

Easy Action followed early in 1970, but failed to chart. There they met Shep Gordon, who became their manager, and Frank Zappa, who signed Alice Cooper to his Straight Records imprint.Īlice Cooper released their first album, Pretties for You, in 1969.

Comprised of vocalist Furnier - who would soon begin calling himself Alice Cooper - guitarist Mike Bruce, guitarist Glen Buxton, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith, the group moved to California in 1968. According to band legend, the name came to Furnier during a Ouija board session, where he was told he was the reincarnation of a 17th century witch of the same name. In 1968, after discovering there was another band with the same name, the group changed its name to Alice Cooper. The Spiders and the Nazz both released local singles that were moderately popular. Changing the band's name to the Spiders in 1965, the group was eventually called the Nazz (not to be confused with Todd Rundgren's band of the same name). Vincent Furnier formed his first group, the Earwigs, as an Arizona teenager in the early '60s. Cooper's dedicated fan base kept him in the game long after his '70s peak, touring regularly and releasing albums like 2021's high-spirited Detroit Stories. Cooper's glossy 1975 solo debut, Welcome to My Nightmare, was a massive hit, and his shows became even more elaborate as he became a regular fixture on television, but subsequent solo releases saw his following dwindle until 1989's Trash and 1991's Hey Stoopid, where he blended his trademark sound with hair metal arrangements and production and gained a new audience.
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Following the commercial and critical disappointment of 1973's Muscle of Love, the Alice Cooper band broke up, and Alice went forward as a solo act, delivering a cleaner and more professional variation on the themes of his early '70s hits, while the band attempted to continue as Billion Dollar Babies, with little success. Coupled with a live show that included snakes, electric chairs, fake blood, and mock hangings, Alice Cooper had something to offend everyone, and from 1971's Killer to 1973's Billion Dollar Babies, they could seemingly do no wrong. After a spell in Detroit where they soaked up the high-energy influence of the Stooges and the MC5, Alice Cooper scored breakthrough hits in 1971 with "I'm Eighteen" and the album Love It to Death, in which the group finally stumbled upon the formula that made them stars, blending tough, dirty, guitar-fueled hard rock with Cooper's sneering vocals and lyrics that were by turns relatable ("I'm Eighteen," "Body") and willfully spooky ("Black Juju," "The Ballad of Dwight Frye"). The name Alice Cooper originally referred to both the band and its lead singer (born Vincent Furnier), as they played dark, eccentric, psychedelic rock on their first two albums, Pretties for You (1969) and Easy Action (1970).

The man (and the band) who first brought shock rock to the masses, Alice Cooper became one of the most successful and influential acts of the '70s with their gritty but anthemic hard rock and a live show that delivered a rock & roll chamber of horrors, thrilling fans and cultivating outrage from authority figures (which made fans love them all the more).
