John Cooper (musician)

John Cooper
John Cooper at the Alive Festival in June 2013
Background information
Birth name	John Landrum Cooper
Born	(1975-04-07) April 7, 1975 (age 41) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres	Christian rock, Christian metal, alternative metal, hard rock, post-grunge, industrial metal (early)
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Vocals, bass guitar
Years active	1989–present

John Landrum Cooper (born April 7, 1975), professionally credited as John L. Cooper, is an American musician, singer and songwriter. He has been the lead vocalist, bassist and co-founder of the Grammy-nominated American Christian rock band Skillet since 1996.

Cooper was briefly in experimental rock group Seraph from 1989–1995. The band released a four-song demo, titled Silence E.P., before disbanding. The track listing was "Alone", "Silence", "Wild Honey", and "Fading Love".

John formed Skillet in 1996 with Ken Steorts. Both had met while touring for previous bands; John as vocalist for the Tennessee progressive rock band Seraph and Ken Steorts guitarist for Urgent Cry. The bands disbanded soon after, so John and Ken's pastor encouraged them to form their own band as a side-project. Coming from different styles of rock music, they decided to name the experiment Skillet. Soon afterwards Trey McClurkin joined the band as a temporary drummer. Skillet was only together for a month when they received interest from major Christian record label ForeFront Records and were signed soon afterwards. Ken Steorts left the band in 1999 and Trey McClurkin left the band in 2000 leaving John as the only founding member of the band and primary songwriter.

Cooper provided vocals for !Hero: The Rock Opera. According to a review, Cooper did not tour with the rock opera, he only provided vocals for the Rabbi Kai on the soundtrack. Cooper was the co-writer of the Decyfer Down single "Best I Can".

He sang on the title track of tobyMac's album, Tonight. He performed vocals on We as Human's song, on "Zombie", which appeared on their debut self-titled album and made a cameo appearance in the music video for "Strike Back". He signed them to his record label.

John Cooper has stated on numerous occasions that he was born and raised in a very religious family and atmosphere, and listening to rock music was not allowed in his parents' household. "You couldn't wear black, you couldn't listen to anything with drums, anything with guitars, you couldn't have long hair, you couldn't do this and you couldn't do that. Everything was so lifeless. I know I'd read the Bible and be like...'This isn't what the Bible says. I like the idea of living for Jesus, but I hate the idea of living for you.' Ya know?"