The recording: “We were a rock’n’roll band that wanted to be theatrical”
To realise their collective vision, Alice Cooper again hooked up with Bob Ezrin, the man who had overseen all their recordings since their 1971 breakthrough, Love It To Death. The renowned Canadian producer (who also helmed classic albums by the likes of Lou Reed, KISS and Aerosmith) was the ideal foil for a group with big ideas and an innate sense of theatre.
“Bob definitely came along at the right time,” Dunaway said in 2004. “[Guitarist] Mike Bruce’s songwriting had improved leaps and bounds. Neal [Smith, drummer] and I had improved across the board, and Alice’s voice had matured – gotten much stronger and less nasal than the early days – but when Bob came along we were still trying to fit a million ideas into each song. It took him to… finally focus our direction.”
“He was a young guy with a theatrical background, and we were a rock’n’roll band that wanted to be theatrical,” Cooper added. “Bob Ezrin was our George Martin.”
The band concocted the material for Billion Dollar Babies before and during recording sessions for the album, which spread across three stages. Initially, a mobile studio from New York City’s Record Plant facilities was parked outside The Cooper Mansion, in Greenwich, Connecticut, where the group laid down the basic tracks with Ezrin. Band and producer then flew to London, where they recorded overdubs and most of Cooper’s vocals, before returning to New York for mixing at The Record Plant. Everyone involved, however, recalled the London phase, at Willesden’s Morgan Studios, with particular fondness.
“We had access to a lot of the stars,” Cooper said with relish. “In fact, T.Rex, Donovan, Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon are all on that album somewhere, but none of us know where, because the session was so drunk.”