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Happy birthday Alice!!!!!

Happy Birthday Mr. Cooper.

EXCLUSIVE: Alice Cooper Offers Words of Wisdom for Lindsay Lohan

By Hollie McKay

Published March 03, 2011

Legendary rocker Alice Cooper suffered some serious substance abuse issues in his time , but after thirty years of sobriety the singer has some words of wisdom for celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, who just can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

“It was fun in the 60’s and 70’s but those days are gone, if you are living in this day and age there are way too many things to stop your career and not enough things to keep it going," he said.

"In this business there is two or things you have to do. You have to be totally professional, always be there half an hour early not half an hour late. Be ready to work and do what you are supposed to do,” Cooper told FOX411’s Pop Tarts, after announcing the nominees for the third annual Revolver Golden Gods Awards presented by Epiphone®, which will take place Wednesday, April 20, at Club Nokia in Downtown Los Angeles.

“If you’re doing a movie, know your lines, if you’re doing an album then don’t show up and not know what you’re doing because that’s the stereotypical thing people think rock stars are…it’s not really true. We get in the studio and know exactly what we’re doing.”

And even when he was in the depths of self-destruction, Cooper said it never impacted his work ethic.

“It was just something that was built into us, if you wanted to stick around you really had to be professional. Our band really believed in that. We were over-rehearsed, we never dared come in late,” he said. “What that says to me is that my time is more important that yours, and that is insulting. You don’t need enemies in this business, you need friends.”

Nonetheless, it wasn’t until his health started drastically declining that he decided to change his bad behaviors once and for all.

“I had to quit drinking thirty years ago because I was getting up in the morning and throwing up blood and that is probably not a good thing. I think that might have been a sign to quit drinking, and what it really did was put thirty more years on my life. I never smoked cigarettes,” Cooper continued. “I’ve been married 35 years with the greatest wife in the world, and all those things really contribute to (staying clean) and I have never lost my love for the big power chords.”

And who knows, maybe Lindsay Lohan or even Charlie Sheen would benefit from taking up golf – after all, it has worked wonders for the 63-year-old.

“I play for fun even though I’ve won a lot of tournaments and I play pretty good, but it is only because I play a lot – six days a week. It took the addiction of drinking six days a week, now I play golf six days a week but at least I am going to live to talk about it,” he said. “If I was drinking six days a week like I used to, I wouldn’t be here.”

But sobriety aside, Cooper is concerned that the true heart of rock/heavy metal is being skewered in today’s society, and hopes the Revolver Awards (which is dedicated to honoring the best of the best in this genre) will help keep rock alive and well.

“I get a little angry when I watch television and they call hip hop and modern music rock n’ roll, it is not rock n’ roll. It is good and I can sit there and watch it, but rock n’ roll is ‘Guns n’ Roses’ and ‘Aerosmith,’ guys with guitars on stage rockin’. I get a little put off when I see digestible music thrown in the same thing as rock n' roll, we used to be the outcasts and now we’re kind of mainstream and I don’t know if I like that,” he explained.

“And there is a lot of safety on the radio, everything is so PC. Everything has to be totally politically correct, but I tell people I’m politically incoherent. Honestly, rock n’ roll has to have some danger to it and if it is going to get played they make sure it is in this little box and it is just okay… everything is so censored.”

And speaking of Aerosmith and keeping real rock in the spotlight, Cooper hopes his music cohort Steven Tyler’s presence as a judge on the current season of “American Idol” will also help bring back true rock n’ roll.

“Steven Tyler is perfect for the show because he is very quick, very funny, I know a lot of people really revolted against him going on there and said ‘come on, you’re a rock n’ roll guy’ but we needed a rock n’ roll guy on ‘American Idol.’ Maybe now we’ll see some real rock players,” Cooper added.

“The only thing I had against that kind of show was because it always produced the same cookie-cutter kind of guy. What would happen if a Bob Dylan showed up? He would never get past the first round because they’d go ‘we want you to do this Barry Manilow song’ and he’d go ‘no.’ How is that promoting any kind of creativity? We need a hard rock ‘American Idol’ show where you’ve got to get on and write your own songs. That would make

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/03/03/exclusive-alice-cooper-offers-words-wisdom-lindsay-lohan/#ixzz1Fei73ysz
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Alice practices what he preaches about showing up on time.

