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The word "Muppet" itself first appeared in 1956, and was said by Henson to have been created by combining the words "Marionette" and "puppet". However, Henson was also known to have stated that it was just something he liked the sound of, and he made up the "marionette/puppet" story while talking to a journalist because it sounded plausible.
After earlier unsuccessful attempts, the Walt Disney Company bought the Muppets in 2004. Exceptions include characters appearing on Sesame Street (as they were previously sold to Sesame Workshop, although they have always had creative rights, only paying The Jim Henson Company to create and provide their Muppet characters for their use) and the Fraggles of Fraggle Rock (which are still owned by The Jim Henson Company). The legal trademark on the term "Muppet" is currently held by The Muppets Holding Company (now The Muppets Studio, LLC, a division of The Walt Disney Company); although Sesame Workshop and The Jim Henson Company continue to use the term on their characters with certain permissions.
After over a decade, a new movie is in the works. Disney recently enlisted Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller to create the next Muppet movie for the studio. This will be the first Muppet theatrical film since Muppets from Space. In January 2010 James Bobin signed on to direct.
The Muppets' latest television special, , premiered on NBC on December 17, 2008. It was released on DVD on September 29, 2009. A Halloween TV special featuring the Muppets was expected to air on ABC in October 2010, but it turned out that it had been shelved due to the upcoming film.
The puppets are often molded or carved out of various types of foam, and then covered with fleece, fur, or any other material. Muppets may represent humans, anthropomorphic animals, realistic animals, robots, anthropomorphic objects, extraterrestrial creatures, mythical beings or other unidentified, newly imagined creatures, monsters, or abstract characters.
Muppets are distinguished from ventriloquist "dummies"/"puppets", which are typically animated only in the head and face, in that their arms or other features are also mobile and expressive. Muppets are typically made of softer materials. They are also presented as being independent of the puppeteer, who is usually not visible—hidden behind a set or outside of the camera frame. Using the camera frame as the "stage" was an innovation of the Muppets. Previously on television, there would typically be a stage hiding the performers, as if in a live presentation. Sometimes they are seen full-bodied. This is done by using invisible strings to move the characters' bodies and mouths, and then adding the voices later.
Muppets tend to develop, as writer Michael Davis put it, "organically", meaning that the puppeteers take time, often up to a year, slowly developing their characters and voices. Muppets are also, as Davis said, "test-driven, passed around from one Henson troupe member to another in the hope of finding the perfect human-Muppet match".
When interacting with Muppets, children tended to act as though the Muppets were living creatures, even when they could see the puppeteers.
The most widely known television shows featuring Muppets have been Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Bear in the Big Blue House. Other series have included The Jim Henson Hour, The Ghost of Faffner Hall, Dog City, Secret Life of Toys, Muppets Tonight, The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss and . A recurring adult-oriented cast of Muppets (in a setting known as ) were featured throughout the first season of Saturday Night Live.
Guest stars on some of these programs have occasionally had Muppet versions of themselves. It was a regular practice for the first few episodes of The Muppet Show, and ZZ Top, among others, have appeared as Muppet versions of themselves on Sesame Street. Muppet versions of real people have also appeared in other shows, such as in 30 Rock, when one of the characters, Kenneth Parcell, views his co-workers as Muppet-versions in episode "Apollo, Apollo" of March 26, 2009.
The puppet characters of Farscape, The Storyteller, Mother Goose Stories, The Hoobs, Construction Site and Dinosaurs, as well as from the films Labyrinth, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Buddy, The Country Bears and The Dark Crystal, are not considered Muppets, as they were made by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, rather than by Henson's Muppet Workshop. The puppet casts of Puppet Up! and Tinseltown are also not considered Muppets as they were made by The Jim Henson Company after the sale of The Muppets in 2004. The Star Wars character Yoda was voiced by Frank Oz, one of Henson's regular performers, and is often referred to as a Muppet in media and reference works; he is not, however, a Muppet and Henson's organization was not involved in the character's design.
The Muppets' popularity has been so expansive that Muppet characters have been treated as celebrities in their own right. The Muppets have presented at the Academy Awards and Emmy Awards; made cameo appearances in such feature films as Rocky III, An American Werewolf in London and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium; and have been interviewed on the newsmagazine 60 Minutes. Kermit the Frog was interviewed early on in Jon Stewart's run on The Daily Show, guest hosted The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, , America's Funniest Home Videos and an April Fool's Day edition of Larry King Live; and the frog has served as Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade. The characters also appeared in-character on such sit-coms and dramas as The Cosby Show, The West Wing and The Torkelsons. The music video for the Weezer song "Keep Fishin'" is premised on the band performing on The Muppet Show and features appearances by several characters. On September 28, 2005, the United States Postal Service released a Jim Henson and the Muppets postage stamp series. The Muppets also appeared on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve for the 2008 countdown on December 31, 2007. Kermit, Rizzo and others welcomed in the new year with a series of messages to welcome viewers back from the advertising breaks. After one such segment, with Kermit in Time Square, co-host Ryan Seacrest thanked his pal "Kerms" for the help bringing in '08. Miss Piggy has appeared as a guest on The Late Show and Kermit the Frog appeared on Hollywood Squares and as one of the celebrity commentators on VH1's I Love documentary series. They appeared on ABC's as special hosts on January 3, 2010. In September 2010, the Muppets launched a new online cooking show called "The Muppets Kitchen with Cat Cora".
