Nights with Alice Cooper" and is broadcast five nights a week. The actual ownership of the name "Alice Cooper" is often cited by intellectual property lawyers and law professors, as an example of the value of a single copyright or trademark. Since "Alice Cooper" was originally the name of the band, and not the lead singer (ex: "Uriah Heep; Jethro Tull; etc.), and it was actually owned by the band as whole, Cooper paid, and continues to pay, a yearly royalty to his original bandmates for the right to use the name commercially. While the exact amount is not known, insiders agree that it is a significant enough sum, that the other band members could live comfortably on it.

Discography

See: Alice Cooper discography

Filmography

See: Alice Cooper filmography

See also

• List of Alice Cooper personnel

News and interviews

• Podcast interview: "Snakes, Rock & Roll, & Britney Spears"
• "Honorary Ph.D. for Rocker Alice Cooper"
• Interview conducted by Maurie Sherman, CMP. Published Aug 23, 2006
• Alice Cooper by ITV
• Alice Cooper to Get Missing Sword Back
• HM interview by Doug Van Pelt, 2002 Part 1, Part 2.
• Alice Cooper Interview In Horror Garage Magazine
• Enough Rope interview
• Fresh Air - Terry Gross - May 17, 2007 interview
• Alice Cooper 2008 Japan Times interview by Phillip Brasor

References

• Alice Cooper, Keith Zimmerman (2007). Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock 'n' Roller's 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict. Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-307-38265-6.

• Alice Cooper, Steven Gaines (1976). Me, Alice: The Autobiography of Alice Cooper. Putnam. ISBN 0-399-11535-8.

• Wolfgang Heilemann, Sabine Thomas (2005). Alice Cooper: Live on Tour, Studio, Backstage. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf. ISBN 3-896-02651-8.

• Michael Bruce, Billy James (2000). No More Mr. Nice Guy: The Inside Story of the Original Alice Cooper Group. SAF Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-946-71932-2.

• Bob Greene (1974). Billion Dollar Baby. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780689106163.

External links

• Official website
• Alice Cooper'stown: (Restaurant)
• Alice Cooper's Internationally Syndicated Radio Show
• Alice Cooper Celebrity AM Golf Tournament
• Alice Cooper's Solid Rock Foundation
• Alice Cooper Tour Programs
• Alice Cooper discography at MusicBrainz
• Sick Things UK - website providing current news and comprehensive archive of all things Alice Cooper related
• Alice Cooper at Rollingstone
• 2008 Rock2WGTN Festival: Alice Cooper song set list
• Alice Cooper 2008 live dates