If you have a ticket to a Cooper show that is scheduled for 8:00 PM, don't show up at 8:05 expecting not to miss anything.

Happy birthday, Alice! LOVE your radio show.... ;D Rock on, forevah, brotha! 8-)

Pretty shitty the way he has dumped his current band (except Damon) to reform the original group. It wasn't that he has done it, but the way it was done. History repeats itself. No More Mr. Nice Guy indeed.

Jumping Jack wrote on Mar 5^th, 2011 at 4:22am:

So this isn't a temporary thing? The original band is going on tour?

His radio show is fantastic. i love it. He's one person i kick myself for not seeing live. He's been here a lot in recent years (primarily for the golf courses) and if he comes again, i'll go see him.

Alice Cooper to Perform with Original Band at Rock Hall Induction
in

* News Item

Alice Cooper [the group]—along with a few others—snagged the honor of being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They plan to play at the induction ceremony with the band’s original line-up March 14 at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith will join Cooper to fill out the lineup. Glen Buxton won’t be able to make the performance for obvious reasons. “I don’t think Alice would wear a tux unless it was a mirrored one,” Cooper told Rolling Stone. "And we’re trying to figure out, if we do ‘Schools Out’ do we send balloons full of confetti into the audience? I think so. I doubt if there’ll be a snake there though.

So could this mean a full-fledged, original lineup tour? “I think it is [possible],” Cooper continued. “We have kind of been looking for an excuse to do that anyway. Why not do 4 or 5 major cities, Detroit especially since that’s where we broke out of. Los Angeles, New York, London, Toronto. Those were like the five cities where we got our biggest push. We might do that in the spring.”

Fuse will tape the live broadcast on March 14 and air the induction ceremony on March 20.

by Beca Grimm
http://www.alicecooper.com/latest/news-item/alice-cooper-perform-original-band-rock-hall-induction

Edith Grove wrote on Mar 5^th, 2011 at 5:55am:

Jumping Jack wrote on Mar 5^th, 2011 at 4:22am:

So this isn't a temporary thing? The original band is going on tour?

Sorry Jumpin Jack I don't agree with you, the original band were Alice cooper, they wrote all those great songs up to '74, his current band is just a back up band, who play the parts Neil Smith, Mike Bruce & Dennis Dunaway wrote, all those great guitar parts, drum solos & great Bass lines were the original band, for fans of the original group this is a dream come true.

Rumor has Hunter taking Buxton's place at the HOF ceremony with the original members.

Rumor has Keri Keli and DeGrasso fired (not asked back) to make room for Smith and Bruce on tour in 2011. Dumping Garric for Dunaway is unknown at this time for the 2011 tour.

The Gibson Interview: Alice Cooper’s Michael Bruce
Russell Hall | 03.08.2011

In an era in which few things shock any more, it’s hard to imagine that, in the early ‘70s, parents were up in arms over the shock-rock theatrics of the original Alice Cooper band. Today, as evidenced by their forthcoming Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, the group is recognized more for their classic songs than for their cartoon-gore stage shows. From 1971 to 1975, the Alice Cooper band lineup of Cooper, Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway, Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce delivered a stream of time-capsule worthy hits, including “School’s Out,” “Be My Lover,” “I’m Eighteen,” “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Elected.” Bruce, who wrote or co-wrote each and every one of those riff-rock classics, recently spoke with us about the Rock Hall induction, his love of SGs, and the much-talked-about reunion of the surviving members of the original band.

How did you first learn about the Rock Hall nomination?

That was an amazing week. I had gotten a call a couple of weeks earlier from [producer] Bob Ezrin, asking if I wanted to record one of my songs for the Welcome to My Nightmare sequel, which is scheduled to come out this Halloween. Neal and Dennis had each already contributed a song. I said, “Yeah, that would be great!” It was the 25th anniversary of our working with Bob. I spent a week in the studio, recording those three songs. A few days later, Neal called and said he had talked to [Cooper’s manager] Shep Gordon, and that we had been nominated for induction. It was amazing, after all this time. Alice’s late assistant, Brian Nelson, always said that when Iggy Pop got in, we wouldn’t be far behind. Sure enough, that’s how it happened.

Alice has always maintained the band broke up because he wanted to keep the theatrics, and the rest of you didn’t. But the Battle Axe album, which you and Neal and Dennis made afterwards, was pretty theatrical.

