ALICE COOPER - BILLION DOLLAR BABIES @ 50

 

Marking its 50th anniversary today is the sixth studio album from the Alice Cooper band, Billion Dollar Babies, which was released on February 25th, 1973. It was the most popular LP from the band up to that point, hitting the number one slot in both the US and UK. It was also the penultimate album by the band before its lead singer, one Vincent Furnier, would strike out on a solo career, taking the band name with him.

The first recording sessions for the album took place in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a mansion called the Galesi Estate. While at the estate, to achieve certain vocal sounds and echoes, microphones were run through rooms of various sizes, including a greenhouse. After beginning recording there in August of 1972, sessions were then held at Morgan Studios in London, wrapping up by January, 1973. While in London, Donovan contributed to the album by singing on its title track. The album was produced by Bob Ezrin, who had been behind the desk for their albums since Love It To Death in 1971. A quadraphonic mix of the LP was released on vinyl and reel to reel which featured radically different mixes, including alternate vocal takes.

The tour to support the album broke box office records in the US previously set by The Rolling Stones, with ticket sails pushed by the popularity of the album and the four hit singles that were taken from it. It represents the high water mark for the band. The album rocks consistently from end to end with buckets of memorable hooks littering virtually every song.

ALICE COOPER - KILLER @ 50

 

November 27th marks the half century anniversary for the fourth album by the Alice Cooper band, Killer, which was released 50 years ago on this day in 1971. Produced by Bob Ezrin, the album would succeed in solidifying Alice Cooper as one of the premier hard rock bands of the era.

After spending the latter half of the 1960s floundering around, mostly in LA, confusing the hell out of the hippies and generally being misunderstood and ignored, the group relocated back to the mid-west, near Detroit, where they found themselves with a much more sympathetic audience. While they faltered on their first two albums, by the time they came out with their surprise hit single, I’m Eighteen, and its accompanying album, Love it To Death, they’d secured a solid relationship with young-gun producer Ezrin and the financial support of Warner Bros. Records. Ezrin weened them off their meandering psychedelic tendencies and pushed them into a much more concise, sharper hard rock sound and worked their asses off until their songwriting was tightened up enough to make them reliable chart contenders.

Killer is a fully realized representation of Alice Cooper as a band and features some of their most memorable songs. Both the album and its two singles charted respectfully, though not quite as high as I’m Eighteen or the hits that would come after like School’s Out from their follow-up album, but that doesn’t take away from the vitality of Killer nor its ability to deliver a blistering, catchy riff. In the arena of ’70s hard rock and proto-metal, it sits in the top range of classic albums. It certainly belongs on the list of “must have” records by the band or even Alice Cooper as a solo artist after their 1975 breakup. It even has one of the band’s more controversial songs in Dead Babies, though that controversy is entirely misplaced as any cursory examination of the lyrics will show it’s clearly AGAINST child abuse, but that didn’t stop desperate fretting parents from wringing their hands in dismay!

The album would garner predominantly strong critical reactions and many of its songs became live concert staples for both the band and throughout Alice’s solo career and also feature heavily in many of the his/their career retrospective compilations that have been released over the years. It’s classic rock in all the best ways. Even Johnny Rotten considered it one of the best rock albums ever released!

ALICE COOPER - LOVE IT TO DEATH @ 50

 

Alice Cooper used to be a band and not just the guy singing the songs. Back when this was true, 50 years ago today, on March 9th, 1971, they released their third album, Love It To Death. It’s success became the basis upon which they’d build their legend.

Alice Cooper, the band, had been around under various names since about 1966 and had managed to develop a reputation for some wild, theatrical live shows. After spending some time in LA and doing a couple of middling, commercially irrelevant psyche-rock albums for Frank Zappa’s label, the group relocated to Detroit just in time to find themselves surrounded by the likes of raw powerhouses like the MC5 and The Stooges with the furious Iggy Pop freaking out on stage. George Clinton was also firing up the stage with Funkadelic and these influences all helped to revitalize Alice Cooper. Eventually, after seeing them at Max’s Kansas City in NYC, greenhorn producer, Bob Ezrin, finally agreed to work with the band and, after rehearsing the fuck out of them for 10-12 hour days for a few months, got them to record I’m Eighteen as a single to prove to label Warner Bros. that they had commercial potential. The single was a solid hit for the group and got them into the studio to do a full album.

After all that rehearsal, Ezrin had managed to banish all the psychedelic excesses out of them, whittling 8 minute freakout jams down to concise three minute hard rock songs. The result was a tight, heavy album of rock that would come together at the perfect time to become part of the foundational cornerstones of the heavy metal music scene along with similarly influential works by the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. And while those bands may have owned more of the credit for the music’s sound than Alice Cooper, the accompanying stage show the band put together to tour the album would be far more influential in terms of giving the burgeoning genre its style and aesthetic.

The album's influence, however, wouldn’t be limited to heavy metal heads. A few years later, as punk rock began to rumble in the streets of London and New York, both it’s primary respective instigators, the Sex Pistols and the Ramones, would reference I’m Eighteen in their own songs, with the Pistols even legendarily auditioning front-man Johnny Rotten by having him lip-sync the Cooper hit on a Jukebox in Malcolm McLaren’s boutique. The immediacy and energy of the music simply worked as a touchstone for the punks in the same way that Hawkwind did for the emerging scene.

Alice Cooper, as a band, would produce several more classic albums before lead singer Vince Furnier decided to take the brand as his private, solo vehicle and leave the rest of the group behind. Love It To Death, however, is still considered the first proper Alice Cooper album and one of their best.