MAKING OF THE ALBUM: Alice Cooper – Billion Dollar Babies

As a group, Alice Cooper had enjoyed modest success during the early 1970s with several highly acclaimed albums; Love It to Death, Killer and School’s Out. Their sixth release, 1973′s Billion Dollar Babies, saw them once again collaborating with producer Bob Ezrin, who would play a major role in the shaping of their sound. Under pressure to repeat the commercial success of their last single, School’s Out, the band entered The Galecie Estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, in August 1972 to commence work on what would become the group’s fourth album to reach platinum. Once again, the band consisted of frontman Alice Cooper (born Vincent Furnier), guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith, with Ezrin on keyboard.

The concept for Billion Dollar Babies was inspired by the success and attention that the band had begun to receive, with the record company (Warner Bros.) pouring money into the group, something that the former garage band found somewhat overwhelming. Cooper’s hatred for politics would also come into play, with the track Elected being a biting satire on post-Watergate America. The album was also inspired by the track Caught in a Dream (the opening song to 1971′s Love It to Death, written by Bruce), which laid the foundations for the themes that the group would explore with their latest work. Ezrin would allow the band to experiment during recording, with microphones placed in an empty greenhouse to achieve an echo. Problems arose during the recording sessions, however, when Buxton’s substance abuse began to cause issues with him performing, forcing the band to recruit the assistance of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter (Mick Mashbir was also brought in to assist with touring). Incidentally, when the group finally split in 1974 and Cooper embarked on a solo career, Wagner would become his chief collaborator for several years.

After the sessions at the Galecie Estate came to an end, production relocated to Morgan Studios in London in December to complete the recording of the album. The studio would become flooded with an array of famous musicians, such as Keith Moon, John Lennon, Marc Bolan and Harry Nilsson, many of whom were usually intoxicated, which proved too much of a distraction. One of their regular visitors was Donovan Leitch, a Scottish folk singer who had enjoyed success during the 1960s with the hits Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow. Leitch would contribute vocals to the track Billion Dollar Babies, who was working on his own album, Cosmic Wheels, in another room of the building. At the suggestion of Ezrin, the band would record a cover of Rolf Kempf’s Hello Hooray, which had previously been recorded by Judy Collins for her 1968 album Who Knows Where the Time Goes (which also featured renditions of Bob Dylan’s I Pity the Poor Immigrant and Leonard Cohen’s Story of Isaac and Bird on the Wire).

One of Cooper’s most famous songs, No More Mr. Nice Guy, was a deliberate attempt to produce a song that rivalled The Who‘s Substitute (which Moon was a member of). Several of the tracks would be dismissed as shock tactics due to their controversial titles, particularly Raped and Freezin’ and I Love the Dead (1971′s Killer had included a song called Dead Babies). Despite internal conflicts between each members of the band, Billion Dollar Babies would become a tremendous success when it was released in March 1973, aided by an elaborate stage show that would cost approximately $1.2m to create. Four singles would be released off the album, with Elected narrowly missing the US Top 20 (although it would reach no. 4 in the UK), whilst Hello Hooray, No More Mr. Nice Guy and Billion Dollar Babies would reach 35, 25 and 57, respectively.