On July 25, 2007 the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta announced the opening of a new Jim Henson Wing, which will house anywhere from 500 to 700 retired Muppets, including those from Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street. The new wing will also include films, sketches, and other materials from the Jim Henson Company archives. The wing, which will be a part of the Center's new building, is slated to open in 2012.
The first six albums were released by Columbia Records and Warner Bros. Records, both major labels with many years of experience. These were deluxe albums, issued in colorful gatefold covers, usually with bonus material such as posters, lyric booklets, and photos and drawings of the show's characters. This arrangement lasted for the first five years of the show.
During the summer of 1970, as The Sesame Street Book & Record became a best seller, Bob McGrath and Loretta Long also released their own children's albums. While not part of the Sesame Street canon (even though they both mention Sesame Street on their covers), they also became well-known albums because of the show's huge popularity.
In 1974, Sesame Street created its own series of records, on an independent label that was called Sesame Street Records, with a custom record label logo of the Sesame Street sign. These albums were manufactured by Children's Records of America from 1974 to 1976, and by Distinguished Productions from 1977 to 1984. Over 70 titles were produced over the ten-year run of the label. The catalog included reissues of all of the previous Columbia and Warner Bros. albums, although in less lavish packages than their original editions. At first, titles were only issued on vinyl, but over the years, they were also produced on cassettes and 8-track tapes.
The Sesame Street Records label was shut down around 1984. Soon after, many Sesame Street titles began to be reissued on cassettes by an educational company called Sight & Sound. While some tapes used the original cover pictures, others had new cover pictures. An important historical footnote during this period is that in 1987, the very first Sesame Street CD was produced, called The Best of Sesame Street, and it would be the only CD produced until the early 1990s. In 1990, titles began to appear on Golden Music, which was the music division of Golden Books. A mix of new titles appeared, beginning with tributes to Jim Henson and Joe Raposo, along with reissues of older titles. Golden's license lasted until 1994.
In 1995, Sony Wonder began issuing a new series of titles. This was looked on with interest by some Sesame collectors, since Sony owns the back catalog of Columbia Records, who put out the very first Sesame Street LP in 1970. While that album has not yet been reissued on CD in its entirety, the second Columbia album, The Muppet Alphabet Album, was reissued as Sing the Alphabet. However, one section of dialogue was cut which referred to turning the record over, which wouldn't make any sense to CD listeners.
The Sony Wonder years culminated with Songs from the Street, an elaborate 3-CD boxed set produced in association with Sony Music's Legacy Recordings. This set was full of classic and rare tracks both from records and from live performances on the show. It also contained a detailed booklet about the history of the show, written by Christopher Cerf. It was the first time Sesame Street had received the boxed-set treatment from a major label, although several multi-LP boxed sets had been released over the years on Sesame Street Records.
On September 17, 2002 Rhino released . In addition to the many Sesame Street and Muppets movie soundtracks available, this collection compiles music from various Muppets sources. It includes the rare song Rainbow Connection which was previously available on CD only on the soundtrack for The Muppet Movie.
In 2007, Koch Records announced that it would begin distributing Sesame Street titles. The first titles began to appear in 2008, with reissues of albums that had previously been released on Sony Wonder.
In addition to the main library of Sesame Street music, over the years, original cast albums have been sold at the Sesame Street Live shows. See Sesame Street Live Discography for a chronological list of titles.
On June 8, 2010 it was reported that Jason Segel's The Muppets will be released in theatres Christmas of 2011. Segel will star along with Ben Stiller, George Clooney, French Stewart, Sean Penn and others. . Filming began on the film on October 29, and was promoted late that night on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, with Jason Segel breaking the news.
The Muppets have also begun having their own shorts hosted on the popular video sharing site YouTube. After the 'Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody' was posted on the Muppets' new YouTube Channel gained 10 million views within the first two weeks and took home two Webby Awards. Videos are being posted on the site regularly. . Recently, the Muppets starred in an online web series with Cat Cora called "The Muppets Kitchen With Cat Cora", where they show people how to cook several items.
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| Name | Alice Cooper |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Vincent Damon Furnier |
| Born | February 04, 1948Allen Park, Michigan, U.S. |
| Instrument | Vocals, harmonica, guitar |
| Genre | Rock, hard rock, heavy metal, shock rock |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter, actor, DJ |
| Years active | 1964–present |
| Label | Straight, Warner Bros., Atlantic, MCA, Epic, Spitfire, Eagle, New West |
| Url | www.alicecooper.com}} |
Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades. With a stage show that includes guillotines, the gallows, the electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors and baby dolls, Cooper had drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and violent brand of hard rock that was designed to shock.
Alice Cooper was originally a band consisting of Furnier on vocals and harmonica, lead guitarist Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar, and drummer Neal Smith. Taking on the name in 1968 the Alice Cooper band broke into the international music mainstream with the 1971 hit "I'm Eighteen", which was followed in 1972 by the even bigger single "School's Out", which reached #1 in the UK during that summer. The band reached their commercial peak with the transatlantic #1 album Billion Dollar Babies in 1973.Furnier's solo career as Alice Cooper, legally adopting the band's name as his own, began with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare and reached his commercial peak with the 1989 hit "Poison". His most recent studio release was Along Came a Spider, his 18th solo album, in 2008. Expanding from his original Detroit-based garage rock roots, over the years Cooper has experimented with many different musical styles, including art rock, conceptual rock, rock and roll, pop ballad, jazz, new wave, gothic rock, heavy metal, and industrial metal.
