Glen Buxton was born on November 10, 1947, in Akron, Ohio. He became the original Alice Cooper band’s lead guitarist and a co-writer of “I’m Eighteen” and “School’s Out,” bringing musical experience to a group whose beginnings went back to a high school talent show.
After moving to Phoenix, Buxton attended Cortez High School and joined the Earwigs in 1964. His future bandmates were still learning what it meant to play together. “Glen taught me how to play bass,” Dennis Dunaway recalled in a 2000 interview with Goldmine. Dunaway identified Buxton as the first member who already knew an instrument. Before there were records to make or arrangements to argue over, Buxton was helping a school friend become the group’s bassist.
The Earwigs became the Spiders, then the Nazz, before adopting Alice Cooper in 1968. By that point, Buxton was part of a five-piece band with singer Vincent Furnier, who became known as Alice Cooper, guitarist Michael Bruce, Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith. Their interests extended beyond music: Buxton, Furnier and Dunaway had also studied art, and their enthusiasm for surrealism helped inform the stage presentation.
The records took time to catch up with that developing identity. Pretties for You arrived in 1969, followed by Easy Action in 1970. Both preceded the more focused songwriting of Love It to Death in 1971, when producer Bob Ezrin helped the band turn sprawling material into tighter arrangements. “I’m Eighteen,” which credited Buxton alongside the other four members as a writer, reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100. The guitarist who had helped his friends learn their instruments was sharing a writing credit on their breakthrough single.
Dunaway described the difference between the two guitarists in a Guitar World oral history: Bruce concentrated on cutting riffs, while Buxton’s playing had a more agitated edge. Getting the best from Buxton also meant allowing him room to find his own part. Dunaway remembered that changing the room’s lighting could help more than telling him which scale to play. For a group developing theatrical music, mood mattered during the work as well as onstage.
The next step began with something much smaller than a finished song. Buxton came up with the guitar riff for “School’s Out.” Ezrin told MusicRadar in 2013 that the band’s manager called him in Toronto because he thought the musicians had the makings of a hit. Ezrin traveled to Los Angeles, met them in a rehearsal room and worked with them to assemble the song. Buxton’s idea supplied the starting point; the recording grew through the band’s collaboration with its producer.
Released in 1972, “School’s Out” carried songwriting credits for all five members, with Buxton playing guitar on the recording. Smith recalled in the same Goldmine feature that, even after the success of Love It to Death and Killer, the group had wanted another decisive single. He credited Buxton with supplying its riff.
The original group split in 1974. Buxton died on October 19, 1997, in Mason City, Iowa. In 2011, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Alice Cooper, alongside the four bandmates with whom he had made those records.
