Michael Bruce

Michael Owen Bruce (born March 16, 1948) is an American rock musician who was a founding member of the original Alice Cooper band.

Michael Bruce started playing guitar and piano in early adolescence and was heavily influenced by the Beatles. In 1966, Bruce replaced John Tatum in popular Phoenix-based group The Spiders alongside Vincent Furnier, Glen Buxton, Dennis Dunaway, and John Speer. The group quickly established themselves as a top regional act, sharing the stage with such notable groups as The Yardbirds, The Animals, and The Hollies. After relocating to Los Angeles, the group rebranded themselves as the Nazz.

In 1968, after discovering that Todd Rundgren had formed a group called Nazz, Bruce and company changed the name of their project to Alice Cooper, reflecting the sardonic humor that characterized the group and their style. With Bruce's contributions as a songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist, the band released a string of hit albums in the 1970s, including Love It to Death, Killer, School's Out, and Billion Dollar Babies.

Bruce's distinctive rhythm guitar riffs became an essential component of the group’s sound, and his songwriting skills added to the band's success. He was the sole composer of the songs "Be My Lover" and "Caught in a Dream", and he co-wrote many of the band's other famous hits, including "I'm Eighteen", "Under My Wheels", "School's Out", "No More Mr. Nice Guy" and "Billion Dollar Babies".

In 1973, Bruce began working on his own recordings with a group of musicians that included Mick Mashbir (guitars and vocals), Bob Dolin (keyboards and vocals), Frank Crandall (bass and vocals), and Don Lindley (percussion and vocals). Mashbir and Dolin had performed as members of the touring band with the Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies tour. This line-up recorded and produced four songs ("King of America", "As Rock Rolls On", "Oh, My Love" and "Nothing on Earth") that producer Jack Douglas mixed.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.