Alice Cooper is known for his social and witty persona offstage. The Rolling Stone Album Guide goes so far as to call him the world's most "beloved heavy metal entertainer". He helped to shape the sound and look of heavy metal, and is seen as the person who "first introduced horror imagery to rock'n'roll, and whose stagecraft and showmanship have permanently transformed the genre". Away from music, Cooper is a film actor, a golfing celebrity, a restaurateur and, since 2004, a popular radio DJ with his classic rock show Nights with Alice Cooper.
In December 2010, it was announced that in 2011 the original Alice Cooper band would be inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has French Huguenot, Sioux Native American, English, Scottish and Irish ancestry, and was named after one of his uncles (Vincent Collier Furnier) and the writer Damon Runyon. His paternal grandfather, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite). Vincent Furnier was very active in his church at the ages of 11 and 12.
While in Detroit, Furnier attended Washington Elementary School, and then a middle school that is now Lutheran High School Westland. Following a series of childhood illnesses, Furnier moved with his family to Phoenix, Arizona. Furnier attended Cortez High School in northern Phoenix. He was also a member of the Order of DeMolay.
In 1966, the members of The Spiders graduated from high school. After North High School footballer Michael Bruce replaced John Tatum on rhythm guitar, the band scored a local #1 radio hit with "Don't Blow Your Mind," an original composition from their second single release. By 1967, the band had begun to make regular road trips to Los Angeles, California to play shows. They soon renamed themselves The Nazz and released the single "Wonder Who's Lovin' Her Now," backed with future Alice Cooper track "Lay Down And Die, Goodbye." At around this time drummer John Speer was replaced by Neal Smith. By the end of the year the band had relocated to Los Angeles permanently.
In 1968, upon learning that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, the band were again in need of another stage name. Believing that the group needed a gimmick to succeed and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage, Furnier chose Alice Cooper as the band's name and adopted this stage name as his own. Cooper admitted in 2007 that the name change was one of his most important and successful career moves.
Early press releases claimed that the name was agreed upon after a session with a Ouija board, during which it was revealed that Furnier was the reincarnation of a 17th century witch named Alice Cooper.
Nonetheless, at the time Cooper and the band realized that the concept of a male playing the role of an androgynous witch, in tattered women's clothing and wearing make-up, would have the potential to cause considerable social controversy and grab headlines. Cooper stated in a 2008 interview that his look was inspired in part by the film Barbarella. "When I saw Anita Pallenberg playing the Great Tyrant in that movie in 1968, wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them, I thought, 'That's what Alice should look like'. That, and a little bit of Emma Peel from The Avengers".
The conception for the character that Cooper plays on stage came when he took careful observation of the rock world around him. He noticed that rock stars were always made out to be heroes, and that rock villains were scarce. In a 2010 interview he stated, "Why do we always have rock heroes? Why not a rock villain? I was more than happy to be rock's Darth Vader. I was more than happy to be Captain Hook."
The classic Alice Cooper group line-up consisted of singer Alice Cooper (Vincent Furnier), lead guitarist Glen Buxton, rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith. With the exception of Smith, who graduated from Camelback High School (which is referred to in the song "Alma Mater" on the School's Out album), all of the band members were on the Cortez High School cross-country team, and many of Cooper's stage effects were inspired by their cross-country coach, Emmett Smith (one of Smith's class projects was to build a working guillotine for slicing watermelons). Cooper, Buxton and Dunaway were also art students, and their admiration for the works of surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí would further inspire their future stage antics.
One night, after an unsuccessful gig at a club in Venice, California, called The Cheetah, where the band emptied the entire room of patrons after playing just ten minutes, they were approached and enlisted by music manager Shep Gordon, who ironically saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction. Shep then arranged an audition for the band with composer and renowned record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. For the audition, Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock." The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of psychedelic rock at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough to sign them to a three-album deal. Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, who liked to "dress the Cooper boys up like full size barbie dolls," played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look.
Cooper's first album Pretties for You, released in 1969, had a slight psychedelic feel. Although it touched the US charts for one week at #193, it was ultimately a critical and commercial failure.
Alice Cooper's "shock rock" reputation apparently developed almost by accident at first. An unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper and a live chicken garnered attention from the press, and the band decided to capitalize on the tabloid sensationalism, creating in the process a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the infamous "Chicken Incident" at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969, was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way on stage during Cooper's performance; not having any experience around farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by disabled people in wheelchairs, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces.
The next day, the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Zappa phoned Cooper to ask if the story, which reported that he had bitten the head off the chicken and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, "Well, whatever you do, don't tell anyone you didn't do it", obviously recognising that such publicity would be priceless for the band.
Despite the publicity from the Chicken Incident, the band's stronger second album, Easy Action, released in June 1970, met with the same fate as its predecessor. At around this time the band, fed up with Californians' indifference to their act, relocated to Cooper's birthplace, Detroit, where their bizarre stage act was much better received by the crowds of the Midwest states who were accustomed to the similar hard rock styles of local bands such as The Stooges and The MC5. Despite this, Cooper still managed to receive a cream pie in the face when performing at the Cincinnati Pop Festival. Detroit would remain their steady home base until 1972. "LA just didn’t get it," Cooper stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."
In autumn 1970 the Alice Cooper group teamed with producer Bob Ezrin for the recording of their third album Love it to Death. This was the final album in their Straight Records contract and the band's last chance to create a hit. That first success came with the single "I'm Eighteen", released in November 1970, which reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1971. Not long after the album's release in January 1971 Warner Bros. Records purchased Alice Cooper's contract from Straight and re-issued the album, giving the group a higher level of promotion.
