Alice Cooper

Before Alice Cooper was one man, it was a band: Vincent Furnier out front, under the stage name Alice Cooper, with Glen Buxton on lead guitar, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar and keyboards, Dennis Dunaway on bass and Neal Smith on drums. They came out of Phoenix and became one of the few glam acts to go truly mainstream in America, with stage shows so theatrical, so gleefully gruesome, that the music sometimes got lost in the uproar. It shouldn't have. This was a tough, riffing hard rock band.

"I'm Eighteen", from Love It to Death, their third album, made them famous in 1971, a snotty, lurching anthem with a chip on its shoulder. Killer, the same year, added the swaggering "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover". "School's Out", in 1972, is a riot of a single, all crunching guitar and gang-shouted chorus, and it went all the way to the top in the UK. Billion Dollar Babies, in 1973, was the summit: a number-one album in the US and the UK, with "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "Elected", and a tour that broke box-office records held by the Rolling Stones.

Then the band came apart, and Furnier took the name, legally, for a solo career. The original band went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011, and in 2025 they reunited for The Revenge of Alice Cooper.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.