ALICE COOPER "BILLION DOLLAR BABIES" 1973 EMBOSSED W/INSERT NM-/EX 1st PRESS LP

$

46

THREE YEARS AGO I LOST ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS TO CANCER, HE WAS A COOL MUSICIAN A DRUMMER BY TRADE, ORIGINALLY FROM SEATTLE, BUT RELOCATED TO L.A. IN 1985, HE AMASSED A VERY LARGE MUSIC COLLECTION, AND HAD KILLER TASTE FOR ROCK & ROLL, SADLY I AM SELLING OFF A LOT OF HIS COLLECTION ON BEHALF OF HIS WIDOW TO HELP PAY OFF DEBTS INCLUDING BILLS, TAXES AND STORAGE UNIT FEES. I AM NOT TAKING ANYTHING FOR THIS SERVICE, DOING IT FOR MY FRIEND (MISS YOU DAVE!). THIS ITEM IS FROM HIS COLLECTION.

THE PHOTO'S MAY BE A LITTLE BLURRY, HAVE A LITTLE GLARE, SOME REFLECTIONS OR IN SOME CASES YOU MAY SEE SPECKS OF DUST. BUT THE PHOTO'S ARE OF THE ACTUAL ITEM YOU ARE BIDDING ON. I DO COMBINE SHIPPING. BUT I DO NOT ACCEPT “BEST OFFERS”, THE MONIES GO TO MY FRIENDS WIDOW.

THESE ARE VISUALLY & PLAY GRADED.

ARTISTS: ALICE COOPER

TITLE: “BILLION DOLLAR BABIES”

TRACK LISTING (SEE PHOTOS & BELOW):

A1

Hello Hooray

4:14

A2

Raped And Freezin'

3:15

A3

Elected

4:05

A4

Billion Dollar Babies

3:39

A5

Unfinished Sweet

6:17

B1

No More Mr. Nice Guy

3:05

B2

Generation Landslide

4:31

B3

Sick Things

4:18

B4

Mary Ann

2:19

B5

I Love The Dead

5:08

Companies, etc.

• Produced For – Nimbus 9 Productions Limited

• Phonographic Copyright (p) – Warner Bros. Records Inc.

• Copyright (c) – Warner Bros. Records Inc.

• Published By – Ezra Music

• Published By – Wb Music Corp.

• Recorded At – Alice Cooper Mansion

• Recorded At – Morgan Studios

• Recorded At – Record Plant, N.Y.C.

• Mastered At – Master Cutting Room

Credits

• Design Concept [Album] – Pacific Eye & Ear

• Engineer – Ed Sprigg, Frank Hubach, Jack (The Rock) Douglas*, Peter Flanagan, Robin Black, Shelly Yakus

• Mastered By – George Marino

• Photography By – David Bailey (5), Lynn Goldsmith, Neal Preston

• Producer – Bob Ezrin

Notes

First press on green WB label.

Embossed gatefold cover. Has set of cards perforated on inside of gatefold. Comes with a billion dollar banknote foldout and a printed inner sleeve with lyrics.

Produced by Bob Ezrin for Nimbus Nine Productions, Ltd.

Recorded At:
The Cooper Mansion, Greenwich, Conn. August and October 1972
Morgan Studios, London, England December 1972
Record Plant, New York, N.Y. December 1972, January 1973

Mastering At:
The Cutting Room, New York, N.Y.

Track A4: Donovan appears through the courtesy of Epic Records.

Barcode and Other Identifiers

• Matrix / Runout (Side A Label): S40,396

• Matrix / Runout (Side B Label): S40,397

• Matrix / Runout (Side A Etched Runout (Variant 1)): BS-2685 A 40396 -4C

• Matrix / Runout (Side B Etched Runout (Variant 1)): BS-2685 B 40397-4C

• Matrix / Runout (Side A Etched Runout (Variant 2)): BS-2685 A 40396 -4E

• Matrix / Runout (Side B Etched Runout (Variant 2)): BS-2685 A 40396 -4E

• Matrix / Runout (Side A Etched Runout (Variant 3)): BS-2685 40396-4F

• Matrix / Runout (Side B Etched Runout (Variant 3)): BS-2685 40397-4D
  

LABEL: WARNER BROS. RECORDS

CAT. #: BS 2685

YEAR: 1973

RECORD CONDITION: THE RECORD IS IN EX/NM- CONDITION, NICE SHINEY BLACK LUSTER. NO MARKS OR SCRATCHES,LINES, ETC. BOTH LABELS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.NICE SHINEY LUSTER TO THE VINYL.NO AUDBLE NOISE BETWEEN TRACKS. THE SONGS SOUND GREAT. PLAYS CLEAN!