Love it to Death proved to be their breakthrough album, reaching number 35 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album charts. It would be the first of eleven Alice Cooper group and solo albums produced by Ezrin, who is widely seen as being instrumental in helping to create and develop the band's definitive sound.
The group's 1971 tour featured a stage show involving mock fights and gothic torture modes being imposed on Cooper climaxing with a staged execution by electric chair, with the band sporting tight, sequined, and color-contrasting glam rock-style costumes made by prominent rock fashion designer Cindy Dunaway (sister of band member Neal Smith, and wife of band member Dennis Dunaway). Cooper's androgynous stage role had developed to present a villainous side, portraying a potential threat to modern society. The success of the band's single, the album, and their tour of 1971, which included their first tour of Europe (audience members reportedly included Elton John and a pre-Ziggy David Bowie), provided enough encouragement for Warner Bros. to offer the band a new multi-album contract.
Their follow-up album Killer, released in late 1971, continued the commercial success of Love It To Death and included further single success with "Under My Wheels", "Be My Lover" in early 1972, and "Halo Of Flies" which became a Top 10 hit in the Netherlands in 1972. Thematically, Killer expanded on the villainous side of Cooper's androgynous stage role, with its music becoming the soundtrack to the group's morality-based stage show, which by then featured a boa constrictor hugging Cooper onstage, the murderous axe chopping of bloodied baby dolls, and execution by hanging at the gallows.
The summer of 1972 saw the release of the single "School's Out". It went Top 10 in the US, was a #1 single in the UK, and remains a staple on classic rock radio to this day. School's Out the album reached #2 on the US charts and sold over a million copies. The band now relocated to their new mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. With Cooper's on-stage androgynous persona completely replaced with brattiness and machismo, the band solidified their success with subsequent tours in the US and Europe, and won over devoted fans in droves while at the same time horrifying parents and outraging the social establishment. Controversy seemed to have little negative effect on the band's popularity, as they were selected to be the first band to appear on then-new US television series ABC In Concert in September 1972. In England, Mary Whitehouse, a well known campaigner for values of morality and decency, succeeded in having the BBC ban the video for "School's Out" and Member of Parliament Leo Abse petitioned Home Secretary Reginald Maudling to have the group banned altogether from performing in the country.
In February 1973 Billion Dollar Babies was released worldwide and became the band's most commercially successful album, reaching #1 in both the US and UK. "Elected", a late-1972 Top 10 UK hit from the album, which inspired one of the first MTV-style story-line promo videos ever made for a song (three years before Queen's promotional video for "Bohemian Rhapsody"), was followed by two more UK Top 10 singles, "Hello Hooray" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy", the latter of which was the last UK single from the album; it reached #25 in the US. The title track, featuring guest vocals by Donovan, was also a US hit single. Due to Glen Buxton's waning health around this time Mick Mashbir was secretly added to the band (who also played, without credit, on Muscle of Love) to supplement Glen's playing.
With a string of successful concept albums and several hit singles, the band continued their gruelling schedule and toured the US once again. Continued attempts by politicians and pressure groups to ban their shocking act only served to fuel the myth of Alice Cooper further and generate even greater public interest. Their 1973 US tour broke box office records previously set by The Rolling Stones and raised rock theatrics to new heights; the multi-level stage show by then featured numerous special effects, including Billion Dollar Bills, decapitated baby dolls and mannequins, a dental psychosis scene complete with dancing teeth, and the ultimate execution prop and highlight of the show: the guillotine. The guillotine and other stage effects were designed for the band by magician James Randi, who appeared on stage during some of the shows as executioner. The Alice Cooper group had now reached its peak and it was among the most visible and successful acts in the industry. (Cooper's stage antics would influence a host of later bands, including, among others, Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Kiss, Blue Öyster Cult, GWAR, W.A.S.P. and, later, Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie.) Beneath the surface, however, the repetitive schedule of recording and touring had begun to take its toll on the band, and Cooper, who was under the constant pressure of getting into character for that night's show, was consistently sighted nursing a can of beer.
Muscle of Love, released at the end of 1973, was to be the last studio album from the classic line-up, and marked Alice Cooper's last UK Top 20 single of the 1970s with "Teenage Lament '74". A theme song was recorded for the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun, but a different song of the same name by Lulu was chosen instead. By 1974, the Muscle of Love album had not matched the top-charting success of its predecessor, and the band began to have constant disagreements. Cooper wanted to retain the theatrics in the show that had brought them so much attention, while the rest of the group thought they should be toned down so that they could concentrate more on the music which had given them credibility. Largely as a result of this difference of opinion, the band decided to take a much-needed hiatus.
During this time, Cooper relocated back to Los Angeles and started appearing regularly on TV shows such as Hollywood Squares, and Warner Bros. released the Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits compilation album. It featured classic style artwork and reached the US Top 10, performing better than Muscle of Love. However, the band's 1974 feature film Good To See You Again, Alice Cooper (consisting mainly of 1973 concert footage with 'comedic' sketches woven throughout to a faint storyline), released on a minor theatrical run mostly to drive-in theaters, saw little box office success.
