In the smoky, cramped confines of a dimly lit Phoenix garage, the seeds of chaos were about to bloom. The year was 1968, and the world seemed to be spinning off its axis. Amid the revolutionary din of Vietnam protests and flower power, a gangly teenager named Vincent Damon Furnier stood in front of a microphone. His unruly mop of black hair hung over his eyes as he stared down at a notepad filled with lyrics scrawled in frenzied handwriting.
To his right, guitarist Glen Buxton fiddled with his battered six-string, tuning it with all the precision of a bomb technician. Dennis Dunaway, the bassist, had just slapped on his sunglasses, his head bobbing as he plucked out a sinister baseline. The drummer, Neal Smith, sat hunched over his kit, twirling his sticks with theatrical flair, while Michael Bruce strummed his guitar, half-lost in the melody.
They were a ragtag crew of misfits with one thing in common: a shared desire to shatter every musical convention in sight.
"Vinny, you got a name for this circus yet?" Glen quipped, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he strummed an off-key chord.
Vincent raised his head and smirked. "Alice Cooper," he said, deadpan.
The room erupted in laughter. "Alice Cooper? What is that? Your grandma's bridge partner?" Neal barked, nearly losing his grip on a drumstick.
But Vincent didn’t laugh. His grin widened into something darker, almost wicked. "No," he said, leaning into the mic. "It’s the ghost of a witch who haunts the stage. It’s a name they’ll never forget."
The laughter fizzled out.
"Alright, Alice," Michael said, shaking his head but clearly intrigued. "What’s this witch singing about?"
Vincent—Alice, now—held up the notepad, his eyes glinting. "Nightmares. Freak shows. All the stuff people pretend not to like but secretly love."
The band exchanged glances. Glen’s fingers found a haunting riff, something that crawled under the skin like a spider. Dennis matched it with a low, slithering bassline, and Neal hit the toms in a heartbeat rhythm that felt like a predator’s footsteps.
“Let’s make it loud enough to wake the dead,” Alice growled, the mic now a weapon in his hands.
By the time they finished their first song, sweat dripping from every pore, something had shifted in the room. The air crackled with electricity.
"This...this is insane," Dennis said, shaking his head, but he was grinning like a madman.
"No," Alice corrected. "This is theater. Rock and roll is a stage, and we’re going to turn it into a madhouse."
They practiced until their fingers were raw and their throats burned, piecing together a sound that was equal parts macabre and magnetic. By the time they took the stage at their first gig—an ill-lit club with a half-drunk crowd—they weren’t just a band anymore. They were a spectacle.
Alice stepped into the spotlight, his eyes lined in black, his face pale as death. When he screamed into the microphone, it wasn’t just a note; it was a war cry, daring the world to look away.
And the world didn’t.
Within months, they were gaining a cult following. By the time they landed in Detroit, where the underground rock scene embraced their brand of chaos, Alice Cooper wasn’t just a band. They were a movement, a bizarre mix of horror, satire, and rebellion.
It was the beginning of something larger than life, a nightmare nobody wanted to wake up from. And at the center of it all was Alice, smiling like the devil with a story to tell.
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