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ALBUM REVIEW
ALICE COOPER
Billion Dollar Babies
Released - 1973, Warner Bros. Records. Produced by Bob
Ezrin
Alice Cooper - Lead & Backing Vocals
Michael Bruce - Lead & Rhythm Guitars, Keyboards
Glen Buxton - Guitar Riffs
Dennis Dunaway - Bass Guitar
Neal Smith - Drums
Additional Personnel - Donovan - Vocal Harmony on "Billion
Dollar Babies", Steve Hunter and Dick
Wagner - additional Guitar Licks.
All songs written by members of Alice Cooper (see below) except "Hello Hooray"
written by Rolf Kempf.
| SONG | RATING |
| Hello Hooray (Kempf) | 10.0 |
| Raped And Freezin' (Bruce/Cooper) | 9.0 |
| Elected (Bruce/Buxton/Cooper/Dunaway/Smith) | 10.0 |
| Billion Dollar Babies (Bruce/Cooper/Reggie) | 10.0 |
| Unfinished Sweet (Bruce/Cooper/Smith) | 7.4 |
| No More Mr. Nice Guy (Bruce/Cooper) | 10.0 |
| Generation Landslide (Bruce/Buxton/Cooper/Dunaway) | 8.2 |
| Sick Things (Bruce/Ezrin) | 5.6 |
| Mary Ann (Bruce/Cooper) | 6.6 |
| I Love The Dead (Cooper/Ezrin) | 6.6 |
| Ave | 8.34 |
REVIEW
Another high energy album put out by the band with outstanding guitar riffs, this one made it to #1 in both the US and UK. The LP starts off with its only cover, "Hello, Hooray", with Alice Cooper's lead vocals on here as strong as he has ever sang.
Contains two classic hard rock songs in "Elected" (great lyrics!) and the title cut, "Billion Dollar Babies". "B$B" features a great vocal duo with Alice & sixties icon Donovan Leitch, plus an even greater lead guitar played by Michael Bruce. The band's normal lead guitar man, Glen Buxton, was having major health and drug problems when the sessions for B$B were taking place and he missed out on most of the recordings.
Another classic is "No More Mr Nice Guy", yet I think I've heard this one over the radio a little to much. "Generation Landslide" is another fun song, talk about a generation gap! It starts out with the Baby Boomer's generation taking over their parents, then fast forwards to the Boomer's kids overtaking them (or something like that!). Also when this album was released, a song that was the cause of great discussion was "I Love The Dead". Dealing with necrophilia, it was one of the very first Goth Rock songs.
Some claimed the band sold out with this album, sorry but I don't see that anywhere. This is a true Alice Cooper album and one of their best.
-- Keno 2000
To listen to some soundclips from Billion Dollar Babies or to purchase it click on: Billion Dollar Babies
To listen to some soundclips from the remastered 2001 Billion Dollar Babies, which contians a second CD
with 11 live tracks from 1973, plus 3 studio outtakes of songs, click on this link: Billion
Dollar Babies Remastered Extra Tracks
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