Alice Cooper

ALICE COOPER BIOGRAPHY

Alice Cooper is famed for his bad boy theatrics that caused controversy around the globe. Cross-dressing, snake wearing Cooper was born Vincent Damon Furnier in Detroit in 1948. At the age of sixteen, Cooper formed the band The Earwigs to enter a talent show competition which they subsequently won. After teaching themselves to play instruments the band renamed and became The Spiders, recording their first single in 1965. The band graduated from high school in 1966 and made their first number one single with “Don’t Blow Your Mind” before changing their name once again to The Nazz. After realising there was another band with the same name, Cooper came up with the idea of calling themselves Alice Cooper - a name he then adopted as his own.

Alice Cooper’s first big hit was in 1971 with “I’m Eighteen” from their third album “Love it to Death.” It was the first of eleven albums to be produced by Bob Ezrin, who is often credited for helping shape the Alice Cooper band. The following year saw the band reach number one in the US charts with the single “School’s Out” and number two with the album of the same name. The chart success was not felt everywhere and campaigner Mary Whitehouse was successful in getting the “School’s Out” video banned on the BBC.

Cooper battled alcohol addiction for the majority of his career, even hospitalising himself in New York in 1977. While under treatment Cooper wrote the album “The Alice Cooper Show” which he later staged in an asylum.

As well as producing over 30 albums, Cooper has appeared in a number of films including “Nightmare On Elm Street,” “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare,” “Wayne’s World” and Tim Burton’s latest release “Dark Shadows.” Along with a passion for horror, Cooper is an avid golf player and has his own radio show “Nights with Alice Cooper” which began in 2004.