I suppose Alice had to say something, and that explanation was as good as any. We had been together for a long time, working together and even living together. We needed a break. Also, Glen started having some personal problems that really affected the band. I think Glen sort of lost his love of what we were doing. The music wasn’t sustaining him like it was us, and he went off on a wrong track. Alice, I think, didn’t want to continue with a new guitar player, which would have changed the chemistry of the group. It really took the wind out of my sails when Alice told us he didn’t want to work with us any longer, but looking back at it now, I don’t think we could have gone on. There needed to be some time for growth, and that was difficult to do, as a band.

Glen was lead guitarist and you were rhythm guitarist, but obviously there was a lot of overlap in those roles. How did you view your role in the group?

We had a different drummer back when we were called the The Spiders, a guy named John Speer. He was really good, sort of like Dino Danelli, from the Rascals. But he also had a bad temper, which made working with him very hard. When Neal came into the band, he was more about cymbals and tom-toms, as opposed to bass drum and snare. He was like a “lead” drummer. And then Dennis was all over the place, on bass, so he treated the bass like a lead instrument as well. And of course Glen played lead guitar. My job, therefore, was to hold down the rhythm, to create something everyone could play along to. I was the guy who held down the fort.

Both you and Glen played SGs. What made the SG so right for you?

My fingers aren’t very long, and other guitars just didn’t feel right. I play really hard, and press down hard on the frets. It’s not exactly the feathery touch that someone like, say, Eric Clapton has. The SG allows me to play that way. I remember my first SG, which had a single-coil black pickup. Later, I got an SG Special, with two humbuckers, and put my original single-coil pickups in that guitar. That gave it a really nice fat sound. Glen and I liked to do these long, droning things, and the SGs were perfect for that. The SG was precisely the right guitar for me.

The songs you wrote for the band were very riff-oriented and very melodic. That obviously carried over into your style of playing.

That’s true, but I also love playing something like “Muscle of Love,” which is very physical, and very in-your-face. Those riffs – “Be My Lover,” “I’m Eighteen,” “Under My Wheels,” “Elected” -- usually came from just sitting around and tinkering on the guitar. “Halo of Flies,” from Killer, was comprised of parts left over from other songs. I used to play those parts, in order, as a warm-up exercise, and we took them and created a song from them. I know my limitations. I’m not a great soloist. I can write simple leads, here and there, but I really like to go for interesting chord structures.

Are the songs you’re writing today in that same vein, stylistically?

It’s probably broadened, just a bit. It’s funny. The song of mine Alice picked for the new album was, of course, one of the darker ones. I was working on an album I’m hoping to put out called The Dark Side of Love. All the songs are about love but not the “so happy together” side of that. It’s more reality-based and more about the fact that relationships aren’t always a stroll in the park. I had this song called “Hell Hole #9” and that’s the one Alice chose for the Nightmare sequel. It’s been re-titled “When Hell Comes Home.”

Do you know which songs the band will play at the Rock Hall induction ceremony?

I believe we’re going to do “I’m Eighteen,” “Under My Wheels” and “School’s Out.”

Is there a chance you, Neal, Dennis and Alice might tour together and do some more recording?

Nothing’s certain yet, but I’ve been told that the last week in April we may do three shows at the Roxy, in Los Angeles. Places like Chicago, Detroit, New York and Toronto have been mentioned as well. The idea is that we will play smaller venues since it’s been so long since we’ve done this. It will be close-up and personal. Even though we went our separate ways, it’s great that Alice has always kept the original concept alive. And now, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honor has sort of re-energized the original idea of who we were and created a perfect time to bring the band back together. I don’t know if we’ll go into the studio or how long it will last, but at least we’re going to do some shows together. I never thought that would happen after all this time. It’s really great.

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/michael-bruce-0308-2011/

New Tour And Band Line Up 07 Mar 2011
For Alice Cooper's "No More Mr Nice Guy" summer tour, May-August 2011, Alice has announced a revamped band line-up. The tour will kick off in North America May 12-21, then go to South America May 25-June 3, and England & Europe June 7-July 16, before returning to North America again for the month of August.

Alice is bringing back to his stage show guitarist Steve Hunter, who famously toured and recorded with him for several years. Additionally, Tommy Henriksen will be replacing Keri Kelli on guitar, and Damon Johnson will be continuing with the band, making for a three guitar attack.