SLEEVE CONDITION: THE JACKET IS IN EX/NM- CONDITION THERE'S NO WRITING ON THE JACKET. STRAIGHT EDGES, NO WRITING, TEARS, WRINKLES OR SEAM SPLITS, ETC.ETC. THIS IS THE EMBOSSED COVER. (RAISED CIRCLE AROUND THE BABY LOGO, ON BOTH SIDES OF THE JACKET).

MORE INFO: THIS RECORD IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT. AS MENTIONED THIS INCLUDES THE “BILLION DOLLAR BILL” AS WELL AS THE “PUNCH OUT” CARDS. ALSO COMES WITH ORIGINAL INNER SLEEVE WITH BAND PHOTO & LYRICS. MATRIX # BS-2685/40396-4C

MORE ON THE ARTIST & RELEASE:

Alice Cooper was an American rock band formed in Phoenix, Arizona in 1964. The band consisted of lead singer Vince Furnier (stage name Alice Cooper), Glen Buxton (lead guitar), Michael Bruce (rhythm guitar, keyboards), Dennis Dunaway (bass guitar), and Neal Smith (drums). Furnier legally changed his name to Alice Cooper and has had a solo career under that name since the band became inactive in 1975. The band was notorious for their elaborate, theatrical shock rock stage shows. In 2011, the original Alice Cooper band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

After several years of little success, the Alice Cooper band rose to fame in 1971 with the hit single "I'm Eighteen" and the album Love It to Death. Success continued with the popular single "School's Out" and the album of the same name in 1972. The band peaked in popularity in 1973 with their next album Billion Dollar Babies and its tour, which broke box-office records previously held by The Rolling Stones.

History

Formative years

The band consisted of former members of the garage rock band the Spiders, formed in Phoenix in 1964 with three of the eventual five Alice Cooper members (Furnier, Dunaway and Buxton), who were classmates in high school. Michael Bruce and Neal Smith joined in 1966 and 1967, respectively. They created everything as a group and wrote virtually the lion's share of what became the classic Alice Cooper canon.

The band officially relocated to Los Angeles in 1967, having traveled there frequently for shows, and were briefly renamed Nazz. In 1968, the band learned that Todd Rundgren also had a band called Nazz, and found themselves in need of another name. The legend is that the name "Alice Cooper" came from a session with a Ouija board and was the name of a 17th century witch. However, Furnier described the incident with the ouija board as "just pure urban legend...but it was a great story."[5] Furnier stated the name was chosen simply as a gimmick, because it sounded innocuous and wholesome, in humorous contrast to the band's image and music.

After a 1968 gig at the Cheetah club in Venice, California, where most of the club's patrons left after hearing the band play just ten minutes, they were approached by music manager Shep Gordon, who saw the band's negative impact that night as a force that could be turned in a more productive direction.Shep arranged an audition for the band with renowned musical artist and record producer Frank Zappa, who was looking to sign bizarre music acts to his new record label, Straight Records. Zappa told them to come to his house "at 7 o'clock" for an audition. The band mistakenly assumed he meant 7 o'clock in the morning. Being woken up by a band willing to play that particular brand of music at seven in the morning impressed Zappa enough for him to sign them to a three-album deal."Frank was the only one who stuck out his neck for us, for me," recalled Alice himself. "He was the one who said, 'Here's a band that everybody in the business is laughing at – I like 'em.' … He was the outcast in L.A. and so were we."The first three Alice Cooper albums were released on Zappa's Straight label.

Another Zappa-signed act, the all-female GTOs, were encouraged to dress up the Alice Cooper band members in women's clothing and heavy makeup, and played a major role in developing the band's early onstage look.

The band was the subject of media criticism after Furnier threw a live chicken into the audience during the 1969 Toronto Rock 'n' Roll Revival Festival. The audience ripped the chicken to shreds.In 1970, the band appeared on a Warner Bros sampler album, Zapped, featuring acts produced by Zappa.

Finding success

Slow sales of the band's first two albums, as well as Californians' indifference to their act, led the band to relocate again in 1970, this time to Pontiac, Michigan near Furnier's original home town of Detroit. Here, their bizarre stage act was much better received by Midwestern crowds accustomed to the proto punk styles of local bands such as the Stooges and the MC5. "L.A. just didn’t get it," Furnier stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."

Hooking up with young producer Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper released the single "I'm Eighteen" in late 1970, and it became a surprise Top 40 hit. The single's success convinced Warner Bros that the band could be a viable commercial act, leading to much stronger investment in the third Alice Cooper album, Love It to Death. The album was initially released on Straight Records, but was reissued on the Warner label following its buyout of the imprint from Zappa, giving Alice Cooper even greater exposure. Under Ezrin's direction, the band's sound moved from psychedelic rock to a tighter, guitar-driven hard rock sound, even as much of the lyrical content continued to explore "decadence, perversion and psychosis."