As some of the Alice Cooper band's members had begun recording solo albums Cooper decided to do the same himself, and 1975 saw the release of his first solo album Welcome To My Nightmare. Its success marked the final break with the original members of the band, with Cooper collaborating with their producer Bob Ezrin who recruited Lou Reed's backing band, including guitarist Dick Wagner to play on the album. Spearheaded by the US Top 20 hit "Only Women Bleed", a ballad, the album was released by Atlantic Records in March of that year and became a Top 10 hit for Cooper. It was a concept album, based on the nightmare of a child named Steven, featuring narration by classic horror movie film star Vincent Price (several years after Welcome To My Nightmare, he guested on Michael Jackson's "Thriller"), and serving as the soundtrack to Cooper's new stage show, which now included more theatrics than ever (including an furry Cyclops which Cooper decapitates and kills).
However, by this time alcohol was clearly affecting Cooper's performances. During the Welcome to My Nightmare tour in Vancouver, and only a few songs into the routine, Cooper tripped over a footlight, staggered a few paces, lost his bearings and plunged head first off the stage and onto the concrete floor of the Pacific Coliseum. Some fans, thinking it was all part of the act, reached through the barriers to pull at his blood-matted hair before bouncers could pull him away for help. He was taken to a local hospital, where medical staff stitched his head wound and provided him with a skullcap. Cooper returned to the venue a couple of hours later and tried to perform a couple of more songs, but within minutes he had to call it a night. The opening act, Suzi Quatro, had already left the building and the remainder of the concert was cancelled.
Accompanying the album and stage show was the TV special The Nightmare, starring Cooper and Vincent Price in person, which aired on US prime-time TV in April 1975. The Nightmare, the first rock music video album ever made (it was later released on home video in 1983 and gained a Grammy Awards nomination for Best Long Form Music Video), was regarded as another groundbreaking moment in rock history. Adding to all that, a concert film, also called Welcome to My Nightmare and filmed live at London's Wembley Arena in September 1975, was released to theaters in 1976. Though it failed at the box office, it later became a midnight movie favorite and a cult classic.
Such was the immense success of Cooper's solo project that he decided to continue alone as a solo artist, and the original band became officially defunct. It was also during this time that Cooper co-founded the legendary drinking club The Hollywood Vampires, which gave him yet another reason to indulge his continued ample appetite for alcohol.
Following the 1976 US #12 hit "I Never Cry", another ballad, two albums, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell and Lace and Whiskey, and another ballad hit, the US #9 "You and Me", it became clear from his performances during his 1977 US tour that he was in dire need of help with his alcoholism (at his alcoholic peak it was rumored that Cooper was consuming up to two cases of Budweiser and a bottle of whiskey a day). Following the tour, Cooper had himself hospitalized in a New York sanitarium for treatment, during which time the live album The Alice Cooper Show was released. His experience in the sanitarium was the inspiration for his 1978 semi-autobiographical album From The Inside, which Cooper co-wrote with Bernie Taupin. The release spawned another US Top 20 hit "How You Gonna See Me Now", which peaked at #12, and was yet another ballad, based on his fear of how his wife would react to him after his spell in hospital.
The subsequent tour's stage show was based inside an asylum, and was filmed for Cooper's first home video release, The Strange Case of Alice Cooper, in 1979. Around this time, Cooper performed "Welcome To My Nightmare", "You and Me", and "School's Out" on The Muppet Show (episode # 307) on March 28, 1978 (he played one of the devil's henchmen trying to dupe Kermit the Frog and Gonzo into selling their souls). He also appeared in an against-type casting in the campy role of a piano playing, disco bellboy in Mae West's final film, Sextette. Cooper also led celebrities in raising money to remodel the famous Hollywood Sign in California. Cooper himself contributed over $27,000 to the project, buying an O in the sign in memory of friend and comedian Groucho Marx.
In 1983, after the recording of DaDa, Cooper was re-hospitalized for alcoholism. In a deathly state of health, he relocated back to Phoenix, Arizona, in order to try and save his marriage from collapse and so that he could receive the support of family and friends. Cooper was finally clean and sober by the time DaDa and The Nightmare home video (of his 1975 TV Special) were released in the fall of that year; however, both releases performed below expectations. Even with The Nightmare scoring a nomination for 1984's Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video (he lost to Duran Duran), it was not enough for Warner Bros. to keep Cooper on their books, and, in 1984, Cooper became, for the first time in his career, a free agent.
After over a year on hiatus, which time he spent being a full-time father, perfecting his golf swing every day on the golf course, and finding time to star in the Spanish B-grade horror movie production Monster Dog, Cooper sought to pick up the pieces of his musical career. In 1985 he met and began writing songs with guitarist Kane Roberts. Cooper was subsequently signed to MCA Records, and appeared as guest vocalist on Twisted Sister's song "Be Chrool To Your Scuel". A video was made for the song, featuring Cooper donning his black snake-eyes make-up for the first time since 1979. But any publicity it may have generated toward Cooper's return to the music scene was cut short as the video was promptly banned because of its graphically gory make-up (by Tom Savini), and because of the innumerable zombies in the video and their insatiable appetite for gorging on human flesh.
