Original Manager Of -- David Bowie

 

Shep Ezra Gordon 

Shep Gordon is the manager who brought the Alice Cooper Band to fame and prominence, later managing the long solo career of of the band's calculatingly bizarre front man, Alice Cooper. The front man, born Vincent Furnier of Phoenix, is not Jewish as far as is known, and is certainly an embarrassment to the White Race. He was the first case of what imitators later called 'heavy metal,' 'black metal,' and 'gothic rock.' But it is unlikely he would have ever appeared on the world stage without Shep Gordon.
  

The Original Alice Cooper Band Glen Buxton, Guitar -- Neil Smith, Drums -- Michael Bruce, Guitar/Vocals -- Alice Cooper, Vocals -- Dennis Dunaway, Bass    In a tamer phase in their L.A. period, you could tell they had not been eating very well. For the times their hair was unusually long and the 'shag' on Cooper was creepy. The bare chests combined with satin, sequins, and jewelry gave people the heebee jeebees in 1970. Together with the name 'Alice Cooper' the band was patently queer. But they were just getting started. They hadn't struck on the blood and violence angle yet or written any songs about killing babies. Shep Gordon was their manager by this time, taking them on by 1969, from the time of their first album, "Pretties For You."

Alice Cooper and his band were one of the most disturbing cultural developments of the 1970's. They used shock tactics, pointlessly breaking societal taboos to gain attention, starting with giving their male front man a woman's name, which was highly upsetting to early 70's America. The lore is that Gordon became interested in the group when he saw them empty out an entire auditorium because the audience was so disturbed and revolted. Gordon saw that revulsion and shock -- which came from violating the audience's deeply held spiritual and moral sensibilities -- as a form of "power."

Shep Gordon with an elderly Alice Cooper
and unidentified woman. Source: Google Image Search

Photos of Shep Gordon have been scarce even though he is now a significant figure in music publishing and management. Even fan and friendly sites have had to content themselves with one or two blurry pics. Photos of Gordon with Cooper have been even scarcer, despite their long and pivotal relationship -- and constant photography of Alice Cooper 30 years. This a curious fact in itself. This recent photo of Gordon with Alice Cooper recently showed up on Google.

  
Alice Cooper's persona and shows heavily employed sexual ambiguity, perversion, and violence and made every effort to disturb moral sensibilities of that time. This was the essence of their promotional technique. Though all band members were heterosexual, they wore makeup and dressed in provocatively feminine clothes. Patently feminine cosmetic makeup had never been seen before on male musicians at that time, and it was a real gross-out factor for their audiences. Drummer Neil Smith often sported blue eye shadow and black fingernail polish. They were a definite departure from '60's hippiedom.

Their fourth album was charmingly titled "Killer" and had a lot of violent themes. One song was "Halo of Flies." (A hint about their approach to religion.) Another was "Dead Babies," supposedly about a mother or parent murdering her children. If this was not enough positive thinking, on stage "Alice" would hack apart baby dolls with an ax as he sang the song, the dolls spewing imitation blood. (See earlier photo above center where he is carrying a hammer.)

The group's first album, "Pretties For You" Los Angeles, 1969.   Apparently "pretties' was supposed to refer to them. This was theyr first album, a flop. The music was chaotic and impressionistic, completely unpalatable. More than that, people found them disturbing. 'Alice' is  wearing a school cheerleader's gold lame dress, his hair died red.  Just at the close of the '60's Gordon's most important act was the original 'pervert band'.

Later recordings celebrated necrophilia ("I Love The Dead," Cold Ethyl"). During the "Killer Tour" the band regularly enacted the hanging of their singer from a gallows. During the "Billion Dollar Babies" tour the routine was to execute him on a large stage guillotine and display his fake head, dripping gore.

"Alice" and the group rationalized this violence-in-music by spinning their shows as some vague 'morality tale' in which a villain ends up punished. But it was really just a brutally simple fame gimmick: Present whatever is culturally disturbing, negative, or atrocious. Not for any real point or purpose, but for notoriety, fame and profit.
  
 

Sick Things
The really big break: Alice Cooper poses nude in Jan Wenner's Rolling Stone with a boa constrictor wrapped around his sex organ pelvis.

Their singer Vince Furnier, later renamed Alice Cooper, was a key creative agitator and the major lyricist in the original group. Originally the band was a group effort. Its five members were friends and band mates since high school. It was decided that Furnier would take a shocking name, and the band have the same name. This was all prior to meeting Shep Gordon in 1969.

'Alice Cooper' traded in negative
 and  disturbing ideas, images and lyrics
for their shock effect.

