Warner Bros. 2685
Producer: Bob Ezrin
Track listing: Hello Hooray / Raped and Freezin’ / Elected / Billion Dollar Babies / Unfinished Sweet / No More Mister Nice Guy / Generation Landslide / Sick Things / Mary-Ann / I Love the Dead
April 21, 1973
1 week
With the 1972 album School’s Out and the single of the same name, Alice Cooper, the man and the band, could no longer be dismissed as a rock ‘n’ roll freak show. The album, Cooper’s fifth, held the number two position on the album chart for three weeks, while the single climbed to number seven and would live on for years as a teen anthem. It would also set the stage for Cooper to deliver the most successful album of his career.
“School’s Out was the album no one ever expected,” says Cooper. “We were the band that everyone called the flavor of the month. So it was fun to smear it in those people’s faces. That’s why we called the next album Billion Dollar Babies. We thought the best thing to do was to make fun of ourselves and flaunt the whole thing.”
Cooper’s band formed in Phoenix in 1965 and underwent several name changes before opting for Alice Cooper, a name frontman Vincent Furnier also adopted as his own. The band became widely known for its outrageously theatrical stage shows, but its recordings went largely unnoticed until School’s Out.
For the follow-up album, Cooper and company holed up in Morgan Studios in London in December 1972 where they were frequently visited by some famous friends. “One night when we were cutting the basic tracks, Marc Bolan came in with Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, Rick Grech, Ringo, and Donovan. We ended up doing an hour version of ‘Jailhouse Rock,”‘ says Cooper. Yet only Donovan, who was recording in the studio next door, actually made it onto Billion Dollar Babies. His voice was featured reciting lyrics along with Cooper on the title track. “Getting him to rock out on a song was really pretty cool,” says Cooper. “After that, his career was never the same.”
Although none of the album’s four singles cracked the top 20, they were hits on album rock radio and several would become staples of Cooper’s live set. “Elected,” the first single, was actually a rewrite of the song “Reflected” from the band’s 1969 debut album, Pretties For You. “The ’72 election was coming up and everyone was saying, ‘Elvis for President,’ so we said, ‘Why not Alice for President?”‘
Another Cooper favorite was “No More Mister Nice Guy.” Says Cooper, “That has a Who open-chord feel to it. It was a real basic pop song with a funny lyric. Every time we came into a different town, there were new rumors about us. We figured everyone hated us so much, we would take it to the extreme — ‘You think we are bad now, wait you see what’s coming.”‘
The album’s finale, “I Love the Dead,” cemented Cooper’s position as rock’s most notorious ghoul. “It was such a funny song. Certainly it was scary, but it was like any good horror movie, which is initially very scary, but then becomes really funny.”
America apparently got the joke. Cooper wasn’t elected President, but Billion Dollar Babies hit Number Ore six weeks on the chart. Says Cooper, “We were there with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, and Led Zeppelin — all of those people we looked up to. Then, all of a sudden we were on the charts with them, but ahead of them. It was an unbelievable dream.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of April 21, 1973
1. Billion Dollar Babies, Alice Cooper
2. Lady Sings the Blues, Diana Ross
3. The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd
4. Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite, Elvis Presley
5. The World Is a Ghetto, War