Alice Cooper is 70 years old.
Alice was born Vincent Damon Furnier on 4 February, 1948.
Alice Cooper released his 27th album ‘Paranormal’ in 2017 after consistently releasing new music since 1969.
Originally Alice Cooper was the name of the band and Vincent was the co-lead singer. The first album ‘Pretties For You’ in 1969 by Alice Cooper (the band) featured lead vocals by rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce on three songs.
‘Pretties For You’ was recorded at Whitney Studios in Burbank. Frank Zappa is listed as a producer but did not spend five minutes in total with the band. Zappa’s brother recorded the Alice Cooper band and recorded a rehearsal. No-one actually produced and the unfinished songs from the rehearsal were released as the album ‘Pretties For You’.
PHOTO GALLERY: Alice Cooper in Melbourne 2017 by Ros O’Gorman
The second album ‘Easy Action’ was equally a disaster. David Briggs (Neil Young) produced a band he hated and the record label released the demos as the album instead of the final recordings.
In today’s world that band who have been turfed after the first release but actually went on to make a third album ‘Love It To Death’. That record was made with Bob Ezrin, a producer who actually understood the band. ‘I’m Eighteen’, the best-known track from that album is a centrepiece of an Alice Cooper show today.
The fourth album, 1971’s Killer, also contains a Cooper staple ‘Under My Wheels’. The song was covered by Foo Fighters on their recent Australian tour.
The Alice Cooper Band broke world-wide with their fifth album ‘School’s Out’.
The Alice Cooper Band featuring Alice, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith made two more albums ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ and ‘Muscle of Love’ before Alice became a solo act with ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’ in 1975.
While the solo career initially kicked in with ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’ (no 5 USA, no 5, Australia) the US started to lose interest with the next releases ‘Alice Cooper Goes To Hell’ (no 27, 1976), ‘Lace and Whiskey’ (no 42, 1977) and ‘From The Inside’ (no 60, 1978). In Australia the albums kept Alice firmly in the charts where the career didn’t wane until 1980’s ‘Flush The Fashion’ failed to make the Australian or American Top 30 and Alice didn’t have another hit until the end of the decade when ‘Trash’ brought him back into the Top 10 with the hit song ‘Poison’.
‘While ‘Trash’ reached no 5 in Australia it stalled at no 20 in the USA. Alice’s releases from ‘Brutal Planet’ in 2000 through to ‘Along Came A Spider’ (2008) failed to make the Top 100 in the USA or a chart position in Australia.
‘Welcome 2 My Nightmare’, a sequel to the first solo album in 1975, gave Alice his first highest charting record in the USA since 1989.
His current album ‘Paranormal’ was his highest charting album in Australia since 1977’s ‘Lace and Whiskey’.
‘Paranormal’ featured two tracks with the Alice Cooper Band (Dunaway, Bruce and Smith). Glen Buxton died in 1997.
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