Later Furnier and Gordon effectively 'hijacked' the band name for himself in a solo career, letting his original band mates be forgotten. The solo "Alice Cooper" continued to be managed by Shep Gordon and produced many albums. None were as creative as the band efforts, but he continued the strategy of negativity and taboo-ripping in this solo career.

In both the band and solo days, Cooper postured in interviews as an everyday conventional fellow who was just providing the audience the same thing they get in Hollywood horror films. (Which he claimed to watch frequently growing up. He appears to have spent his childhood in front of a television set.)
 

Moral depravity and social chaos for fun and profit.
The singer Alice Cooper in an early  1970 show, living on peanut butter before Shep Gordon shepherded them into the big time. Note the in-your-face female eye makeup, the little flowered blouse and bare midriff, all with a menacing hammer. It was all patently bizarre for the time.

He proposed that it was merely entertainment, and developed an approach that "Alice" was a kind of theatrical character, separate from himself. He would often justify himself by stating that Shakespeare's "Macbeth" contained as much violence as his shows.

But because the context was different, the Alice Cooper Group affected the culture differently than Hollywood horror stories or a Shakespearean play. There is a natural separation between movies, plays, and real life. The same separation does not exist between singers, songwriters, and their listeners. Young people do not see musicians as 'fictional characters.' They look to musical performers for personal and cultural inspiration, even guidance. So the Alice Cooper Group created profound moral and spiritual confusion in the young people of the 1970's.
 
 

On their second album (1970) the five men of
The Alice Cooper Band pose as seductive females.
The album title, "Easy Action," is both a line from the movie "West Side Story," and reference to the 'easy' looking 'ladies' on the cover -- meant to offend.

In particular, the idea of the group's sexual 'orientation,' still seen socially as dark perversion, had a very unsettling effect on people. Even though the band was heterosexual, their fame antics stimulated a social atmosphere of confusion and distress first, then  'permission' for many young people to experiment with homosexuality or perversion. Many youth developed morbid obsessions through the Alice Cooper Band. In their "Killer" album's inside cover, 'Alice' was shown hanging from a noose. In at least one case a Canadian boy hanged himself to death trying to imitate the picture.

There were many averse reactions in society. Church ministers, in particular, criticized and even protested the group and it's intellectual content, but those protests when unheeded. Gordon and the band considered this good for business, as in 'there is no such thing as bad publicity.'

Their's was not a 'liberal' campaign to create "tolerance" for homosexuals. It was just a way to gain notoriety by shredding American moral sensibilities. Those were more innocent times, and the band succeeded in destroying much innocence in young Americans, then and since. The Alice Cooper Band had impacts all throughout music, entertainment, and the wider culture.

Continued Above

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The Cooper Copycats

 

More Inspiration for the kids:
The '90's 'Creepy' Competition
   
Setting out to "improve" on Alice Cooper and to go him one better, hackneyed imitators like
'Marilyn Manson' aped the "shock 'em" schtick in the '80's and '90's by simply posturing as worse perverts. Just to be on the safe side, 'Manson' even copied the damaged eye of another "shock rocker"
David Bowie's. (See below.)
So much for the American spirit of originality.
Another Alice Cooper clone calls himself 'Rob Zombie' and he presents himself as a demented
 cretin for the inspiration of the youth.

 

The mysterious Shep Gordon,
Original Manager of  the Alice Cooper Group and Alice Cooper.

The photo above is from the site SickThingsUk.co.uk
and its page about Gordon. The other Shep Gordon photos were available at Google.

Alice Cooper was the direct inspiration for later fame seekers like as "Marilyn Manson." He followed the Cooper lead in every way, using a name for himself that combined a female sex symbol with a mass murderer. (All his bandmates engaged in the same disgust.) The basic promotional formula is to combine sexuality with perversion with violence, along with a good helping of religious sacrilege. Early Alice Cooper songs that worked the "sacrilege" angle were: "Hallowed Be My Name," and "Second Coming." Also essential is the breaking of moral/cultural taboos and the shock and disturbance it causes in society.

"Young people do not see musicians as 'fictional characters.' They look to
musical performers for
personal and cultural
inspiration, even guidance."

Later bands took the Cooper fame formula and just turned it up a few notches as society became more disturbed and jaded. "Marilyn Manson"  simply took it to the obvious next notch, presenting himself as a kind of inhuman demon, singing about sexual depravity, while presenting himself as "Christ" or "the antichrist." He enacted a mock crucifixion of himself to work the sacrilege angle. (It has to be pointed out that 'Marilyn' lacked the creative powers of Cooper, who also had a serviceable singing voice. But 'Marilyn' was definitely an Alice Cooper copycat, and not much else.)

