Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American shock rock singer, songwriter, and musician whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, boa constrictors, and baby dolls, he is considered by fans and peers alike to be “The Godfather of Shock Rock”; Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, and garage rock to pioneer a grandly theatrical and macabre brand of rock designed to shock.
Alice Cooper is known for his social and witty persona offstage; The Rolling Stone Album Guide has called him the world’s most “beloved heavy metal entertainer”. He is credited with helping to shape the sound and look of heavy metal, and has been described as the artist 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 golfing celebrity, a restaurateur and, since 2004, a popular radio DJ with his classic rock show Nights with Alice Cooper.
In 2011, the original Alice Cooper band was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.