In 1986, Alice Cooper officially returned to the music industry with the album Constrictor. The album spawned the hits "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)" (the theme song for the movie ; in the video of the song Cooper was given a cameo role as a deranged psychiatrist) and the fan favorite "Teenage Frankenstein". The Constrictor album was a catalyst for Cooper to make (for the first time since the 1982 Special Forces tour) a triumphant return to the road, on a tour appropriately entitled The Nightmare Returns. The Detroit leg of this tour, which took place at the end of October 1986 during Halloween, was captured on film as The Nightmare Returns, and is viewed by some as being the definitive Alice Cooper concert film. The concert, which received rave reviews in the rock music press, was also described as bringing "Cooper’s violent, twisted onstage fantasies to a new generation". The Constrictor album was followed by Raise Your Fist and Yell in 1987, which had an even rougher sound than its predecessor, as well as the Cooper classic "Freedom". The subsequent tour of Raise Your Fist and Yell, which was heavily inspired by the slasher horror movies of the time such as the Friday the 13th series and Nightmare on Elm Street, served up a shocking spectacle similar to its predecessor, and courted the kind of controversy, especially in Europe, that recalled the public outrage caused by Cooper's public performances in America in the early 1970s.
In Britain, Labour M.P. David Blunkett called for the show to be banned, saying "I'm horrified by his behaviour — it goes beyond the bounds of entertainment". The controversy spilled over into the German segment of the tour, with the German government actually succeeding in having some of the gorier segments of the performance removed. It was also during the London leg of the tour that Cooper met with a near fatal accident during the hanging execution sequence at the end of the show. Needless to say the attendant publicity served only to increase public interest and ensure that the tour was completely sold out.
Constrictor and Raise Your Fist and Yell were recorded with lead guitarist Kane Roberts and bassist Kip Winger, both of whom would leave the band by the end of 1988 (although Kane Roberts played guitar on "Bed Of Nails" on 1989's album Trash). Roberts would continue as a solo artist while Kip Winger would go on to form Winger.
In 1987, Cooper made a brief appearance as a vagrant in the horror movie Prince of Darkness, directed by John Carpenter. His role had no lines and consisted of generally menacing the protagonists before eventually impaling one of them with a bicycle frame. Cooper also appeared at WrestleMania III, escorting wrestler Jake 'The Snake' Roberts to the ring. After the match was over, Cooper got involved and threw Jake's snake Damien at The Honky Tonk Man's manager Jimmy Hart. Jake considered the involvement of Cooper to be an honor, as he had idolized Cooper in his youth and was still a huge fan.
In 1988 Cooper's contract with MCA Records expired and he signed with Epic Records. Then, in 1989, his career finally experienced a real revival with the Desmond Child produced album Trash, which spawned a hit single "Poison", which reached #2 in the UK and #7 in the US, and a worldwide arena tour.
By the early 1990s Cooper had become a genuine cultural icon, guesting on records by the most successful bands of the time, such as the Guns N' Roses album Use Your Illusion I, (on which he shared vocal duties with Axl Rose on the track "The Garden"); making a brief appearance as the abusive stepfather of Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare On Elm Street film (1991); and making a famous cameo appearance in the 1992 comedy film Wayne's World, in which he and his band intellectually discuss (after a performance of the song "Feed My Frankenstein" from Hey Stoopid) the history of Milwaukee in surprising depth. In a now famous scene, the movie's main characters Wayne and Garth, upon seeing Cooper, kneel and bow reverently before him while chanting "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!" He later made an appearance on an episode of That 70s Show, at the end of which he and two other (minor) guest characters parody Dungeons & Dragons.
In 1994 Cooper released The Last Temptation, his first concept album since DaDa. The album deals with issues of faith, temptation, alienation, and the frustrations of modern life, and has been described as "a young man's struggle to see the truth through the distractions of the 'Sideshow' of the modern world". Concurrent with the release of The Last Temptation was a three-part comic book series written by Neil Gaiman, fleshing out the album's story. This was to be Cooper’s last album with Epic Records, and his last studio release for six years, though during this period the live album A Fistful of Alice was released, and in 1997 he lent his voice to the first track of Insane Clown Posse's The Great Milenko. In 1999, the four-disc box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper appeared, which contained an authorized biography of Cooper, Alcohol and Razor Blades, Poison and Needles: The Glorious Wretched Excess of Alice Cooper, All-American, written by Creem magazine editor Jeffrey Morgan.
During his absence from the recording studio, Cooper toured extensively every year throughout the latter part of the 1990s, including, in 1996, South America, which he had not visited since 1974. Also in 1996, Cooper sang the role of Herod on the London cast recording of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
The lengthy break between studio albums ended in 2000 with Brutal Planet, which was a return to horror-lined heavy metal, with a vicious injection of industrial rock, and with subject matter thematically inspired by the brutality of the modern world, set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, and also inspired by a number of news stories that had recently appeared on the CNN news channel. The album was produced by Bob Marlett, with longtime Cooper production collaborator Bob Ezrin returning as Executive Producer. The accompanying world tour, which included Cooper's first concert in Russia, was a resounding success, introducing Alice Cooper to a new audience and producing the live home video, Brutally Live, in 2001. During one memorable episode in Brutally Live, Britney Spears (being played by Alice Cooper's real life daughter, Calico), and representing "everything that my audience hates — the softening of rock and roll...the sweetness of it" is executed by Cooper.
Brutal Planet was succeeded by the sonically similar and widely acclaimed sequel Dragontown, which saw Bob Ezrin back at the helm as producer. The album has been described as leading the listener down "a nightmarish path into the mind of rock's original conceptual storyteller" and by Cooper himself as being "the worst town on Brutal Planet". Like The Last Temptation, both Brutal Planet and Dragontown are albums which explore Cooper's personal faith perspective (born again Christianity). It is often cited in the music media that Dragontown forms the third chapter in a trilogy begun with The Last Temptation; however, Cooper has himself indicated that this in fact is not the case.
