December 23, 2024

Skylight Webzine

Online since 2000

Audio Fidelity To Release Classic Alice Cooper Album ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ On Hybrid SACD On February 4, 2014

Alice Cooper fans worldwide rejoice! Marshall Blonstein’s Audio Fidelity is releasing Alice Cooper’s classic album ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ on Hybrid SACD on February 4, 2014! As a bonus, along with the meticulously reproduced artwork, enclosed in every CD is the very collectible replicated ‘Billion Dollar Bill’
With ‘Billion Dollar Babies’, Alice Cooper refined the raw grit of their earlier work in favor of a slightly more polished sound resulting in a mega-hit album that reached the top of the US and UK album charts. It’s impossible to overstate how popular the band had become by the time their sixth album was released. The album, is brilliant, decadent and encapsulated all the celebrity trashiness of the 70’s only three years into the decade.
Song for song, ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ is probably the original Alice Cooper group’s finest and strongest. The album’s singles “Elected”, “Hello Hooray”, “Billion Dollar Babies”,and “No More Mr. Nice Guy” all became hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Also included are a pair of perennial concert standards – the disturbing necrophilia ditty “I Love the Dead” and the chilling macabre of “Sick Things”.
After the album was released, the band embarked on a tour which broke the US box office records previously held by the Rolling Stones. The show climaxed with a guillotine execution of Alice. The album and the tour made the band into the world’s preeminent pied pipers of teenage trash culture and the most successful rock band ever to be loathed by American parents.
“Other than the original ‘Alice Cooper Band’ being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2011, our second biggest achievement was when our album ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ went to Number #1 in all three music trade magazines at the same time in April of 1973. Number #1 in Billboard, Number #1 in Record World and Number #1 in Cash Box. We had hoped it would sell Gold or Platinum as a follow up to the success of our album ‘School’s Out’, but a Number #1 album was something that was totally unexpected. Over the years the title track “Billion Dollar Babies” has become my signature song because of the recognizable drum intro.” – Neal Smith, Alice Cooper drummer and founding member
“I remember we were out on the road when the album finally came out in February 1973. I listened to it in my hotel room and just got this really big smile. I was thinking, ‘It’s amazing, we’re really pulling this off’. The album was very, very unique and very, very different. I was really proud of the songs, especially ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’, ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ and ‘Generation Landslide’.” – Michael Bruce, Alice Cooper guitarist/keyboardist and founding member
TRACKS:
1. Hello Hooray   
2. Raped and Freezin’
3. Elected
4. Billion Dollar Babies
5. Unfinished Sweet
6. No More Mr. Nice Guy
7. Generation Landslide
8. Sick Things
9. Mary-Ann
10. I Love the Dead
Produced by Bob Ezrin
Mastered by Steve Hoffman at Stephen Marsh Mastering
“…it remains one of rock’s quintessential classic albums!”