Glen Sobel will be joining the band on drums, replacing Jimmy DeGrasso, while bassist Chuck Garric will continue to anchor the rhythm section.

Said Alice, "Steve's always been one of my favorite guitarists since the first time I ever heard him play, and I've been working with Tommy a lot on the new album. Oh, and yes, a new snake might make the band lineup...you never know. We will miss Jimmy and Keri, but I know we will be sharing a stage again in the future."

Rock Hall finally inducts Alice Cooper, a real Mr. Nice Guy
By Brian Mansfield, Special for USA TODAYUpdated 12h 33m ago |
22 | 3Share

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction airs March 20 on Fuse (9 p.m. ET/PT).

By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY

Alice Cooper tried not to let a little thing like being overlooked for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame get to him.

After all, he had built his reputation with horror-show stage antics and dead-end-kid anthems like School's Outand No More Mr. Nice Guy. He had fashioned a persona of a pop-culture Professor Moriarty, a psychotic Captain Hook for rock 'n' roll's Peter Pan syndrome.

PHOTOS: Welcome to Alice Cooper's playful nightmare
And who's going to grant a villain entrance into the hall of heroes?

"We were Susan Lucci for quite a long time — or Pete Rose, whichever way you look at it," says Cooper, 63, sitting on a black couch in the studio where he's working on Welcome 2 My Nightmare, a sequel to his platinum-selling 1975 album Welcome to My Nightmare.

On Monday, Cooper (aka Vincent Furnier) and the original members of the band Alice Cooper — rhythm guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith and late lead guitarist Glen Buxton — will finally be inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Darlene Love and Tom Waits.

It took only 16 years — to even get on the ballot.

Alice Cooper was first eligible in 1994, 25 years after debut album Pretties for You. Despite nine gold and platinum albums and 11 top-40 hits, Cooper and the band didn't make the ballot until last year, at which point voters promptly picked them.

Cooper's producer, Bob Ezrin, believes the induction could signal the start of a revival for rock's master of the macabre.

"Alice is one of the rock artists from that time who has not had his second golden era yet," says Ezrin, who initially worked with Cooper on 1971's Love It to Death, the band's breakthrough album. Forty years later, Cooper and Ezrin have reunited to create the sequel Welcome 2 My Nightmare.

The concept, Cooper says, is simply: "If Alice had a nightmare in 1975, what would his nightmare be in 2011?"

Beyond the tour
Cooper comes into Ezrin's studio clad entirely in black — his hair, long-sleeved shirt, jeans, boots — with a sword pendant dangling from his neck. He and Ezrin are putting the finishing touches on the ambitious concept album, scheduled for release in the fall.

Cooper's time in Nashville (he lives in Phoenix) brings lots of visitors to the studio, from his former guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, who both now live in the town, to former Senate majority leader Bill Frist. After hours, Cooper becomes something of a regular presence at nearby restaurants and a local movie theater.

"I go to see everything," he says. "I don't care how bad it is."

The new album won't just play off the 1975 Nightmare, though haunting motifs from the original occasionally can be heard worming their way into the new one. It actually pulls together threads from various stages of Cooper's career.

Portions of the album reunite the surviving Alice Cooper members. Others were recorded with members of Cooper's touring band, as well as Hunter and Wagner.

The album features newer friends, as well. Cooper and Ezrin wrote songs with Buckcherry guitarist Keith Nelson. Guests making cameos range from Rob Zombie and former Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 to Vince Gill.

"Vince Gill shreds," says Cooper, who attended a Nashville Predators hockey game a few weeks ago and wound up singing School's Out and Chuck Berry's Nadine with Gill and the team's house band between periods. "My guitarists are going to hear it and go, 'Holy crap.' "

Ezrin hints at ambitions for Welcome 2 My Nightmare beyond the album and a subsequent tour. "We're thinking not just the big tour. This has the possibility of being almost like a musical."

Considering Cooper's history, that's not such a far-fetched idea. He has long approached his tours as though they were musical-theater productions, each with its own unique score and book.

"We have 400 songs to go to," Cooper says. "If you did come to see an Alice Cooper show, if you were really watching, it actually did make sense from beginning to end. This little psychodrama had sense to it. But it was still never giving up The Yardbirds, never giving up The Who, never giving up that energy. We were first and foremost a hard-rock band. With this as the icing on the cake."

