I once upon a time paid a visit to Rock and Roll Heaven, a record store outside Orlando, Florida, and picked up a “Rocktober” reissue of this LP. Supposedly, it was available only in October, 2016, and only in the States. Limited edition of 3,000 copies. The vinyl is a green and orange marble splatter pattern and they even included the fake billion dollar bill.
I’d more-or-less outgrown this LP years ago, but it still rocks and sometimes the 18-year-old me sneaks out and wants to hear mindless brain candy rock and roll. And this is great mindless brain candy!
The original Alice Cooper group was really tight and musical, and this LP was a big rock n’ roll leap forward. Michael Bruce is a great guitarist and songwriter without whom this group would never have achieved the success they did. Alice, for his part, could write clever and funny lyrics and sing in tune. So what else do you need, besides a competent drummer and bass player who work well together to lay down a solid foundation for the theatrics the group became known for? Not much.
In the 1970s, this was edgy stuff.
But it's dated now and the record sounds "muddy" on my system. I'm not saying it isn't a good album - it is - I just don't see the point in keeping it around on vinyl when I have a digital copy that sounds quite a bit less m muddy - brighter? - which, although perhaps an actual fault of the digital format, works well here.
There's no real soundstage, other than Donovan's voice going from one speaker to the other.
About 20 years ago I saw Alice play a hockey rink in Timmins, Ontario. I bought the entire middle section of the front row and took my kids and a bunch of their friends. We had a blast and the band was on fire that night. It certainly beat the last time I went to see Cooper in August, 1980 at Toronto's CNE Stadium. The Coop didn't show up and the crowd rioted. That night I got my first and (hopefully) only taste of tear gas - which I can still taste 40+ years on.
Billion Dollar Babies appeared on Feb. 25, 1973, three months after Tricky Dick Nixon beat Democratic challenger George McGovern to win his second term of office. For the members of Alice Cooper - high school friends who had started out playing together as The Spiders nearly a decade earlier - this was probably disappointing, if they even cared at all. But on the bright side, the years of punishing dues-paying in shitty clubs were starting to pay off.
Billion Dollar Babies surpassed the previous year's release School's Out - which reached number two in the Billboard charts - to claim the number one spot. A compelling string of controversial songs such as Raped And Freezing and I Love the Dead probably helped its ascent, and it also helped generate some devil music parental backlash that only added fuel for the rocket ride up the charts.
Unfortunately, like so many other rock successes of the era, the Alice Cooper group was already crumbling. Substance abuse and strained relationships among band members, who were upset because Alice was becoming the focus while the rest of the band was starting to look like his backup band, served to grind the band's previous all-for-one camaraderie into dust.
By the end of the record-breaking Billion Dollar Babies tour, and the late-'73 release of it's followup, Muscle of Love, the Alice Cooper group was basically over as a unit. Within a year, Alice (real name Vincent Furnier) would legally change his name to Alice Cooper and embark on a successful solo career with a new band of conspirators.
In the many decades since, the surviving members of the Alice Cooper group, including Alice, have played together on the odd rare occasion, but it is unlikely a new album or tour will ever see the light of day despite the pleadings of old fans like me. It's just been too long, and Alice's current touring band can probably play circles around his old group.
But what a group they were, and what a record this still is. Sort of.
I once upon a time paid a visit to Rock and Roll Heaven, a record store outside Orlando, Florida, and picked up a “Rocktober” reissue of this LP. Supposedly, it was available only in October, 2016, and only in the States. Limited edition of 3,000 copies. The vinyl is a green and orange marble splatter pattern and they even included the fake billion dollar bill.
I’d more-or-less outgrown this LP years ago, but it still rocks and sometimes the 18-year-old me sneaks out and wants to hear mindless brain candy rock and roll. And this is great mindless brain candy!
The original Alice Cooper group was really tight and musical, and this LP was a big rock n’ roll leap forward. Michael Bruce is a great guitarist and songwriter without whom this group would never have achieved the success they did. Alice, for his part, could write clever and funny lyrics and sing in tune. So what else do you need, besides a competent drummer and bass player who work well together to lay down a solid foundation for the theatrics the group became known for? Not much.
In the 1970s, this was edgy stuff.
But it's dated now and the record sounds "muddy" on my system. I'm not saying it isn't a good album - it is - I just don't see the point in keeping it around on vinyl when I have a digital copy that sounds quite a bit less m muddy - brighter? - which, although perhaps an actual fault of the digital format, works well here.
There's no real soundstage, other than Donovan's voice going from one speaker to the other.
About 20 years ago I saw Alice play a hockey rink in Timmins, Ontario. I bought the entire middle section of the front row and took my kids and a bunch of their friends. We had a blast and the band was on fire that night. It certainly beat the last time I went to see Cooper in August, 1980 at Toronto's CNE Stadium. The Coop didn't show up and the crowd rioted. That night I got my first and (hopefully) only taste of tear gas - which I can still taste 40+ years on.