Cooper again adopted a leaner, cleaner sound for his critically acclaimed 2003 release The Eyes Of Alice Cooper. Recognizing that many contemporary bands were having great success with his former sounds and styles, Cooper worked with a somewhat younger group of road and studio musicians who were very familiar with his oeuvre of old. However, instead of rehashing the old sounds, they updated them, often with surprisingly effective results. The resulting Bare Bones tour adopted a less-orchestrated performance style that had fewer theatrical flourishes and a greater emphasis on musicality. The success of this tour helped support the growing recognition that the classic Cooper songs were exceptionally clever, tuneful and unique.
Cooper's radio show, Nights with Alice Cooper, began airing on January 26, 2004 in several US cities. The program showcases classic rock, Cooper's personal stories about his life as a rock icon, and interviews with prominent rock artists. The show appears on nearly 100 stations in the US and Canada, and has also been sold all over the world. In 2005, Alice Cooper was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame.
A continuation of the songwriting approach adopted on The Eyes of Alice Cooper was again adopted by Cooper for his 24th studio album, Dirty Diamonds, released in 2005. Dirty Diamonds became Cooper's highest charting album since 1994's The Last Temptation. The Dirty Diamonds tour launched in America in August 2005 after several European concerts, including a performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on July 12. Cooper and his band, including Kiss drummer Eric Singer, were filmed for a DVD released as Alice Cooper: Live at Montreux 2005. One critic, in a review of the Montreux release, commented that Cooper was to be applauded for "still mining pretty much the same territory of teenage angst and rebellion" as he had done more than thirty years previously.
In December 2006 the original Alice Cooper band reunited to perform six classic Alice Cooper songs at Cooper's annual charity event in Phoenix, entitled "Christmas Pudding".
On July 1, 2007 Cooper performed a duet with Marilyn Manson at the B'Estival event in Bucharest, Romania. The performance represented a reconciliation between the two artists; Cooper had previously taken issue with Manson over his overtly anti-Christian onstage antics, which included tearing up Bibles, and he had sarcastically made reference to the originality of Manson's choosing a female name and dressing in women's clothing. Cooper and Manson have been the subject of an academic paper on the significance of adolescent antiheroes.
In January 2008 he was one of the guest singers on the new Avantasia album The Scarecrow, singing the 7th track, The Toy Master. In July 2008, after lengthy delays, Cooper released Along Came a Spider, his 25th studio album. It was Cooper's highest charting album since 1991's Hey Stoopid, reaching #53 in the US and #31 in the UK. The album, visiting similar territory explored in 1987's Raise Your Fist and Yell, deals with the nefarious antics of a deranged serial killer named "Spider" who is on a quest to use the limbs of his victims to create a human spider. The album generally received positive reviews from music critics, though Rolling Stone magazine opined that the music on the record sorely missed Bob Ezrin's production values. The resulting Theatre of Death tour of the album (during which Cooper is executed on four separate occasions) was described in a long November 2009 article about Cooper in The Times as "epic" and featuring "enough fake blood to remake Saving Private Ryan".
On March 29, 2010, Cooper revealed during his weekly radio show on Planet Rock that his next record is to be titled The Night Shift. Cooper stated he has 10 demos ready.
On May 26, 2010, Cooper made an appearance during the beginning of the season finale of the reality-show, American Idol, in which he sang "School's Out".
in 2010]] On June 15, 2010 to coincide with the release of the "Alice Cooper Track Pack" for Guitar Hero, a free download of the newly-recorded "Elected" was made available on Alice Cooper's official website. He scored alongside his daughter and band member Dick Wagner the score for the Indie horror flick Silas Gore.
On July 1, 2010 when talking about the newly retitled album, Welcome to My Nightmare II, Alice said in a Radio Metal interview: "We'll put some of the original people on it and add some new people, I'm very happy with working with Bob (Ezrin) again."
During a press conference in France, Cooper said about Welcome to My Nightmare II that "this album is more bloody and more accomplished than the first. It sounds like the early years." According to Gail Worley, Alice and Bob Ezrin have come up with 13 songs, including the ballads "I Am Made of You" and "Something to Remember Me By." In addition, Cooper cut three new songs with original band mates Dennis Dunaway (bass), Neal Smith (drums) and Michael Bruce (guitar).
On December 15 2010, it was announced Cooper and his former band would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cooper told Rolling Stone magazine that he was "elated" by the news and that the nomination had been made for the original band, as "We all did go to the same high school together, and we were all on the track team, and it was pretty cool that guys that knew each other before the band ended up going that far".
On "Wrecker in the Morning" Cooper said that Steve Hunter would fill in for Glen Buxton duing the Christmas Pudding show. No mention whether Hunter or Slash would fill in for the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame show. Alice did say that 'Slash is the Premier Guitarist for This Generation'[Joe] Satriani and [Steve] Vai would be the three -- comparable to [Jeff] Beck, [Eric] Clapton and [Jimmy] Page for their generation."
During an interview Cooper himself conducted with Ozzy Osbourne on his radio show, Nights with Alice Cooper in 2007, Cooper again affirmed his debt of gratitude to these bands, and to The Beatles in particular. During their discussion, Cooper and Osbourne bemoaned the often inferior quality of songwriting coming from contemporary rock artists. Cooper stated that in his opinion the cause of the problem was that certain modern bands "had forgotten to listen to The Beatles".
On the 25th Anniversary DVD of Cabaret, Liza Minnelli stated that her good friend, Alice Cooper, had told her that his whole career was based on the movie Cabaret.
