Biography of Alice Cooper
The horror side of rock
February 4, 1948Vincent Damon Furnier, best known as Alice Cooper, was born in Detroit, Michigan, Usa, on 4 February 1948. American rock singer and guitarist of the legendary kind, inventor and a forerunner of a whole dark current that has him as the first historic specimen musically, he starred during his long and brilliant career of some of the most spectacular concerts ever. The horror, literary and artistic, is the scope from which has always drawn inspiration for his music and for his performances, characterized by bloody instruments onstage, places like guillotines, snakes, dolls impaled and much more. To see Alice Cooper is the colleague and great artist Frank Zappa, one of the best music talent scout, as well as immense guitarist and composer.
The young Vincent is the son of a preacher, likely descendant of an ancient French Huguenot family. Her father is Ether Moroni Furnier and his mother's name is Ella Mae McCart, a carrier of the British strain, mostly Scottish. A few years pass and from Detroit the family of the future King of rock macabre decided to move to Phoenix, Arizona, where it grows in the then Vincent Furnier. He attended Cortez High School, in the North of the city and, in 1965, at the age of seventeen, puts together a band racimolata around and takes part in the annual school talent show. His first group is called "The Earwigs".
Actually the guys do not know still sound, but from the scenic point of view affect not just: win the first prize. The success pushes Vincent and fellow to engage in the study of music, under the guidance of their leader, who took over the microphone and is passionate on the harmonica. Bands like the Beatles, the Who, Pink Floyd, inspire the group born around the future Alice Cooper, acting as a stylistic and musical point of reference. A few years pass and Vincent becomes the front man of another band, which initially named Spiders. Having changed their name to Nazz, these become soon the Alice Cooper. On the origins of the name, which later will end up stuck to the same Vincent Furnier, becoming in fact its even legally, there are different versions, quite discordant.
According to some, the choice would be backsliding on an alleged witch burned at Salem, during the era of witch hunts, to the approximately 1660. According to others, and probably finding also confirms in the words of the then nascent band singer, the name was chosen simply because it sounded good. Further, now famous, the same Alice Cooper became such, stated that the name made him think of "a beautiful girl in a miniskirt that hides an axe behind his back". However, the beginnings of the famous singer from Detroit are all under his real name, as stated also in the credits on the back of the first discs engraved. The beginning of their recording career you have almost all the great Frank Zappa, to whom the young Furnier makes a good impression.
Agree with the manager Shep Gordon, Hoe makes sure that Alice Cooper from publishing their first job, dated 1969, for Straight Records, which produced the great guitarist and composer of Italian descent. The disc is called "Pretties For You", by genre folk and blues, but already emerge the hallmarks of Cooper, distinguished from texts and sounds vaguely horror, focusing on themes of death, torture and blood. It is, in essence, the beginning is very far from the so-called "shock rock" genre, of which Alice Cooper will become a historic exponent. After a second album, titled "Easy Action" of 1970, the band moved from Los Angeles to Detroit. There she meets Bob Ezrin, producer, and get the deal with Warner Brothers. Is the year of "Love It Do Death", which marks the transition from a rock in brilliant colors, a real rock-horror, pushed right by the single "Eighteen", which in a short time becomes gold. The scenic apparatus of the concerts begins to fill with macabre subjects, the theatricality of the band does talk and discuss a lot; some Puritan groups Americans dispute the way they do live music, represented by forks, masks and various instruments of torture. The album "School's out" in 1972 and, especially, spreads the eponymous single, which quickly becomes a liberating anthem of American students, so as to be even today, intoned at the end of the school year. The following year gets equal success the album "Billion Dollar Babies", with his song-No More Mr. Nice Guy "manifest". In the same year the band tries to make the big time, riding the wave of success and releasing a new album, "Muscle of Love", which, however, turns out to be a fiasco. Vincent Furnier to various discrepancies with the rest of the band, decided to undertake a solo career and, even legally, becomes in effect Alice Cooper. The musician in Detroit, thanks to links with Ezrin, Lou Reed Group chooses for his first solo performance, going more and more towards hard rock. His first album is "Welcome to My Nightmare", dated 1975, sounds macabre lyrics and dark, evidently, according to many, his best work ever. In addition to the title track on the disc, there are other songs by now fully into the history of rock, as "The Black Widow", "Steven" and "Only Women Bleed", the latter arranged in acoustics and exquisite workmanship. The year after putting your name on the disk and affect "Alice Cooper Goes to Hell", other work much appreciated by critics and audiences. However, by this time, the problems of Alice begin to have to do, and brutally, with alcohol. Spent some time at the clinic, rehab, and publish "From the Inside", in 1978, telling of his last period of life. From 1980 to 1983 with albums like "Flush the Fashion" and "DaDa", Alice Cooper cannot be carried over to its highest levels: the sound has changed, the new decade seems tired of dark atmospheres and catastrophic, Feelgood, catchy reasons wants. Alice Cooper is trying, but his pop makes water from all sides and comes out, at least for a few years, from the stage, being talked about his retirement. In 1987 surprisingly appears in a movie, "Prince of darkness", John Carpenter, as actor-guest star for your situation. Then comes the album "Raise Your Fist and Yell," that same year, which ascribes Alice Cooper in the metal, musical style closer to her, at least according to his beginnings. "Trash", 1989, is an excellent work, which marks the comeback of Detroit singer. Prominent guests like Aerosmith, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, plus Steve Lukather and others, make the disc very good and varied, with tracks of excellent workmanship, as "Poison", "Spark In The Dark" and "Bed Of Nails". The album stands in the standings and reveals the new teen star of old Alice Cooper, who finds a lost success now for over fifteen years. In the years ' 90, to make him a sort of continuous tribute but also takes away a large part of the scene, is the controversial Marilyn Manson shock rock star, which, however, does not hide his stylistic debt against the master.
Alice Cooper falls in alcohol and only publishes two CDs-studio, noticeable but not sublime. In addition, he took part in "Use Your Illusion I" with Guns n ' Roses by Axl Rose, his admirers and shipshape. Meanwhile, cultivated his passion for film, and takes part in blockbuster movies like "Nightmare on Elm Street 6: the end", in 1991, and "Wayne's world" of 1992. After the first album in a trilogy that will be completed only in 2000 and 2001, dated 1994 and entitled "The Last Temptation", to detect in these years is above all "A Fistful of Alice," an album that hosts musicians like Slash, Sammy Hagar and Rob Zombie: a whole generation grew up listening to his music. Two years later, in 1999, it set its best tracks, entitled "The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper". Macabre like old times is the album "Brutal planet", 2000, followed the year after "Dragontown", the two CDs that complete the trilogy with the aforementioned "born in macabre 1994 The Last Temptation".
In June 2007, confirming their contiguity even musical, Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson Duet to ' B ' Estival event "in Bucharest, Romania. However, the anti-Christian sentiment that echoes Manson, little suits religious and cultural beliefs of Cooper. After the single "Keepin' Halloween Alive", released in 2009, the Detroit musician participates as a guest on the album "Slash & Friends", job thought obviously by former guitarist of Guns ' N Roses and released in 2010. In 2011, see the light yet another disc of Alice Cooper's "Welcome To My Nightmare 2".
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.