CD Odyssey Disc 228: Alice Cooper

I actually finished listening to this album yesterday, but there was no way I was taking it out of my car after only one listen.

Disc 228 is...Billion Dollar Babies
Artist: Alice Cooper

Year of Release: 1973

What’s Up With The Cover?: Snakeskin with an "Alice Baby" gold coin. Somehow I doubt you can order them from the Franklin Mint, and more's the pity. My CD cover art has an annoying 'special price' logo actually printed into the picture so I instead took a picture of my vinyl version (yes - I have this record on vinyl - more on that later).

How I Came To Know It: I have known this album since I was a kid and I've owned it in a lot of formats. In the eighties I had it on tape. When I bought a CD player it was one of the first albums I purchased. Then last year I saw a copy of the original vinyl in Fan Tan Alley records that was in great shape. Even the inside was practically mint - check it out:
The folded bill to the left actually folds out into a giant "Billion Dollar Bill" - here's a photo of it folded out:
How I long for the days when artists cared to put this kind of effort into their product. Anyway, on with the review.

How It Stacks Up: I have twenty five studio albums by Alice Cooper. It is a competitive field, but even so I put "Billion Dollar Babies" first, slighly edging out the similarly impressive "Love It To Death".

Rating: 5 stars.

As this is my seventh Alice Cooper review, I'll gloss over the generalities (one of the most under-rated songwriters of all time, more than just shock rock, incredible career etc.) and get on to the album at hand.

"Billion Dollar Babies" is one of the greatest rock records ever pressed. Chronologically, it represents the Alice Cooper band at the height of their talents - fresh off of the concept album "School's Out" and just before the impressive but somewhat disjointed "Muscle of Love", it combines everything that is great about Alice Cooper, before later bickering impacted their ability to work together.

Alice's vocals are brilliant, and show a surprising amount of range - he has that rare ability to sing in different styles - raspy rock voiced, plaintiff cries, a hollow lounge singer tone and a creepy staccato that is like white rock's early answer to rap.

Glen Buxton's guitar has a true rock tone, played in "Alex Lifeson/Buck Dharma" style selflessness that adds to the song without deliberately calling attention to itself. If you focus on the guitar, you fall right into the groove, but you can just as easily move to the drums, or Alice's lyrics or any other element and have a great time.

I gave "Billion Dollar Babies" three listens on this go around, and found myself enjoying Buxton's solos more than usual. They are not the ridiculous noodling that would come to exemplify eighties rock, but rather controlled constructs of rock designed to fit into the overall feel of each song.

Speaking of properly constructing a song, "Billion Dollar Babies" is also producer Bob Ezrin at the height of his talent. His fingerprints are all over this record.

As I type this, I am listening to the last song on Side One, "Unfinished Sweet", a song about an unfortunate trip to the dentist. The song has a section between the 2nd and 3rd stanzas where the music descends into the sounds of a jaw being hyperextended, slowly builds back into a nice even drum beat, then morphs into a strange sound of a spring twanging and then into a classic guitar riff, and finally back to the main melody - each step as flawless as it is bizarre and unexpected.

Why did I choose this song to demonstrate what this record is capable of? Absolutely no reason - it was playing when I got to this point. I could have just as easily discussed how Alice's vocal styles are layered on top of one another in "Billion Dollar Babies" where he matter-of-factly sets the scene as he dances with a baby in the attic, fearful 'it's little head will come off in my hands'. Since it is Alice, we must assume this comes to pass (sort of a prequel to an earlier song off of Killer; "Dead Babies").

My favourite song on the record has varied widely over the years, but for a while now it has been the opening track, "Hello Hooray". This is a song ostensibly about how pumped Alice feels as he walks on stage, but is really an expression of how we all feel when we are at our most positive and invincible. Its manic mood is so infectious, it always has me singing along in the car (or wherever I happen to be):

"Hello Hooray" is one of the finest rock anthems ever written. Play it when you are leaving a bad job for the last time, or just when you're ready for the weekend. Play it when you're deeply in love, or deeply alone. Play it when you're going to get lucky or even when you're just going to spend a quite evening alone with a bottle of bourbon. It will make you feel good regardless.

Where to go next - the album has so many great one offs, like a man who gets more than he bargained for from a hitchhiker in "Raped and Freezin'":

"Felt like I was hit by a diesel-loaded Greyhound bus
She was no babysitter."

As this song fades out to a mariachi beat, and the tale of a man fleeing naked across a Mexican desert, you'll think you've heard it all, but it is only the second song.

Later in the record will come a powerful and prophetic indictments of excessive consumerism in our society in "Generation Landslide". The song fades out with a fine Buxton guitar solo, but not before it gives us a harmonica solo in advance of that. This whack-a-doo song not only brings all its weird elements together successfully - it excels at it.

Side Two opens with "No More Mr. Nice Guy" which is as straight ahead a rock song as this album has, and great emotional fodder for anyone who's felt victimized by public opinion. I love that this song is still played at Detroit Red Wings games when the visiting team scores a goal. Score one for the music director at Joe Louis.

The album closes with "I Love The Dead", a song that is about exactly what you think it is about and leaves little to the imagination. Best line:

"I love the dead, before they're cold
Their bluing flesh for me to hold.
Cadaver eyes upon me see...nothing."

This album covers a lot of ground, and takes a lot of risks and everything pays off. It is a 'must have' on CD - unless you can get it on vinyl, where it sounds even better.

Best tracks: All tracks, although they are better heard in a row. If you must divide them up, then you could skip "Sick Things" but keep the rest.