Riding the riff
The original pairing of Cooper and Ezrin ended up launching both careers.

Ezrin, a native of Canada with an early background in classical and folk music, brought a much-needed sense of structure to five guys from Phoenix whose music blended the influences of British Invasion rock, Broadway musicals like West Side Storyand spy and crime-show themes.

"We didn't know anything about recording, we didn't know anything about songwriting," Cooper says. "We knew that we wrote great parts, but we didn't know how to arrange."

Ezrin helped transform Alice Cooper into one of the '70s' great riff-based rock bands. "The melody of the riff had to be memorable," he says. "It had to be something people could sing."

Those early Alice Cooper records are more complex than they initially appear, with counter-melodies under Cooper's vocals, and secondary melodies that usually come in the form of guitar solos. "Underneath it was a foundation of rhythm that never changed," Ezrin says.

A long time coming
As a result, Love It to Death sold 1 million copies and got Alice Cooper on the radio with I'm Eighteen. Ezrin produced the band's biggest albums —Killer, School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies, Muscle of Love — and Cooper's early solo work, like Welcome to My Nightmare and Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. He went on to produce key albums for Kiss (Destroyer), Lou Reed (Berlin) and Pink Floyd (The Wall).

"Alice Cooper was the first thing that got me excited about music," says Zombie, who'll induct the band into the hall. "He invented everything that is now a staple in rock music. People you wouldn't even think of owe him. People thought it was so neat when Michael Jackson used Vincent Price on Thriller. But it was even cooler when Alice Cooper did it nine years before" on Nightmare.

Some of the acts that Cooper influenced preceded him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"OK, David Bowie is in in 1996," Cooper says. "Alice was before David Bowie and influenced David Bowie. Well, I never begrudged him that. I went, 'Great, David Bowie belongs in there.' Elton John? 'Wait a minute, Elton John got all his theatrics from watching Alice at the Hollywood Bowl.' "

Eventually, Cooper decided that he got more attention for not getting into the Hall of Fame. "I went, 'That's kind of cool. Every year, it's this new outrage.' I was sitting there, going, 'Calm down. Don't worry. Our time will come.' "

But as five years passed without even getting nominated, then 10, then 15, "it got harder every year for me to keep calming people down."

Of course, the very notion of Cooper — whose concerts have featured multiple hangings, decapitations, mutilated mannequins and other mock atrocities — wanting to calm anybody down might seem surprising. In its early years, Alice Cooper thrived on controversy and outrage.

"We realized that the more out-there, the more lunatic fringe we were, the more the parents hated, the more the kids liked us," Cooper says.

As years passed, the Alice persona became less of a threat and more of a burlesque. With the band's induction into the Rock Hall, the perception changes once more, recognizing the impact his music and his showmanship has had on acts ranging from Kiss to Lady Gaga.

Cooper has also changed the way he sees himself. For years, he says, "there was a gray area where I didn't really know where I started and Alice ended." That area was blurred by alcohol, what Cooper describes as one drink that lasted 18 years.

In the mid-'80s, "when I got sober, I finally realized that I like to go to the movies, I like to go play golf, I like to go shopping," Cooper says. "I want a wife (he'll celebrate his 35th anniversary with wife Sheryl on March 20) and kids (they have three) and a family, my spiritual life, my Christian life. This Alice character didn't want any part of my life.

"I separated the two, and I found that Alice became more defined as Alice, and I had my own life."

Lovable character
Now, where Alice is the villainous maniac who owns the stage, Cooper is outgoing and accessible, a four-handicap golfer and a substitute teacher for a regular Wednesday morning Bible study.

"He's always the first to speak and the first to reach out — he's that kind of friendly," says Christian singer Amy Grant, who met Cooper through a VH1 celebrity golf tournament in the mid-1990s (where they were put together as part of a "Heaven & Hell" foursome). "That's really disarming in somebody that's had such a monstrous career."

When approached in public, Cooper happily poses for pictures and signs autographs. And he says most fans have learned not to expect Alice when they run into Cooper at the mall.

"I think, by now, they get it," Cooper says. "I've become incredibly lovable. The character has become Vincent Price. Which is OK, because when Vincent Price wanted to be scary, he could still be scary.