With Love It to Death and its follow-up album Killer both charting well, the band was able to afford a more elaborate stage show, including sophisticated props and elements of gothic horror, and they became a highly popular concert attraction in the US and UK over the next few years. Calls by members of British Parliament in 1972 to have the group banned from performing in the UK only solidified the band's legend, and the next year's Billion Dollar Babies tour broke box office records. Cindy Dunaway (Neal Smith's sister who married Dennis Dunaway) designed the band's costumes and occasionally performed in the stage show (she was the "dancing tooth" on the Billion Dollar Babies tour).

Following Killer, Alice Cooper released three more hit albums – all three charting in the US Top Ten – and headlined major tours from 1972 to 1974, before breaking up.

Breakup of the original band

The original Alice Cooper band played their final show on April 8, 1974 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There are varying reasons former band members have given for the breakup. Smith said the members wanted to take a year off to slow down and possibly do solo projects, and just never reunited. Cooper said there was disagreement over how much money to sink back into stage shows, which had become costly. Bruce contends that Buxton's issues with substance abuse, which at one time led him to pull a switchblade on the band's tour manager, likely hastened the breakup.

The breakup was made public in 1975.Vincent Furnier took "Alice Cooper" as his own name and carried on as a solo artist with a new group of musicians,the original band becoming officially defunct. Furnier later stated that the name change was one of his most important and successful career moves.

Billion Dollar Babies is the sixth studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released in 1973.The album became the best selling Alice Cooper record at the time of its release, hit number one on the album charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and went on to be certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album has been retrospectively praised by such critics as Robert Christgau, Greg Prato of AllMusic, and Jason Thompson of PopMatters, but The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) gave the album only two and a half stars.

Songs were recorded in both the state of Connecticut and London, England. Lyrics cover topics and themes such as necrophilia, dental fear, horror, and sexual harassment.

Recording and production

Drummer Neal Smith has said that the album can be traced back to the song "Caught in a Dream" from the album Love It to Death (1971). The first recording sessions for the album took place in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a mansion called the Galesi Estate. To achieve certain vocal sounds and echoes, microphones were run through rooms of various sizes and a greenhouse. Other sessions were held at Morgan Studios in London, where singer Donovan contributed to the album by singing on its title track. The album was produced by Bob Ezrin with Gerry Lyon as assistant in New York, Connecticut and London.

Guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce both used Gibson SGs for the album. Three more guitarists, Mick Mashbir, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, were also featured on the album to help cover for Buxton who at the time was suffering from pancreatitis.

A Quadraphonic mix of the album was released on both eight-track and reel-to-reel format, as well as vinyl. This features radically different mixes of all of the songs, including different vocal tracks ("Raped and Freezin'"), unfaded endings ("Generation Landslide"), and editing ("I Love the Dead"). Alice's lead vocals are more upfront in the quad mix than the stereo mix. There has been discussion that this mix of the album can be found on the DVD-Audio release, which is not the case. The DVD-Audio release contains a newer 5.1 channel mix of the album, based on the original 2-channel tracks as opposed to the quad mix.

Lyrical themes and subjects

The album's title comes from the fact that the five members of Alice Cooper were surprised about their success. Cooper related: “How could we, this band that two years ago was living in the Chambers Brothers’ basement in Watts, be the Number One band in the world, with people throwing money at us?” The title was also later used as the name of the group Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway, and Michael Bruce formed after Alice Cooper group had split up Cooper said, "The whole idea behind the Billion Dollar Babies album was exploiting the idea that people do have sick perversions."

Alice Cooper, who wrote the majority of the album's lyrics, cited Chuck Berry as a key influence on his writing."Hello Hooray", the album's opening track, was written by Canadian singer/songwriter Rolf Kempf and was previously recorded by Judy Collins. The band wanted their version of the song to sound like "Alice Cooper meets Cabaret". The album's third track, "Elected", is a rewrite of the song "Reflected" from Pretties for You (1969). "Raped and Freezin' has been called a "hilarious and gorgeously catchy" take on the idea of sexual harassment by PopMatters's Jason Thompson "Unfinished Sweet" is about visiting a dentist with sound effects recorded by Gerry Lyon.The title track was co-written by Reggie Vinson (credited on original pressings of the album as "R. Reggie", i.e., "Rockin' Reggie Vinson"), who had played guitar on and performed vocals for School's Out (1972). Donovan described the song as a "horror story song". The album's closing track, "I Love the Dead", is a tongue-in-cheek song about necrophilia.

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