128. Alice Cooper / Billion Dollar Babies. 1973. 4/5.

The Alice Cooper Band, consisting of Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Denis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Vincent Furnier, released their first album “Pretties for You” in late 1969, and over the next three years released another four albums at regular intervals, all of which increased in success from the previous one. By the time 1972’s “School’s Out” was released – an album reviewed on Season 3 of this podcast – the Alice Cooper Band were selling out shows around the world and had Top Ten selling singles and albums, and this success was driving the lives of the band members. Having been living in a basement together two years earlier, they now found themselves with fame and more money than they had had in their lives, and the resulting problems with drugs and alcohol probably weren’t unexpected as a result. Indeed, when recording the “Billion Dollar Babies” album, the band had to have three session guitarists on hand to help out, as Glen Buxton suffered from pancreatitis during the recording sessions which was directly related to his alcohol abuse during this time.
Recorded in three different locations along the way, the writing was again shared by all members of the band, with Alice Cooper himself composing most of the lyrics. And on the back of those last couple of albums that were building to something, “Billion Dollar Babies” became that album that showcased exactly what the Alice Cooper Band had become.

I didn’t know for years that this wasn’t even an Alice Cooper song. “Hello Hooray”, the opening track from the album, is actually written by a bloke called Rolf Kempf, and came from an album recorded by Judy Collins in 1968. This version is a beauty, and still crops up in set lists on tours.
When people see the title “Raped and Freezin’” they immediately think it is awful that a band could write a song about that subject of sexual harrassment. Of course, if they listened to the lyrics they’d realise it was a female driving, picking up a hitchhiker and then trying to do the deed with him, and him actually running off naked into the desert – thus the title. It’s a great song, in the hilarious way this band did these types of songs. Great lyrics, excellently performed. This is followed by “Elected”, one of the great Alice Cooper Band songs, politically motivated sneering perfectly orated by Alice throughout, and with a great bridge and orchestrated sound from the band as well. The title track “Billion Dollar Babies” is a statement of the time, and showcases the best this band has to offer, at a time that the harder genre of music was beginning to take hold. While the band could play in their early themed music, this song in particular showcases the attributes that they had to really bring the heaviness to their songs when they wanted to. And then you come to “Unfinished Sweet” which is about a trip to the dentist, with complementing drill sounds to make it a fabulous listen.
The second side of the album opens up with the brilliant “No More Mr Nice Guy”, with the excellently written and performed track being a standout in the years since this album was released. “Generation Landslide” changes up this second part of the album, with acoustic guitar and harmonica, which is a downplaying of the harder versions of songs on the first half of the album. “Sick Things” incorporates the piano in the same slower tempo. And then “Mary Ann” completes the trilogy of songs here that find themselves pushing the boundaries of ragtime. The album closes out with “I Love the Dead” which again has that tongue planted firmly in cheek as it talks about necrophilia, once again in the Alice Cooper style of playfulness.
There are a number of songs here that have been long-held classics not only of the band itself, but of music in general. “Elected” is a killer with its perfect takedown of the political election ideals of the US. “Billion Dollar Babies” is a perfect cut of that rise in the hard rock scene of the early 1970’s, as important as what Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were producing at the time. “No More Mr Nice Guy” is the losers story, one that so many fans of the band at the time could have related to, as any fan of Alice Cooper was considered an outcast, a freak, just as the band was. These three songs in particular have transcended time to today, where they are still relevant, topical, and just plain brilliant.

As I know I have already mentioned here on previous episodes of this podcast, my introduction to Alice Cooper was through the mid-to late 1980’s albums such as “Constrictor” and “Raise Your Fist and Yell” and “Trash”, and then the greatest hits albums. I knew the Alice Cooper songs from the 1970’s that had made the radio, as my mother had made mixed tapes off the radio with those songs on them. So it wasn’t until the 1990’s that I first really began to delve back into the albums of the 1970’s and early 1980’s. And it is safe to say that this was one of the ones that really hit it off with me and stuck with me. Why? In the long run, it was the hit songs that drove it. Those four singles are all still the best songs on the album, and they still resonate today. They lend themselves to great cover versions as well, which both “Elected” by Bruce Dickinson and “No More Mr Nice Guy” by Megadeth have done so. And, within the framework, the whole album draws together as one. If you listen to the songs on the second half of the album out of context they don’t always work, but when you listen to the album from start to finish it comes together as a great package.
There are so many albums that share Vincent Furnier as the protagonist lead vocal, both of the band and his so-called solo albums, and this one always rises to the top if you were to list a best of poll of all of those albums. From the original band, this album is probably the best of the seven they released. Adding in the Alice Cooper albums that followed, it would be hard to argue that this isn’t in the top five of those somewhere. Of my FAVOURITE Alice Cooper albums to listen to, it would be on the borderline of those top five. And fifty years on from its release, it honestly still sounds as amazing as the first time I heard it, and how it must have sounded to all of those young freaks and geeks in 1973.