If someone asked you, could you give them a clear definition of Shock Rock? You could definitely give them examples, but what would you put it in the dictionary as? If you said (or would say) something along the lines of hard rock music with a high level of theatrics at their live shows, you’d be correct. That’s the definition, almost word for word.

And almost no one personifies that as much as Alice Cooper does – or at least – as he did when he first started making music. While Alice has gotten a little (and we mean a little) less theatrical in the past years, they were one of the first artists to make shock rock popular. They inspired artists like Ozzy Ozbourne and Marilyn Manson, who both followed in his genre footsteps.

Alice Cooper, Who Is She?

Alice Cooper doesn’t exist. It’s a stage name for Vincent Furnier, the lead singer of the band. And while that stage name is both the lead singer’s chosen name and the name of the backup band, one couldn’t exist without the other. For example, how are you going to have flames go up on stage without some badass drums in the background to accompany them and heighten the shock factor even more?

Decades of Shock

Alice Cooper’s first record, titled Pretties for You, came out in 1969. They put out an album a year almost all the way between the ’70s and ’80s, with a range of different record companies. The band is famously hard to work with, as there are a lot of risks they take at their shows.

Risks or not, they’ve always been dedicated to putting out new music. The longest they have ever gone without making a new record is only about three years. Which means we should expect a new album around 2021/2022. But we’re not greedy – we’re happy to see them live, no matter what part of their song catalog they’re performing!