Alice Cooper

About Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper started as a band in Phoenix in the mid-60s, though most people think of it as one guy's stage name now. Vincent Furnier and his high school friends originally called themselves The Spiders, then The Nazz, before landing on Alice Cooper in 1968. The story about picking the name via Ouija board is probably nonsense, but it worked. They moved to Los Angeles, got signed by Frank Zappa's label, and promptly went nowhere with their first two albums.

Detroit changed everything. The band relocated there in 1970 and found producer Bob Ezrin, who gave their theatrical shock-rock tendencies actual songs to hang on. "Love It to Death" had "I'm Eighteen," which became their first real hit. Then "Killer" arrived with "Under My Wheels" and the title track, but it was "School's Out" in 1972 that made them unavoidable. The single went to number one in the UK, and suddenly their stage show with guillotines, fake blood, and boa constrictors wasn't just Detroit weirdness anymore.

"Billion Dollar Babies" in 1973 hit number one in the US and UK. It had "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "Elected," and the tour was massive, cementing Alice Cooper as both a band and a character. But Furnier was becoming Alice full-time, and the original group imploded shortly after. He kept the name in a legal settlement and went solo, which confused people for years about whether Alice Cooper was ever actually a band.

His solo run through the late 70s had "Welcome to My Nightmare" and some hits, but also a lot of alcohol. He dried out in the late 70s, became a born-again Christian for a bit, and spent the 80s trying to stay relevant. "Trash" in 1989 was his commercial comeback, with "Poison" getting MTV play alongside all the hair metal bands who'd stolen his look two decades earlier.

He's kept going without much drama since then. Regular albums, constant touring, a radio show, celebrity golf tournaments. He never stopped being Alice Cooper the character, but also never pretended he was still dangerous. The act is the same guillotines and theatrics, just with better production and a guy in his seventies who knows exactly what he's doing.

The original band reunected for one album in the mid-2010s, which was fine but mostly felt like closing a loop that didn't really need closing. Cooper's legacy is pretty secure at this point. He created the template for theatrical rock horror before Kiss or Marilyn Manson existed, and unlike most shock rockers, he had actual songcraft underneath the props. He's still out there doing it, and nobody seems tired of it yet.

Alice Cooper shows are still weirdly professional. He plays well, the band is tight, and there's actual production design—guillotines, decapitations, snakes. It's not chaos, it's controlled weirdness. Crowd is mixed ages, lots of people there to see the bit more than the songs.

Known for School's Out, I'm Eighteen, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Poison, Welcome to My Nightmare

See Alice Cooper Live