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When you talk about rock and roll originators Vincent Furnier needs to be in the discussion.
Most know Vince Furnier by his stage name Alice Cooper, a rock and roll legend and Hall of Famer (2011) who broke through the stasis in the late 1960s with his self-named outfit that defied and defined the changing times.
Cooper, the son of a lay preacher, was born in Detroit in 1948, but moved to Phoenix as a child. He formed various bands in Phoenix during his high school years before being signed by Frank Zappa’s label Straight Records in 1969. His first two albums, “Pretties for You” and “Easy Action,” collectively garnered little attention from the public but that all changed when the Alice Cooper Band moved back to Detroit in the summer of 1970.
Within a matter of one year, the Alice Cooper Band brought out “Love it to Death” and raced up the radio charts with “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out” which propelled them to a national audience.
Moreover years before such acts as KISS put together massive stage shows, Cooper was defining the very area with his show, which included hanging at the gallows and electric chairs and boa constrictors and everything that parent’s feared their children seeing.
Source : Jim Lahde, “Alice Cooper plans show at Soaring Eagle”, Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun, November 18, 2011.
Alice Cooper cameo from the movie Dark Shadows in 2012.
Source : Historical Society of Michigan.