When music became negative.

The negative musical trends called "heavy metal," "black metal," "gothic metal," and "death metal" all gelled and spawned from the fame of Alice Cooper. He often performed with a live boa constrictor snake around him. This sickness was recently imitated by Britney Spears. The Alice Cooper Group was also known to be a key inspiration to  David Bowie (discussed with his Jewish manager below), who hung around them wide-eyed as a fame-dreaming folkie, then copied their blatant use of female makeup and sexual ambiguity to get himself on the map. Bowie just specialized in that aspect and turned it up a few notches more.

During Alice Cooper's most influential years their singer was an alcoholic. Other band members were addicted to alcohol, cocaine, and assorted.

Shep Gordon was the master strategist who made Alice Cooper -- and whatever they represented -- an everyday part of the American mind. Band members have frequently credited him for their fame and success. He employed brilliant tactics to get the band featured in media, getting financial benefits from their shock value. Shep Gordon is believed to have made millions of dollars promoting Alice Cooper.

Before Mr. Gordon took interest in them and devoted years to bringing them to fame, Alice Cooper had no airplay or recognition, were considered pariahs everywhere they went, and were financially insolvent. They had almost no income, and had to walk and hitchhike around the L.A. area. According to guitarist Michael Bruce, Gordon once helped finance them by illegally selling bootleg Bob Dylan albums. The band got its first radio play by circumventing FCC radio rules and getting a Canadian station to broadcast the the heavy-handed dirge "Eighteen" into the U.S. from across the U.S. border. After the promotion of the Alice Cooper Group, the culture of White gentile America was never the same, not so innocent, and many followed their example for fame and profit. Today Alice Cooper operates a bar and nightclub in the Phoenix area called 'Cooperstown.'

After Gordon became successful promoting Alice Cooper he went on to manage more respectable acts and expanded into other realms of the entertainment business. But 'Alice Cooper' was the foundation of his wealth. After 'Alice' separated from the band it is reported that Gordon and Alice had a 50-50 profit split.

Ever questing for new lows, one recent solo tune by Cooper sexualizes and profanes the name of Catholic monastic nuns. The "Sick Things" website (above) states that Gordon is the Executive Producer of all Alice Cooper recordings even today:

"Serving as executive producer on all of his clients recordings, Gordon is responsible for record sales in excess of one hundred million worldwide."

We presume that "one hundred million" refers to dollars.

After filling the world with "Alice Cooper" Shep Gordon became a veritable entertainment mogul. He is now chairman of a film production company that distributed a number of films including "Kiss of the Spider Woman." Early on with the Alice Cooper band he became a music publisher, and his company is named Ezra Music, after Gordon's Jewish middle name.

Shep Gordon is above left.
The Alice Cooper manager appears to like
 things that are much more bright and wholesome than the darkness and spiritual sickness he -- and Alice -- have fed to the minds of western youth for three decades.
Source: Google Image Search

 

Tony DeFries -- Seminal Manager Of -- David Bowie

"All the freaks are out today, and it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh you Pretty Things / Don't ya know you're driving your mamas and papas insane... Gotta make way for the Homo Superior..." David Bowie's Homosexual Anthem, "Oh You Pretty Things"

