His first band was called The Earwigs, renamed as The Spiders, and then The Nazz. Cooper realized Todd Rundgren already had a group called The Nazz, so the name Alice Cooper was born. As Cooper explains in his Golf Monster book, the new name "conjured up an image of a little girl with a lollipop in one hand, and a butcher knife in another." Allegedly, the name came from a witch doctor who supposedly spoke to Vincent through a Ouija board. Furnier felt that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, so his "shock rock" persona was born, cemented by the infamous "chicken incident" at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969. A chicken had somehow made its way onto the stage into a prop feather pillow, and Furnier, presuming the chicken could fly, picked it up and threw it out over the crowd. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by wheelchair users, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces.
Alice Cooper was born Vincent Damon Furnier, named after his uncle, Vincent Collier Furnier, and the writer Damon Runyon. He legally changed his name to Alice Cooper in 1975 to avoid legal complications over ownership of the group name. Since the name was actually owned by the band as whole, Cooper paid, and continues to pay, a yearly royalty to his original bandmates for the right to use the name commercially. Cooper is The Godfather of Shock Rock. He has drawn equally from horror films, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a macabre and theatrical brand of rock designed to shock people.
Prior to his marriage to Sheryl Goddard in 1976, Cooper was first linked to Miss Christine (Christine Frka) of the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), an all-girl group produced by Frank Zappa. She overdosed in 1972. Cooper briefly dated actress Raquel Welch, at the time widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. But Cooper left Welch, to marry his longtime love, ballerina instructor/choregrapher Sheryl Goddard, who performed in the Alice Cooper show from 1975 to 1982. In November of 1983, Goddard filed for divorce, due to Cooper's rampant alcoholism. In 1984, they reconciled and have remained together since. They have three children – daughter Calico (born 1981), son Dash (born 1985), and daughter Sonora Rose (born 1993).
The legendary rocker, who has been a devout Christian for many years, having grown up with a father who was a preacher, Cooper has always had religion in his life. But it wasn't until he quit drinking and drugging in the '80s that he dedicated his life to Christ, partly at the urging of his wife, Sheryl.
"Sheryl had gone — she had gone to Chicago and said, 'I can't watch this,'" Alice recalled about the moment when he accepted Jesus into his life. "But the cocaine was speaking a lot louder than her. Finally, I looked in the mirror and it looked like my makeup, but it was blood coming down [from my eyes]. I think — I might have been hallucinating; I don't know. I flushed the rock down the toilet. I woke up and I called her and I said, 'It's done.' And she goes, 'Right. You have to prove it.' One of the deals was we start going to church. I knew who Jesus Christ was, and I was denying him. I knew that there had to either come a point where I either accepted Christ and started living that life, or if I died in this, I was in a lot of trouble. And that's what really motivated me. I just got to a point of saying, 'I'm tired of this life.' And I know that this is right when the Lord opens your eyes and you suddenly realize who you are and who He is."
Cooper admitted that he contemplated changing his name after he came to faith in Christ, but his pastor advised him not to. "I went to my pastor and I said, 'I think I've gotta quit being Alice Cooper now.' He says, 'Look where he put you. What if you're Alice Cooper, but what if you're now following Christ? And you're a rock star, but you don't live the rock-star life. Your lifestyle is now your testimony.'"
When asked if he was ashamed to say he believed in Jesus Christ, the rock star replied with a confident "no."
"People talk about Alice being a rebel — there was never more of a rebel than Jesus Christ," he said. "You wanna talk about a rebel — he was the ultimate."
In 1986, Megadeth opened for Cooper on his US Constrictor tour. After noticing the abuse of alcohol and other drugs in the band, Cooper personally approached the band members to try to help them control their abuse, and he has stayed close to front man Dave Mustaine, who considers Cooper to be his "godfather". Since overcoming his own addiction to alcohol in the mid-1980s, Cooper has continued to help and counsel other rock musicians with addiction problems. "I've made myself very available to friends of mine – they're people who would call me late at night and say, 'Between you and me, I've got a problem.'" In recognition of the work he has done in helping other addicts in the recovery process, Cooper received in 2008 the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award at the fourth annual MusiCares MAP Fund benefit concert in Los Angeles.
In 2015 he formed Hollywood Vampires, the supergroup project he's part of alongside Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and actor Johnny Depp.
"I told 'em: 'What we should do is put a bar band together. Call it Hollywood Vampires and just play songs for all of our dead, drunk friends. It was really true. All the guys we used to drink with, most of them died.
"I said, 'Look: You've got Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Keith Moon, T.Rex [Marc Bolan]. I said, 'We could do all these songs.' Not expecting it to end up playing in front of 200,000 people.
"I thought we were going to be a little bar band. We ended up touring and doing a whole bunch of European shows that had 10, 20, 30 thousand people."
In a 2019 interview, Cooper said that he and his wife Sheryl have a death pact, wherein they will die at the same time, sparking a flurry of headlines. But Cooper clarified his comments telling USA TODAY, "What I was meaning was that because we're almost always together, at home and on the road, that if something did happen to either of us, we'd most likely be together at the time. But neither of us has a suicide pact. We have a life pact."
Seriously though, this guy is a machine! He 71 years old & still rocking like he's 20 something. If I make it to 71 I hope I have the energy to rock like he does.
That's my contribution for today. I'm back tomorrow with the final installment for the week so until then, Keep Rocking
No comments:
Post a Comment