Alice Cooper Doesn’t Run from Danger

The Alice Cooper story is, first and foremost, an extraordinary tale of “split personality”. Like something straight out of “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, singer Vincent Furnier surrendered to the domination of showman Alice Cooper. But by his own admission, the man who always speaks of “Alice” in the third person in interviews remains a simple, completely normal guy in private, far from the stage where he enacts his excesses and provocations. Throughout a career stretching over 50 years, there is an evident streak of schizophrenia in his many stylistic changes. While we credit him with the invention of shock rock, he has ventured into almost every genre with varying degrees of success, from pop to nascent hard rock, with forays into heavy metal, new wave and industrial…

Furnier was born in Detroit on February 4, 1948, but his chronic asthma forced his family to move to Phoenix in the early ’60s. While he had already discovered rock’n’roll in Michigan thanks to an uncle who had introduced him to Chuck Berry and Elvis, his father was also a big band jazz musician, a very open-minded dad who encouraged young Vince, especially after the epiphany of hearing The Beatles’ She Loves You on the radio. While also a fan of The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Roy Orbinson and Them, he would never renounce his devotion to the four lads from Liverpool. In 1964, in their very first performance, with fellow high schoolers (including Glen Buxton, the only one who could vaguely play guitar), they called themselves The Earwigs, styled after The Beatles, with wigs and costumes sewn by Mrs. Furnier, Vinnie’s mom. That line-up already included Dennis Dunaway on bass. In school, The Earwigs were acclaimed for their hip covers, with slightly modified lyrics. To keep the momentum going, the group renamed itself the Spiders a year later (still showing a strong Beatles influence), opening for The Hollies, The Byrds and The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck era… Their first single was a cover of The Blackwells’ Why Don’t You Love Me, sounding like a mix of Please Please Me and She Loves You. During the summer of 1966, the Spiders made a guitar swap with Spooner, the group led by guitarist Bill Spooner, future founder of The Tubes, main competitors of Alice Cooper in the ’70s. Exit John Tatum, enter Michael Bruce, also a huge Beatles fan, having in fact played in a lookalike group called The Trolls. In 1967, Spiders became The Nazz, before becoming Alice Cooper, named for a supporting character in a popular TV series. The singer would long claim that after a (real) car accident in April 1968, he died and was reincarnated as his new alter ego. In the meantime, the group welcomed a new drummer, Neal Smith, the final piece of the puzzle, now ready to shake up the ’70s while racking up record sales. But the debut album, Pretties for You, on Frank Zappa’s Straight Records label, showed no signs of that success upon its release in June 1969.