17 Things Only Alice Cooper Fans Will Understand

Your biggest fear has just come true - this maniac's in love with you.

Alice Cooper fans run the gamut between teenage goths in ripped fishnets and pension-age old rockers with slightly grown-out mullets and a little too much denim. After all, he€™s been making music for close to fifty years, and a star for most of that time. Never exactly a critical darling, his legions of rabid obsessives still comb old record shops for sixties bootlegs and cram arenas worldwide to hear the hits (and more; much, much more) delivered faultlessly just one more time. And yet, with all that, he still feels like ours: that's why we all call him 'Alice', like he's the guy we see in the pub every Friday night. He€™s the shock rock icon who€™s kept the tabloids in lurid copy for the last five decades: a sneering, androgynous serial killer on stage in the seventies, smeared with blood and eyeliner, belying his secret reputation as the nicest man in showbiz. He€™s Alice Cooper, and if you€™re an Alice Cooper fan, there are a few things you know and understand about the man and his music that few others will.

17. He's The Son Of A Preacherman

You'd think that a man christened Vincent Damon Furnier wouldn't need to take on a stage name to get across his diabolically sinister alter ego in front of an audience of umpteen millions. I mean, it already sounds like one of the names Anton LaVey crossed out in his school exercise book. However, the future Alice Cooper, scourge of the PTA, was born the son of a of a lay preacher in the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ - otherwise known as an offshoot of the Mormons. His father€™s father, Thurman Sylvester Furnier, was an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ - it€™s also known as the Bickertonite Church. They don€™t call themselves Mormons, but€ well, who are they kidding?
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Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.