"The Alice villain is still in me. If I really want to slit somebody's throat onstage, I will. And I'll say, 'Let's be sure it squirts into the audience.' "

27-second clip of rehearsals with the Alice Cooper Band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVtT0VLGhUE&feature=player_embedded

Thanks EG for that clip, they sound great! too bad it wasn't longer, is that Steve Hunter on guitar?

Heart Of Stone wrote on Mar 11^th, 2011 at 11:15am:

Thanks EG for that clip, they sound great! too bad it wasn't longer, is that Steve Hunter on guitar?

I'm pretty sure that's Hunter wearing the hat. I had to check his website to make sure what he looks like now.

Rock lifestyle caught up with Cooper guitarist Glen Buxton
Mar. 8, 2011 01:35 PM
The Arizona Republic

Editor's note: This article originally ran in the Arizona Republic in October 1999, when a Valley tribute to Glen Buxton, a late member of Alice Cooper's original band, was staged. Cooper and that band will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, March 14.

Paul Brenton

Glen Buxton's tombstone in Clarion, Iowa.

Glen Buxton never really had a chance.

Once the wisecracking loner from Phoenix's Cortez High School was thrust into the no-holds-barred world of rock-and-roll stardom, his fate was sealed.

A founding member of the Alice Cooper group, Buxton was cursed with a double whammy: a penchant for alcohol, cigarettes and switchblades as well as a disdain for authority figures - including the doctors who struggled to keep him alive.

But he was blessed with a magnetic personality and musical talent that helped produce rock classics such as "I'm Eighteen," "Under My Wheels," "No More Mister Nice Guy" and "Billion Dollar Babies."

Half a lifetime after he fired off some of rock's most memorable guitar riffs - including the opening to "School's Out," which now graces his tombstone - Buxton's battered body wore out.

Pneumonia was the official cause of death, but those close to Buxton agree that the satin-clad guitar hero who once played to stadiums of 60,000 fans had been felled by the demons of drink and drugs, along with a stubborn streak that made him ignore his doctors' warnings.

"There would be no Alice Cooper without Glen," says Paradise Valley resident Cooper, who found early success with Buxton and Michael Bruce (guitar), Dennis Dunaway (bass) and Neal Smith (drums).

"When it came to the music, we'd look at Glen and say, 'Glen, what do we do here?' . . . I think that people didn't realize that about him - he was our main musical force in the beginning."

The beginning was at Cortez High in northwest Phoenix in the mid-1960s. Buxton, Dunaway and Cooper, then known as Vincent Furnier, met through the school newspaper.
"Glen was in photography class and I was in the journalism class," recalls Dunaway, who now lives in Connecticut. "As the sports editor . . . when I'd do a story, I'd call on Glen to go take the picture for the paper."

When the future Alice and Dunaway decided to do a Beatles spoof for a talent show, they turned to Buxton.

"Glen was the only person we knew who played guitar," Dunaway recalls. "Since none of us played any instruments, we asked him if he would play guitar while we mimed and pretended.

"Everybody in the audience thought it was a joke - ha ha - but we were thinking, 'Wow, this is great. Let's do it some more.' "
And did those guys ever do it some more - and more and more.

With Buxton helping Dunaway and later addition Bruce with their musical chops - first as the Earwigs, then the Spiders and the Nazz - the group honed its cutting-edge act at clubs such as the V.I.P., the Dunes and the Beau Brummell.

Some of those bars were a bit on the rough side, recalls Smith, a Camelback High graduate who joined up in 1967.

"Glen and I used to get in fights in Arizona all the time," he says. "They just thought we were two long-haired hippies. But they didn't realize we were two punks from Akron."

A young rebel

Buxton was born in Ohio but spent his teenage years in Arizona.

His sister, Janice Davison, recalls her brother as a "normal rebellious teenage kid - he didn't want to mow the lawn and do the chores."

"He wasn't that interested in school. He didn't like to study, didn't like the authority. . . .

"He got glasses freshman year and just hated them. After the band started playing, he would never wear them."

Although his mother nagged him to attend Glendale Community College, Buxton's parents were supportive of his musical career.

"We had a close family," says Davison, adding that she and her parents saw Alice Cooper perform several times.

Asked how her family reacted to the staged hangings and beheadings of Cooper, the hatchet attacks on dolls and other shock-rock mayhem that brought the band notoriety, Davison replies, "We all just laughed."