Tony Defries Tony DeFries was the aggressive marketer and manager who made David Bowie famous in the 1970's and brought "queer" into mainstream pop. David Bowie (original name David Jones) attained fame by breaking sexual mores with an ambiguous sexual persona, adopting a homosexual or bisexual appearance with makeup, female clothes, and fey mannerisms. Really, Bowie just tarted himself up quite blatantly like a transvestite, and in the more moral culture of the time, this assured his fame. David Bowie is not Jewish. But the manager who brought him to fame is Jewish. Pink 'Revolution' David Bowie acting like a woman, taking male sex corruption mainstream. The shag-cut hairstyle, dyed a carrot red, was strange and fey for the time. Note the bra-like feather breast covering, the red nail polish, the thigh-high boots like stockings-and-garters, the clinging body suit that looks like foil, and his jutting 'slut' posture, hand on hip. This is what Tony DeFries foisted upon innocent young men in the 1970's. Lou Reed, of the "Velvet Underground," NYC. One of David Bowie's avowed inspirations, and later, an important Bowie associate  and pal in the burgeoning "glam rock" scene. Also a Jew. Originally jealous of David Bowie for stealing his queer thunder, yet Bowie's fame raised Reed's profile. Bowie even produced a Lou Reed album that made the depressive, Cohen-esque composer sound surprisingly musical.      Bowie was not a ground breaker with this attention-getting shock tactic. He had been schooled by the American band Alice Cooper (managed by the Jew Shep Gordon, above) who he actually visited and knew, having pressed himself into their backstage circle as an awstruck fan. Back to the U.K., Bowie quickly got his strategy cooking. He simply took the disturbing androgyny/queer thing and did it up worse. As he started to rise, he is said to have been jealous of the edgy-glamoured, theatrical American rock band as their fame took Europe by storm, hoped to supplant them, and anxiously craved their demise. David Bowie's original "Ziggy" look was, in fact, a pretty exact duplicate of the Alice Cooper look during the singer's red-headed shag/blue mascara period in Los Angeles. So similar that it would be easy to mistake them as the same person in video from those periods. Certainly decadence and depravity of all kinds were basic staples of the David Bowie lifestyle, entourage, and promotional strategy. (Bowie ended up addicted to cocaine for some time during the 1980's.) Significant associates of the Bowie 'culture' included the mordantly queer Lou Reed (seen on JewishFaces.org main page) and nutcase 'Iggy Pop' of Detroit, a  bizarre early "thrash" frontman with a suicidal bent. Bowie's original long-time manager, Kenneth Pitt, was a known homosexual, and Mr. Bowie famously studied the art of mime under a flaming transvestite mime teacher in London, "Lindsay Kemp." Bowie became like the godfather of a whole 'queer' music scene that came to be labeled "glam rock." It has always been unclear whether David Bowie was actually a homosexual, or whether he cynically posed as one as a fame strategy. His ex-wife Angela Bowie confirms that he had many sexual relations with women, including herself. She stated that Mr. Bowie had sex with new women who entered his circle in the same way that a dog pees on a fire hydrant to claim its territory. (She also took the trouble to share with the world descriptions of his generative organ in a state of excitement.) She seems to suggest in the book that he is bisexual. Whatever Bowie's actual personal condition, we know that for his 'shock-for-fame-strategy" he chose to violate social mores and moral norms regarding homosexuality. What Alice Cooper/Shep Gordon only played with, Bowie took to the next logical 'taboo-breaking' level. He astutely understood that the sexual angle had more unplumbed depths for social reaction than mere horror show theatrics. In a way, Alice Cooper was too decent to actually push homosexuality. In one early album Bowie wore a dress. Later he dressed in more blatantly feminine clothes, wore nail polish and lots of feminine makeup. (Eye shadow, lipstick -- the whole nine yards.) As time wore on he pranced around on stage nearly naked save for a jock strap. On a later album cover  (Aladdin Sane) he was presented nude with some airbrushing. One of Bowie's performance innovations was to simulate doing oral sex on his guitarist (Mick Ronson) by getting on his knees and picking Ronson's strings with his teeth at Ronson's pelvic area, holding Ronson by the hips. On this early album, "Hunky Dory," David Bowie wears makeup and a dress and works to create the impression of Greta Garbo. All of society considered it appalling, and he well knew this. But anything for fame.   It was all-too-obvious what was being suggested, and a very sickening performance routine indeed. Not surprisingly, Bowie had a large homosexual following. Male fans came to his concerts "in drag" in imitation. Anything For Fame Bowie's early homosexual theme songs included "John I'm Only Dancing," "Oh You Pretty Things," "Queen Bitch," "Moonage Daydream" and "The Prettiest Star" (considered to be about himself, or about English pop singer Mark Bolan.) From "Moonage Daydream": "I'm an alligator / I'm a momma-papa coming for you / I'm a space invader / I'll be a rock'n'rollin' bitch for you."   From "Oh! You Pretty Things": "Gotta make way for the Homo Superior...Oh you Pretty Things / Don't ya know you're driving your mamas and papas insane..." This was all very strange and troubling stuff in the atmosphere of the early 1970's. Scroll Up To Continue Article

