Alice Cooper

With sensational stage shows involving fake executions, mock fights, live snakes, overt sexuality and other garish theatricality designed to offend the moral majority, Alice Cooper -- born as "Vincent Furnier" in Detroit, Michigan on February 4, 1948 -- was one of the most controversial rock stars of the 1970s and '80s. His first band, The Spiders, played around Phoenix, Arizona, before he moved to Los Angeles and developed the androgynous, alter-ego of Alice Cooper, which came as a nasty shock to the hippy era. His shock-rock sharply divided opinion, but Cooper's band was signed by Frank Zappa to the Straight Records label, which released his first album Pretties for You in 1969. Cooper's first hit, “I'm 18”, came in 1970 and he reached new heights, outraging the establishment with the international smash School's Out in 1972. The concept album Welcome to My Nightmare followed in 1975 telling the story of a young boy called Steven, featuring narration by horror movie veteran Vincent Price. The album was turned into a stage show and also a TV special and earned Cooper a Grammy nomination for "Best Long Form Music Video." Lifestyle excesses took their toll in the late '70s, but after a stay in rehab for alcohol addiction, Cooper cleaned up his act and mounted a commercial comeback during the early 1990s. 1991’s Hey Stoopid went gold and featured the hit single "Feed My Frankenstein," which Cooper performed during a cameo appearance in the 1992 film Wayne's World. 1994’s The Last Temptation was Cooper's final album of the decade, and he began the 21st century with a tour and the album Brutal Planet. Dragontown followed soon after, joined by The Eyes of Alice Cooper and Dirty Diamonds, with Welcome 2 My Nightmare, the sequel to the 1975 concept album, being released in 2011. 2017’s Paranormal would become his 10th LP to get into the top 40, and he began the next decade with 2021’s Detroit Stories and 2023's Road.