Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and occasional actor whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by music journalists and peers alike to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock"; he has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre, theatrical brand of rock designed to shock people. Cooper is also known for his distinctive raspy voice.
Originating in Phoenix in the late 1960s after he moved from Detroit, Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. The original Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen" from the album Love It to Death, which was followed by the even bigger single "School's Out" in 1972. The band reached their commercial peak with the 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies.
Alice Cooper (April 8, 1875 – 1937) was an American sculptor.
Born in Glenwood, Iowa, and based in Denver, Colorado, Cooper studied under Preston Powers (son of the well-known sculptor Hiram Powers,) then at the Art Institute of Chicago with Lorado Taft and the Art Students League of New York through about 1901.
Cooper is best known for her bronze figure of Sacajawea (Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste) originally produced as the centerpiece for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon, 1905, unveiled in a ceremony attended by Susan B. Anthony and other prominent feminists. This figure now stands in Washington Park.
Other work includes:
Alice Cooper were an American rock band formed in Phoenix, Arizona in 1964. The band consisted of lead singer Vince Furnier, Glen Buxton (lead guitar), Michael Bruce (rhythm guitar, keyboards), Dennis Dunaway (bass guitar), and Neal Smith (drums). Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and has had a solo career under that name since the band became inactive in 1975. The band was notorious for their elaborate, theatrical shock rock stage shows. In 2011, the original Alice Cooper band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
After several years of little success, the Alice Cooper band rose to fame in 1971 with the success of the single "I'm Eighteen" and the album Love It to Death. The band peaked in popularity in 1973 with the album Billion Dollar Babies and its tour, which broke box-office records previously held by The Rolling Stones.
The band consisted of members, all from the previous 60s garage rock band, the Spiders. They created everything as a group and wrote virtually the lion's share of what was to become the classic Alice Cooper canon. Neal Smith's sister Cindy Smith Dunaway (Dennis Dunaway's wife) designed the band's costumes and also performed in the stage show (she was the "dancing tooth" during the band's Billion Dollar Babies tour).
Welcome to My Nightmare is the eighth studio album by Alice Cooper, released in March 1975. This was Alice Cooper's first solo album (all previous Alice Cooper releases were band efforts), and his only album for the Atlantic Records label. The ensuing tour was one of the most over-the-top excursions of that era. Most of Lou Reed’s band joined Cooper for this record.
It is a concept album; the songs, heard in sequence, form a journey through the nightmares of a child named Steven. It inspired the Alice Cooper: The Nightmare TV special and a worldwide concert tour in 1975, and the Welcome To My Nightmare concert film in 1976. A sequel, Welcome 2 My Nightmare was released in 2011.
The cover artwork was created by Drew Struzan for Pacific Eye & Ear. Rolling Stone would later rank it 90th on the list of the "Top 100 Album Covers Of All Time". The remastered CD version adds three alternate version bonus tracks. Famed film actor of the horror genre Vincent Price provided the introductory monologue in the song "The Black Widow". The original version of "Escape" was recorded by The Hollywood Stars for their shelved 1974 album "Shine Like a Radio", which was finally released in 2013.
"Welcome to My Nightmare" is the title track to Alice Cooper's eighth studio album. It peaked at 45 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song itself mixes elements from disco,jazz, hard rock, and keeps a "heavy-yet-funky beat". Cooper would later perform the song on The Muppet Show. The tune was placed tenth on a list AOL Radio made of the "10 Best Halloween Songs".
Acoustic guitar is played by Dick Wagner, bass by Tony Levin, clarinet by Jozef Chirowski, drums by Johnny "Bee" Badanjek, and guitar by Steve Hunter.
Ronnie James Dio. Steve Lukather, Bob Kulick, Phil Soussan, Randy Castillo and Paul Taylor covered the song on the 1999 tribute album Humanary Stew: A Tribute to Alice Cooper.
Welcome to My Nightmare is a 1976 music concert film of Alice Cooper's show of the same name, produced, directed and choreographed by David Winters. The film accompanied the album, the stage show (also produced, directed and choreographed by Winters) by the same name and the TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare, the first ever rock music video album, starring Cooper and Vincent Price in person. Though it failed at the box office, it later became a midnight movie favorite and a cult classic.
In 1975, Alice Cooper released his first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare, and a huge theatrical stage show was created and put together by Winters to 'tour the album'. Whilst in the past the Alice Cooper stage show was semi-improvisatory, with confrontational elements of violence and satire (see Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper), the new production was purely horror-themed and professionally choreographed and performed to the split second (Winters had a long history of choreographing and directing big celebrity films, stage and TV shows starring in the cast of West Side Story and choreographing 4 films with Elvis Presley and 5 films with Ann-Margret). With the edginess removed (gone were the bloody guillotine, the spit and the skewered baby dolls, although "Only Women Bleed" presented a drunken, physically abusive side to the character), the Welcome to My Nightmare show was part a carefully planned move toward a more mainstream-friendly 'Alice'.
Beautiful flyaway somewhere like holy days wonder what brought me down to earth
Haven't I always been here let's have another nibble later I think I'll disappear into the bishop's hall
And take a look at what we offer DDT poisoning me changing my relativity what's it going to be
Da da da da d da later I think I'll disappear into another room and take a look inside the till
Lovely days human ways journeys that take us to the end aah
Haven't we always been here sharing one love and one fear
Some day you'll know that life is really really all about you
So come and look inside you'll be surprised to find
Later I think I'll disappear into another womb and take a look inside the mens' room
Haven't I given you everything that I could give where do you live aah