Evidence of Cooper's eclectic tastes in both classic and contemporary rock music, from the 1960s to the present, can be seen in the track listings of his radio show; in addition, when he appeared on the BBC Radio 2 program Tracks of My Years in September 2007, he listed his favourite tracks of all time as being: "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966) by The Rolling Stones; "Turning Japanese" (1980) by The Vapors; "My Sharona" (1979) by The Knack; "Beds Are Burning" (1987) by Midnight Oil; "My Generation" (1965) by The Who; "Welcome To The Jungle" (1987) by Guns N' Roses; "Rebel Rebel" (1974) by David Bowie; "Over Under Sideways Down" (1966) by The Yardbirds; "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" (2003) by Jet; and "A Hard Day's Night" (1964) by The Beatles, and when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2010 he chose the songs "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" by The Yardbirds; "I Get Around" by The Beach Boys; "I'm a Boy" by The Who; Timer by Laura Nyro; "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson; "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction; "Work Song" by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and "Ballad of a Thin Man" by Bob Dylan.
Rob Zombie, former frontman of White Zombie, claims his first "metal moment" was seeing Alice Cooper on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert.
In a 1978 interview with Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan stated, "I think Alice Cooper is an overlooked songwriter".
In the foreword to Alice Cooper's CD retrospective box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper, John Lydon of The Sex Pistols pronounced Killer as the greatest rock album of all time, and in 2002 Lydon presented his own tribute program to Cooper on BBC radio.
The Flaming Lips are longtime Alice Cooper fans and used the bass line from "Levity Ball" (an early song from the 1969 release Pretties for You) for their song "The Ceiling Is Bending". They also covered "Sun Arise" for an Alice Cooper tribute album. (Cooper's version, which closes the album Love It To Death, was itself a cover of a Rolf Harris song.)
In 1999 Cleopatra Records released Humanary Stew: A Tribute to Alice Cooper featuring a number of contributions from rock and metal all-star collaborations, including Dave Mustaine, Roger Daltrey, Ronnie James Dio, Slash, Bruce Dickinson, and Steve Jones. The album was notable for the fact that it was possible to assemble a different supergroup for each cover version on the record, which gave an indication of the depth of esteem in which Cooper is held by other eminent musicians within the music industry.
A song by alternative rock group They Might Be Giants from their 1994 album John Henry entitled "Why Must I Be Sad?" mentions 13 Cooper songs, and has been described as being "from the perspective of a kid who hears all of his unspoken sadness given voice in the music of Alice Cooper; Alice says everything the kid has been wishing he could say about his alienated, frustrated, teenage world".
Such unlikely non-musician fans of Cooper included Groucho Marx and Mae West, who both reportedly saw the early shows as a form of vaudeville revue, and artist Salvador Dalí, who on attending a show in 1973 described it as being surreal, and made a hologram, First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper's Brain.
If it can be worked into the 2011 schedule, Alice Cooper will appear on Saturday Night live. No word on whether he will be involved in any of the skits or just perform as the musica guest, or if any of the origial band will be there with him.
Cooper, a huge fan of The Simpsons, was asked to contribute a storyline for the September 2004 edition of Bongo Comics's Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, a special Monsters of Rock issue that also included stories plotted by Gene Simmons, Rob Zombie and Pat Boone. Cooper's story featured Homer Simpson being a Jason Voorhees, Friday the 13th style killer and Alice and the citizens of Springfield are being stalked by Homer.
On June 20, 2005, ahead of his June–July 2005 tour, Cooper had a wide-ranging interview with interviewer of celebrities Andrew Denton for the Australian ABC Television's Enough Rope. Cooper discussed various issues during a revealing and frank talk, including the horrors of acute alcoholism and his subsequent cure, being a Christian, and his social and work relationship with his family. During the interview, Cooper remarked "I look at Mick Jagger and he's on an 18-month tour and he's six [sic] years older than me, so I figure, when he retires, I have six more years. I will not let him beat me when it comes to longevity."
In 1986, Megadeth was asked to open for Cooper for dates on his US tour. After noticing the hardcore drug and alcohol abuse 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 ever since; Mustaine in fact considers him his godfather. Since conquering his own addiction to alcohol in the mid 1980s, Cooper has continued to help and counsel other rock musicians battling addiction problems who turn to him for help. "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.
The actual ownership of the Alice Cooper name is often cited by intellectual property lawyers and law professors as an example of the value of a single copyright or trademark. Since "Alice Cooper" was originally the name of the band, and not the lead singer (e.g. Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, etc.), and it 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. Although the exact amount is not known, insiders agree that it is large enough for the other band members to live comfortably.
When asked by the British Sunday Times newspaper in 2001 how a shock-rocker could be a Christian, Cooper responded "Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's real rebellion!"
Throughout his career, Cooper's philosophy regarding politics is that politics should not be mixed with rock music. He has consistently kept his political views to himself, and in 2010 said "I am extremely non-political. I go out of my way to be non-political. I'm probably the biggest moderate you know. When John Lennon and Harry Nilsson used to argue politics, I was sitting right in the middle of them, and I was the guy who was going 'I don't care.' When my parents would start talking politics, I would go in my room and put on The Rolling Stones or The Who on as long as I could to avoid politics. And I still feel that way". the incident also drew attention from The Washington Post Cooper's outburst caused a certain amount of controversy, and led to Cooper releasing an official statement that clarifies and reiterated that the treason concerned was not against the state but against the ethos of rock itself.
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