Influences And Recollections of a Musical Mind

Written By Braddon S. Williams

ALICE COOPER: BILLION DOLLAR BABIES

Billion Dollar Babies (1973) by Alice Cooper, was just an enormously entertaining album (well, it still is) in my teenage years. Seriously, what other band back then was writing material this twisted?

Song titles alone tell the story…I Love The Dead, Raped And Freezin’, Sick Things, Unfinished Sweet, Generation Landslide…just genius level weirdness, but at the same time deliciously catchy.

These songs would get in your head and run around endlessly like a hamster on one of those wire wheels.

No More Mr. Nice Guy, Elected, Billion Dollar Babies, and Hello Hooray were all successful singles and have all been in regular rotation in Alice’s wonderful stage shows up to the present day. This album was recorded in a party atmosphere and I read somewhere that there were lots of prominent musicians who recorded various parts and sang backups, but there was so much extra-curricular activity taking place that nothing was properly documented.

It all worked out just fine for all of us diehard Alice Cooper fans, because Billion Dollar Babies is still as wonderful today as it was in 1973.

I had the original vinyl and it came with this huge Billion Dollar bill that had the band picture on the front in place of a dead president. Wish I still had that…it was a really cool artifact.

As I recall, the album itself was designed to look like a snakeskin wallet and when you opened it up, the bill was folded inside a slot that looked like a money clip. Those extra touches were one of the joys of the vinyl experience!