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...