Alice Cooper

Phoenix to Los Angeles

Vincent Furnier was born in Detroit on 4 February 1948 and moved with his family to Phoenix, where he attended Cortez High School. In 1964 he gathered four cross-country teammates for the school's Letterman's talent show and they performed Beatles parodies in costume, with only Glen Buxton able to play. They won, bought instruments from a pawn shop and became the Spiders, then Nazz. Michael Bruce replaced John Tatum in 1966, and Neal Smith later replaced John Speer. When the group learned that Todd Rundgren already had a band called Nazz, it took the name Alice Cooper in 1968, partly because it sounded innocent, in comic contrast to the act.

Manager Shep Gordon found the band after a gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, Los Angeles, where they cleared the room in ten minutes, and he set up an audition with Frank Zappa. Zappa signed them to Straight Records for three albums. The second album, Easy Action, failed to chart. A chicken thrown into the crowd at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in September 1969 was torn apart. Cooper has said it was an accident, and told the Guardian in 2014 that it taught him rock was looking for a villain.

Ezrin and the hits

The band moved to Pontiac, Michigan, and in autumn 1970 began working with the producer Bob Ezrin. Love It to Death followed, with I'm Eighteen reaching 21 on the US singles chart. Warner Bros. bought the band's contract and the album reached 35. Killer came in November 1971, with a stage show that now included a staged execution.

School's Out arrived in the summer of 1972. Its title song reached 7 in the US and 1 in Britain, and the album reached 2 in the US. Mary Whitehouse persuaded the BBC to ban the video, and the MP Leo Abse petitioned the Home Secretary to keep the group out of the country. Cooper sent Whitehouse flowers. The Guardian reported that US Customs had impounded 600,000 pairs of paper panties meant to wrap the records because they were not properly fireproof.

Billion Dollar Babies reached 1 in both countries in February 1973 and was the band's most commercially successful studio album. It held Elected, Billion Dollar Babies and No More Mr. Nice Guy. The 1973 American tour broke box office records set by the Rolling Stones, and the magician James Randi designed its guillotine and other effects.

The split

Muscle of Love, released at the end of 1973, was the last studio album by the classic lineup. The final shows as a group were in Brazil in March and April 1974, including a São Paulo crowd estimated at up to 158,000. Cooper told the Guardian that frustration over the proceeds being poured back into ever bigger stage productions was one reason the group broke up. In 1975 Furnier took the name Alice Cooper as his legal name and released the solo concept album Welcome to My Nightmare, again with Ezrin, with players from Lou Reed's band and a television special that April. Bruce, Dunaway and Smith formed a band called Billion Dollar Babies, which made one album, Battle Axe, in 1977.

Solo years

Cooper wrote From the Inside (1978) with Bernie Taupin. He calls his early 1980s records the blackout albums, and since 1983 he has been sober. The comeback came with Trash in 1989, produced by Desmond Child, whose single Poison reached 2 in Britain and 7 in the US. Concept albums, tours and cameos followed, among them The Last Temptation (1994), Brutal Planet (2000), Detroit Stories (2021) and Road (2023).

The original band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 by Rob Zombie, and Cooper, Bruce, Dunaway and Smith played I'm Eighteen and School's Out together at the ceremony. The same four reunited for The Revenge of Alice Cooper, released on 25 July 2025. Joey Ramone based the Ramones' first song on the chords of I'm Eighteen, and John Lydon is said to have auditioned for the Sex Pistols by miming to an Alice Cooper song.