Billion Dollar Babies appeared on Feb. 25, 1973, three months after Tricky Dick Nixon beat Democratic challenger George McGovern to win his second term of office. For the members of Alice Cooper - high school friends who had started out playing together as The Spiders nearly a decade earlier - this was probably disappointing, if they even cared at all. But on the bright side, the years of punishing dues-paying in shitty clubs were starting to pay off.
Billion Dollar Babies surpassed the previous year's release School's Out - which reached number two in the Billboard charts - to claim the number one spot. A compelling string of controversial songs such as Raped And Freezing and I Love the Dead probably helped its ascent, and it also helped generate some devil music parental backlash that only added fuel for the rocket ride up the charts.
Unfortunately, like so many other rock successes of the era, the Alice Cooper group was already crumbling. Substance abuse and strained relationships among band members, who were upset because Alice was becoming the focus while the rest of the band was starting to look like his backup band, served to grind the band's previous all-for-one camaraderie into dust.
By the end of the record-breaking Billion Dollar Babies tour, and the late-'73 release of it's followup, Muscle of Love, the Alice Cooper group was basically over as a unit. Within a year, Alice (real name Vincent Furnier) would legally change his name to Alice Cooper and embark on a successful solo career with a new band of conspirators.
In the many decades since, the surviving members of the Alice Cooper group, including Alice, have played together on the odd rare occasion, but it is unlikely a new album or tour will ever see the light of day despite the pleadings of old fans like me. It's just been too long, and Alice's current touring band can probably play circles around his old group.
But what a group they were, and what a record this still is. Sort of.
BONUS TRACK
Donovan - the Hurdy Gurdy folksinger who tried to catch the wind - was in a reflective mood recently and recalled the time he added vocals to Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies.
"He was downstairs and I was upstairs at Morgan Studios when he was doing Billion Dollar Babies,'" Donovan said. "I had heard this track and he asked me to put a vocal on it and I said 'Sure.'"
He contnued. "I am experimental. I will try combinations that others won’t and have a lot of fun doing it." Donovan says he didn't know who Cooper was at the time "I went down there and Alice had a guitar player in his band that was playing a little bit like Keith Richards and I thought that was fascinating," he said, in a recent interview with Ultimate Classic Rock magazine.
After listening to the track, Donovan said he knew he'd need to go for the falsetto. "I had to climb above the guitars," he said.
Alice remembers that "once he figured out his approach he went in and sang, in a piercing falsetto, 'biiillllion dollllar baaaaaybeeeees.'"
Donovan also did the talking part on the song, the "we go dancing nightly in the attic … " bit. "It was all like a horror movie," he recalled. "It was tongue-in-cheek."
Donovan could have been just one of many guest stars on that classic album. "Harry Nilsson was there, although Bob Ezrin had to kick him out of the studio a couple of times for falling onto the control board and moving all the dials," laughed bassist Dennis Dunaway. "I must say, though, that even when Nilsson could barely walk he could still sing beautifully. And Keith Moon was there, along with Marc Bolan, Ric Grech of Blind Faith, and Flo and Eddie. There’s actually a tape of a jam session we all did together."
I'd love to hear that!
Donovan - the Hurdy Gurdy folksinger who tried to catch the wind - was in a reflective mood recently and recalled the time he added vocals to Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies.
"He was downstairs and I was upstairs at Morgan Studios when he was doing Billion Dollar Babies,'" Donovan said. "I had heard this track and he asked me to put a vocal on it and I said 'Sure.'"
He contnued. "I am experimental. I will try combinations that others won’t and have a lot of fun doing it." Donovan says he didn't know who Cooper was at the time "I went down there and Alice had a guitar player in his band that was playing a little bit like Keith Richards and I thought that was fascinating," he said, in a recent interview with Ultimate Classic Rock magazine.
After listening to the track, Donovan said he knew he'd need to go for the falsetto. "I had to climb above the guitars," he said.
Alice remembers that "once he figured out his approach he went in and sang, in a piercing falsetto, 'biiillllion dollllar baaaaaybeeeees.'"
Donovan also did the talking part on the song, the "we go dancing nightly in the attic … " bit. "It was all like a horror movie," he recalled. "It was tongue-in-cheek."
Donovan could have been just one of many guest stars on that classic album. "Harry Nilsson was there, although Bob Ezrin had to kick him out of the studio a couple of times for falling onto the control board and moving all the dials," laughed bassist Dennis Dunaway. "I must say, though, that even when Nilsson could barely walk he could still sing beautifully. And Keith Moon was there, along with Marc Bolan, Ric Grech of Blind Faith, and Flo and Eddie. There’s actually a tape of a jam session we all did together."
I'd love to hear that!