However, life was hardly a laugh for Buxton after the Alice Cooper group gained national popularity in the early '70s, with the albums "Love It to Death," "Killer" and the monster hit "School's Out."

The success brought money and adoring females, but it also brought pressure to continue recording and performing to fuel a machine that included a private jet, an expensive stage set and a growing entourage.

"We were either touring or recording or writing all the time, every single day from 1967, when I joined the band, till when the band stopped playing in '74 and '75," drummer Smith recalls.

The constant travel and pursuit by rabid fans was a thrill initially but a burden later.

"It's an assault on your ability to keep your wits about you," bassist Dunaway says.

With that kind of pressure, the band members turned to alcohol and drugs in varying degrees to relax.

"It was the party that never ended," Smith says. "We weren't really sleeping as much as passing out and getting up and doing it all over again."

Buxton, who had developed a fondness for alcohol in high school, carried the partying to extremes as the group stormed through tours such as "Billion Dollar Babies" ("Seventy cities in ninety days,"guitarist Bruce sighs).

"I always said Glen made (Rolling Stone) Keith Richards look like a Boy Scout," Smith says. "Glen just partied hard all the time . . . and I guess he became more of a rock and roll casualty than anybody else in the group."

Asked to explain why Buxton pushed himself to the point of abuse, Cooper - who quit drinking in 1983 - replies, "Glen and I were drinking buddies. I spent more time drinking than anything else.

"I don't know why I became an alcoholic, let alone I couldn't tell you why Glen drank so much. . . . It was just something that happened when you spent that much time on the road.

"I don't think it was a personality flaw or anything, because Glen never missed a show. . . . And none of us - we never missed a show because of abuse."

Eerie guitar work

In the relative sanity of the recording studio, Buxton's eclectic guitar work was a key ingredient of the Cooper band's sound - an eerie mix of hard rock, twisted ballads and larger productions such as "Elected," "Gutter Cats vs. The Jets" and "Muscle of Love."

"'Glen was not a songwriter," Cooper says. "He would write riffs, though. . . . They would show up on the album and even great guitar players would say, 'What is that line? It's so weird, but it's catchy.'

"Mike (Bruce) was much more into chord structure. So, Glen was always sort of our icing on the cake. . . . When everything was done, we'd bring Glen in to put on the little details and oddities."

In Smith's view, "School's Out" "was Glen's album - he played all the lead guitar."

But as Cooper and the others sought a broader sound in the next two discs, Buxton seemed to resist.

"Because of the problems that Glen was having with the demons of rock and roll at that particular time - really, "Billion Dollar Babies" and "Muscle of Love," Glen didn't really play on the (latter) album - by hook or by crook, the albums had to be put out," Smith says.

At that point, the band brought in other guitarists to fill the gaps and augment its sound, including Camelback High School alumnus Mick Mashbir, who also toured with the group in its later days.

To complicate matters at this point, Buxton was hospitalized for two weeks with pancreatitis and was told to clean up his act.

"The doctor told him, 'I opened up your stomach and I was thoroughly disgusted!' " Davison recalls with a chuckle.

"He was in the hospital, and we sent tapes out to him so we could learn the ('Billion Dollar Babies') material," Bruce says. "When he came back, he hadn't spent any time learning the material. At that point, we brought in Mick Mashbir and (keyboardist) Bob Dolin.

"After that, Glen never seemed to catch up - a day late and a dollar short, sort of."

Talk with the former members of this close-knit band (band members lived under the same roof in locales from California to Detroit to Connecticut throughout their run at the top of the charts) and you'll hear differing versions of their breakup.

Cooper says there was disagreement over how much money to sink back into the stage show. Smith says the members simply took a year off for solo projects and never reunited.

However, Bruce says a confrontation with Buxton over his substance abuse - which included one incident in which Buxton pulled his ever-present switchblade on the group's tour manager, according to Bruce - may have sown the seeds of the breakup.

"Neal and Alice and I went over to Glen's house and said, 'Listen, you need to get help . . . we're gonna put you on a temporary leave without pay,' " Bruce recalls. "He (Buxton) goes, 'No, I'm not gonna do it.'

"Then we said, 'OK, we're doing solo projects.' . . . When it came time to get back together, Alice didn't want to because of the situation with Glen."

When the band's end officially came, in 1975, Buxton was living in Greenwich, Conn.

He chose not to record a solo project, instead spending his time buying antiques and going to yard sales, his sister says.

