Broken Base: Alice Cooper, the band, was always theatrical, but this style became more blatant musically than the previous straight hard rock with the School's Out album. It continued after Alice went solo.
The 1980-1983 "new wave" (and alcoholic) period and the 1986-1991 hair metal "comeback" period. The former was commercially unsuccessful with the exception of the "Clones" single, but fans of those albums feel they have some of the best songs he ever wrote. The latter group of albums, especially 1989's Trash, brought Alice back into the mainstream but are disliked in some circles for being very much products of their time and lacking the personality of his best albums, often considering The Last Temptation to be his true artistic comeback (possibly foreshadowed by "Wind-Up Toy").
Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton vs. Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter can get heated sometimes, although most fans recognize that they fit the different styles of music from the albums they played on.
Complete Monster: The Last Temptation: The mysterious Showman, who may or may not be a fallen angel or the Devil himself, is the master of the Theater of the Real who comes through town every five years. Seducing children with the threat of reality, the Showman bids them to sign away their future to him and join the circus, where they are twisted into monstrous shells of themselves to become "the thing that scares" forever. Upon the young Steven resisting him, the Showman reveals Steven's Love Interest Mercy was just his creation, and allows her to fade from existence, before vowing he will one day return and menace Steven again, as "the show never truly ends".
Crosses the Line Twice: The most deplorable bits in his show are usually the funniest as well. One longstanding concert skit is for Alice to beat up a young actress while singing a very tender ballad about domestic violence, then immediately follow it up by dancing with a life sized ragdoll and singing about necrophilia. Beating your wife to death is horrible, waltzing with her obviously phony corpse is hilarious.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith, the bassist and drummer in the original band, are very respected by the unfortunately all-to-small group of people who focus on the group's actual music.
Da Da is a critical favorite despite the fact that none of its songs have ever been played live and that Alice doesn't even remember recording it.
Even fans who loathe the hair metal period tend to like "Wind-Up Toy" and "Poison".
I Am Not Shazam: Subverted. Until 1975, "Alice Cooper" referred to the band, and also to Vincent Furnier. All Alice Cooper albums credit vocals to Alice Cooper, and not Vincent Furnier. Same thing for songwriting: Alice Cooper was both the band & the singer, until he decided this was actually a good idea and kept the name for himself.
He changed his name to Alice Cooper because it was the best way to retain legal rights to its usage. Thus, the music company that the band worked for wouldn't be able to hold on to the rights. For contrast, see "the artist formerly known as Prince", who stopped using his original stage name (which was also his own legal name) as a means to keep releasing music without Warner doing a thing about it, since they owned the rights and were resistant about releasing Prince's back catalog.
This actually turned out to be unnecessary because he bought the band name as well, which means he was also able to trademark "Alice Cooper," which he would not have been able to do if it solely referred to him. Band names can be trademarked, but a person's name can't.
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Alice Cooper was the ultimate "kids love him, parents despise him" artist of his day, so obviously he just wallowed in this trope. Parents en masse raised an uproar through much of his career, and declared his music a danger to kids and teens, who promptly ignored that rhetoric and made Alice an icon.
During a 1969 concert in Toronto, Cooper picked up a chicken someone had thrown onstage and tossed it back into the audience, thinking since the bird had wings, it would fly. Instead, it plummeted into the audience, who promptly tore it to shreds. This story quickly mutated into a rumor that he'd actually bitten the head off the chicken himself. Cooper received a phone call from Frank Zappa asking if he'd done so. When he replied that he hadn't, Zappa said, "Well, don't tell anybody you didn't do it!"
Mary Whitehouse campaigned successfully to keep Alice Cooper off Top of the Pops in the UK. In response, Cooper sent her a gracious thank you note and a bouquet of flowers, because the publicity had helped the single "School's Out" hit number one.
Once Original, Now Common: While some of it can still be shocking today (although it has more to do with shifts in political correctness), for the most part, many people nowadays are unimpressed due to much more line-crossing acts like Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie.
over his concerts.