It’s not a concept album, per se, but it has the feel of one–on it Alice grapples with having money tossed at him, threatens to parlay the success of “School’s Out” into an apocalyptic run for higher office which he’s sure to win in a “generation landslide” cuz he’s got the toxic kiddie vote wrapped up, and in general flexes his skinny biceps while singing “God, I feel so strong, I am so strong.”īillion Dollar Babies is the original Alice Cooper band’s most coherent, sophisticated and (arguably) best LP, which isn’t to say it includes my favorite songs by 1973 the wellspring of proto-punk sleaze rockers that helped propel Alice to prominence ( Love It to Death’s opening trifecta of “Caught in a Dream,” “I’m Eighteen,” and “Long Way to Go” remains one of my favorite opening salvos in rock) had more or less run dry, and the lurid melodrama was beginning to take over. You can see him, poor dear, with his red eyes sticking out and his temples straining… I find him very demeaning.” Which didn’t stop Lou Reed, for one, from stooping to his own brand of low-rent on-stage theatrics if shaving Iron Crosses onto your skull and mimicking shooting up on stage isn’t “straining” to be outrageous, what is?įact is Billion Dollar Babies isn’t really that different from Diamond Dogs or Berlin (whose producer, Bob Ezrin, also produced this baby). Who cares if his oh so chic contemporaries dismissed him with a smug wave of the hand? Sneered an offended David Bowie: “I think he’s trying to be outrageous. Barnum hokum–a low-brow sensationalist who lacked the talent, subtlety and immediacy of such glam era creatures as David and Lou and Iggy–Alice was winning the big youth vote (“Elected” indeed!) and laughing all the way to the bank. While your more sophisticated tastemakers were deriding poor Alice as so much P.T. Ed.Īlice Cooper had the music world’s head in a guillotine in the year of our dark lord 1973 his cartoonishly ghoulish song matter and macabre on-stage shock rock shtick were thrilling to outrage-hungry teengenerates like my older brother, who went to a show on Alice’s Billion Dollar Babies tour in a suit covered with a billion dollars’ worth of stapled-on Monopoly money. Remembering Glen Buxton, born on this day in 1947.
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