Alice Cooper - "Billion Dollar Babies" (1973) - Warner Bros.
Hello Friends,
Halloween is fast approaching and you know what that means... time to break out the Alice Cooper vinyl!
Billion Dollar Babies would be the band's sixth studio album and the fourth produced by longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin.
The band, Alice Cooper, had quite the run on their first six records introducing the world to sleazy yet well-constructed and theatrical garage rock with subject matter and themes that range from classic Horror imagery, to drug use, child abuse, insanity and Leonard Bernstein.
Billion Dollar Babies would continue with these themes and throw in some elements of glam rock, Cabaret-style theatrics, politics, necrophilia and other twisted perversions.
Undoubtedly, a great album from start to finish and like the best Alice Cooper, its also a very fun album with lots of great hooks, pitch black humor and not-so-subtle innuendo!
Kicking off with the Cabaret-inspired "Hello Hooray", the only non-original song on the record, written by the very German-sounding Rolf Kempf and originally performed by Judy Collins in 1968.
"Raped and Freezin'" harkens back to what the band sounded like on 1971's Love It To Death. A great road/driving song about a young male hitchhiker getting picked up (and sexually assaulted) by "some old Broad down in Santa Fe" who leaves him naked, raped and freezin' somewhere over the Mexican border! We've been there before, friends!
The epic and theatrical sounding "Elected" points more to the direction that Alice Cooper (the solo act) would head in a few years later with Welcome To My Nightmare. It also reminds us of something from Quadrophenia. I would undoubtedly vote for whatever candidate uses this as their campaign song!
The great title track is up next and something we never realized until we read the liner notes to this record is that its none other than Donovan singing harmony vocals on the song! Glen Buxton, the original guitarist for The Alice Cooper Band, is in especially fine form here as well.
Alice Cooper's ode to his fear of dentists (anti-dentite?),"Unfinished Sweet", closes out the side and it too is great, but at 6:18 perhaps a minute too long!
And speaking of sweets...
I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing
Until they got a hold of me
Side Two kicks off with one of Alice Cooper's best and most revered songs, "No More Mr. Nice Guy".
Full blown theatrics and operatics are back on "Generation Landslide", again which reminds us of something that might be found on The Who's Quadrophenia (which, we should mention, also came out in 1973 but several months after Billion Dollar Babies was released!)
"Sick Things" is sleazy and creepy-sounding (both good things!) and sounds as if its coming from the pov of Charlie Manson or some other cult-type leader!
Sticking with the creepy theme is "Mary Ann" a soft piano ballad that being presumably being sung to a transvestite!? Or maybe a corpse? Or a transvestite corpse?? Alice sounds a little like Wings-era McCartney or even Todd Rundgren here.
But speaking of creepy...
I love the dead before they're cold
They're bluing flesh for me to hold
Cadaver eyes upon me see nothing...
The album concludes (and climaxes) with the band's epic ode to necrophilia, "I Love The Dead". Alice Cooper might have fallen in love with "Cold Ethyl" two years later on Nightmare, but you don't need to do any Google searches on this one to interpret what this song is about! Scatting and all!
Spooky!
RATING: 5 Sticky Sweet Suckers in the Halloween Air out of 5
Halloween is fast approaching and you know what that means... time to break out the Alice Cooper vinyl!
Billion Dollar Babies would be the band's sixth studio album and the fourth produced by longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin.
The band, Alice Cooper, had quite the run on their first six records introducing the world to sleazy yet well-constructed and theatrical garage rock with subject matter and themes that range from classic Horror imagery, to drug use, child abuse, insanity and Leonard Bernstein.
Billion Dollar Babies would continue with these themes and throw in some elements of glam rock, Cabaret-style theatrics, politics, necrophilia and other twisted perversions.
Undoubtedly, a great album from start to finish and like the best Alice Cooper, its also a very fun album with lots of great hooks, pitch black humor and not-so-subtle innuendo!
Kicking off with the Cabaret-inspired "Hello Hooray", the only non-original song on the record, written by the very German-sounding Rolf Kempf and originally performed by Judy Collins in 1968.
"Raped and Freezin'" harkens back to what the band sounded like on 1971's Love It To Death. A great road/driving song about a young male hitchhiker getting picked up (and sexually assaulted) by "some old Broad down in Santa Fe" who leaves him naked, raped and freezin' somewhere over the Mexican border! We've been there before, friends!
The epic and theatrical sounding "Elected" points more to the direction that Alice Cooper (the solo act) would head in a few years later with Welcome To My Nightmare. It also reminds us of something from Quadrophenia. I would undoubtedly vote for whatever candidate uses this as their campaign song!
The great title track is up next and something we never realized until we read the liner notes to this record is that its none other than Donovan singing harmony vocals on the song! Glen Buxton, the original guitarist for The Alice Cooper Band, is in especially fine form here as well.
Alice Cooper's ode to his fear of dentists (anti-dentite?),"Unfinished Sweet", closes out the side and it too is great, but at 6:18 perhaps a minute too long!
And speaking of sweets...
I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing
Until they got a hold of me
Side Two kicks off with one of Alice Cooper's best and most revered songs, "No More Mr. Nice Guy".
Full blown theatrics and operatics are back on "Generation Landslide", again which reminds us of something that might be found on The Who's Quadrophenia (which, we should mention, also came out in 1973 but several months after Billion Dollar Babies was released!)"Sick Things" is sleazy and creepy-sounding (both good things!) and sounds as if its coming from the pov of Charlie Manson or some other cult-type leader!
Sticking with the creepy theme is "Mary Ann" a soft piano ballad that being presumably being sung to a transvestite!? Or maybe a corpse? Or a transvestite corpse?? Alice sounds a little like Wings-era McCartney or even Todd Rundgren here.
But speaking of creepy...
I love the dead before they're cold
They're bluing flesh for me to hold
Cadaver eyes upon me see nothing...
The album concludes (and climaxes) with the band's epic ode to necrophilia, "I Love The Dead". Alice Cooper might have fallen in love with "Cold Ethyl" two years later on Nightmare, but you don't need to do any Google searches on this one to interpret what this song is about! Scatting and all!
Spooky!
RATING: 5 Sticky Sweet Suckers in the Halloween Air out of 5
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