Left on his own to handle his finances, Buxton got into money trouble. When he failed to pay taxes on proceeds from a mutual fund set up and later sold by the band, the IRS came calling. By 1979, "he had lost his house," Davison says. "Then he went to an apartment in New York City."

He played in a band called Shrapnel and frequented punk hot spot CBGB's. Later, Davison says, "he lived with friends (in New York). The money was going."

His parents talked Buxton into moving back to the Valley, and he lived at their house in the early '80s.

At that point, according to Davison, Buxton had "a guitar - that's about it."

Moving full circle

Davison hooked her brother up with an old high-school pal and they formed Virgin, which took Buxton full circle - back to playing radio hits, as well as some of his songs, in local bars such as the Mason Jar.

He also had his first day job in years, soldering transistors for Goodyear Aerospace for five or six years.

To his good fortune, a rock memorabilia dealer found him with the help of Bruce, who remains a working musician. The dealer, John Stevenson, saw the tough time Buxton was having and invited him to move to an Iowa farm.

Buxton worked in a factory near Clarion, but more important, he met a woman, Laurie Miller, who "was great," Davison says.

"I though she was perfect - a geriatric nurse who could take care of Glen!" Davison chuckles.

By this time, Buxton also was suffering from a bleeding ulcer and liver problems.

"He wouldn't go to the doctor when he should," Davison recalls. "He hated doctors."

Buxton enjoyed a taste of his glory days when he reunited with Smith and Dunaway for some Houston appearances in the fall of 1997.

After he returned from Houston, Buxton, 49, remarked to his sister that he had a pain in his side, possibly from lifting luggage.
"I'm gonna have to go to the bone crusher," he told her.

Later that night, trouble arose.

"He felt clammy, his pulse was . . . not steady," Davison says. "She (Miller) called the ambulance and they went to the closest hospital. He perked up and was joking with the nurses, being Glen, being funny.

"He said, 'Well, I'm kind of tired. I think I'll rest for a minute.' He looked at her, said, 'I love you,' and that was it."

Buxton never woke from his slumber. An autopsy found viral pneumonia as the cause of his death on Oct. 19, 1997.

But those close to him agree that life in rock and roll's fast lane, mixed with a stubborn streak, sped his demise.

"There was never a way of me saying, 'Glen, you gotta slow down,' because that was like me talking to the wall," Cooper says. "He would look at me and just laugh and say, 'Right.'

"That was him, and nobody could change him. He was Glen, and that's why we loved him."

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-8043.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/music/articles/2011/03/08/20110308alice-cooper-glen-buxton.html#ixzz1GLdVLkjQ

Glen Buxton has got one of the most impressive headstones, on it is the riff he came up with for School's Out in musical notes, his former mates in the band certainly kept his memory going, there's been several memorial week-end get together's, thanks for the article EG, I read the book Billion Dollar babies by Bob Greene when it came out in '74, the only person in the band who was positive in nature was Dennis Dunaway, the rest of the band was saying all these negative things about each other, how they hated Alice's success & they were not getting noticed, that if anything, was what broke the band up, after reading about each other in that book, no wonder.

Heart Of Stone wrote on Mar 15^th, 2011 at 10:39am:

I bet this will never happen to Alice.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/snakes_dies_of_silicone_poisoning_BW3UBtoDvsmZj6Be7n2r4O

That's funny,I just heard about this on a local radio show this morning. RIP snake...Hell,she could of killed an elephant with all that silicone. :thatwassmart

For fans of The Early Alice Cooper, "Levity Ball" from the first album.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhnbi3_alice-cooper-levity-ball_music

Heart Of Stone wrote on Mar 17^th, 2011 at 7:39am:

For fans of The Early Alice Cooper, "Levity Ball" from the first album.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhnbi3_alice-cooper-levity-ball_music

Never seen that before. Thanks ! :wow

Alice Cooper (including original members) induction & speech into Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmNHTsMcg20

ROCKS OFF - The Rolling Stones Message Board
http://rocksoff.org/cgi-bin/messageboard/YaBB.pl GENERAL >> MAIN BOARD >> Happy 63rd Birthday, Alice Cooper !! http://rocksoff.org/cgi-bin/messageboard/YaBB.pl?num=1296817950 Message started by Edith Grove on Feb 4^th, 2011 at 5:12am