In 1964 sixteen year-old Vincent Damon Furnier was eager to take part in the local annual letterman's talent show, so he gathered fellow cross-country teammates to form a group for the show. They named themselves The Earwigs. Because they did not know how to play any instruments at the time, they dressed up like The Beatles and mimed their performance to Beatles songs. As a result of winning the talent show and loving the experience of being onstage, the group immediately proceeded to learn how to play instruments they acquired from a localpawn shop. They soon renamed themselves The Spiders, featuring Furnier on vocals, Glen Buxton on lead guitar, John Tatum on rhythm guitar, Dennis Dunaway on bass guitar and John Speer on drums. For the next year the band performed regularly around the Phoenix area with a huge black spider's web as their backdrop, the group's first stage prop.  In 1968 the band learned that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz (that they considered as a name change), and found themselves in need of another stage name. Furnier also believed that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage. He chose the name "Alice Cooper" largely because it sounded innocuous and wholesome, in humorous contrast to the band's image and music, and eventually adopted this stage name as his own. Cooper later stated that the name change was one of his most important and successful career moves.