Tony DeFries   Manager of David Bowie Below, Right As with Shep Gordon, photographs of  David Bowie's manager are rare. In this 1970's photo  Tony DeFries lounges arm in arm with David Bowie's   bisexual wife, Angela Bowie. In this photo his Jewish ethnic features are obvious. 'DeFries' is a Jewish name.     As with The Beatles and their Jewish manager Brian Epstein, David Bowie's career did not really take off until he met Tony DeFries. DeFries was a business man. He took over all practical aspects of Bowie's affairs, and began working an assiduous strategy to create David Bowie as an international star. Like Shep Gordon above, DeFries probably recognized the "power" that is released by the breaking of societal norms. He realized he could really do something with this little folkish "mod" who inclined towards fey. Like an indulgent father, DeFries nursed Bowie along as an artist, letting him spend extravagantly on clothes and encouraging him to freely innovate and create without any survival distractions. Under DeFries' management authority Bowie lived the life of a spoiled, moody, prima donna. He financed Bowie's creative head space. One thing DeFries did was to consciously feed Bowie's ego and his sense that he was a 'star' well before real fame, building up an ambiance of mystery and glamour around his artist that would hold when fame struck. He was kept separate from the band, with his own dressing room. He was later surrounded by bodyguards. At concerts it would be announced, after the encore: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Bowie has left the building" to imitate the famous routine ending Elvis Presley concerts. Bowie seemed to feed on all that, and was dependent on DeFries much like a child, having little awareness of the business details. It helped that Bowie had Nordic good looks, and a certain quality often called charisma, and certainly a good deal of British charm. His bone structure was refined and he was able to affect a genuine androgyny rather than the dorkishly absurd appearance of the typical man 'done up' female. Bowie made a better-looking female than many women. This all added to the otherworldly glamour he and his manager were after, and made him all the more disturbing. (Later he would revert to patently male styles and personae.) Without the androgyny bit, David Bowie was just a good melody writer with a rather insipid voice. But as "Queen Bitch" David Bowie became more interesting, and his voice was very serviceable for catlike snarls and petulant quasi-crooning. But this made him merely disturbing. It is likely that David Bowie would never have seen fame without the business savvy and psychological support of Tony DeFries. DeFries used aggressive marketing tactics to promote the world's first 'fey' pop star in the U.S., and spent tremendous amounts of money doing it. Bowie was far too obtuse for the American mass market. It wouldn't be until social corruption had progressed more deeply in the 80's and 90's that David Bowie would become an acceptable artist for AM radio in the U.S. Finally in the '90's he had big AM hits like "Modern Love," and the money started rolling in. But this was long after DeFries already made him famous all across America. With the rising success of his main client David Bowie, DeFries opened up offices in New York City. But soon money, fame, and the Judensting exacted revenge. DeFries was alleged to have defrauded Bowie of substantial songwriting royalties, having assigned the bulk of Bowie's royalties -- from the most important body of his work -- to himself and his heirs. Stirring from his years of drug fog and melagomania, Bowie had to pursue litigation against DeFries. Fortunately, he was now a household name and he was able to spin that fame into a long-term gig as a fringe entertainment figure who made good financially.   Since parting from DeFries David Bowie has had few important songs or albums and his music has been mediocre. He appears to have used up his collection of melodic ideas about half way through, and has receded into a "cult hero" status for those who find his 'queer' image entrancing. But after David Bowie met Tony DeFries, "androgyny" -- and perversion in general -- became the order of the day for rock groups for approximately two decades, inaugurating a period of moral and social decay among youth that culminated with the documentary film "The Decline of Western Civilization" which documented the disgusting glam rock scene Bowie pioneered. Groups like "Motley Crue" -- all of the "hair bands" of the '90's -- were simply not well turned out if they did not look a lot like girls, including plenty of garish eye makeup, and lipstick, too. Much later Michael Jackson jumped on the androgyny bandwagon. Eventually in the '90s, youthful rock music became synonymous with pornography. But none of them had the style and panache of the Original Homo Superior. After gaining comfortable fame and the spoils of it, David Bowie distanced himself from bisexuality/homosexuality. But still seeking the bizarre, he married a black woman. As far as is known, Tony DeFries is heterosexual. As for David Bowie, he is disinclined to talk about it. Bowie's ex-wife Angela Bowie (top) always proclaimed herself bisexual. In her book "Backstage Pass" she gave a disturbing account of her days with Bowie, including a disgusting look at his sex life. By the late 1970's David Bowie had become a depressive, spooky character missing eyebrows, and was addicted to cocaine. Before DeFries, David Bowie was a quaint English act with some homosexual undertones and pop aspirations, a bit of flotsam and jetsam from the folkish side of the '60's. Bowie was a sort of "fey Donovan" struggling to develop an identity, more or less repellent to the average person. After DeFries, David Bowie became the world's first "flaming fag" pop star, then a major name in music. Soon after separating from DeFries Bowie moved to New York City. He has acted in several movies. Still obsessed with his own face, his own fame and image, he now flits about the "celebrity circuit" with his black wife, who he apparently finds sufficiently exotic for him. The rest of the time we suppose he spends looking into the mirror and planning his next hair style. He has not come up with a worthwhile melody in many years. As for lyrics, he never did come up with any meaningful lyrics. And now that he doesn't smoke or do cocaine all the bass has left his voice and it's just a tin machine.

Previously the roles of these two Jews in the development of western culture, music and youth have been little known.
Today the same corruptive role is filled by Sumner Redstone, owner of MTV, and others.