Article Database

Concert Review: Billion Dollar Babies

Scene: A pre-concert press conference at the Downtown Howard Johnson’s motor lodge. The conference is held in a medium sized room with a bar and snack table in the back (Budweiser beer is available) and a table facing rows of chairs in the front. The various members of the press (college, rock and roll, straight and underground) wander in, take a drink, mill around, adjust cameras and tape recorders and wait.

Soon Ashley Pandel enters and sits at the table. He is in charge of promotion for Alice Cooper. Promotion for Alice Cooper, incidently, has roughly paralleled that of a presidential campaign ("I want to be elected?") Warner Bros, press releases explain that the production should gross more than any other tour in the history of rock and roll (about four and a half million bucks). To bring this about, Warner has come up with Alice Cooper posters, pillow cases, door and bumper stickers, press releases, photos, rumors, baby dolls, and among other things, a 48 passenger F-27 aircraft with an Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies logo on it’s nose.

Ashley explains that Alice will be coming out soon to answer all questions. The press continues to mill about, mumbling to each other and exchanging rumors when Alice comes in and sits at the table. Alice is carrying a can of Budweiser beer. Alice always carries a can of Bud. One must assume that by now Budweiser is subsidising that particular habit.

Alice seems likeable enough, smiling, laughing and exchanging jokes with the press. He gives answers, jokingly, before any questions come.

"Barbara Billingslea and myself have nothing in common. No, I'm not Eddie Haskel. Yes I do have a new snake. My favorite color is..."

The press chuckles mildly.

"Yes, I drink a case of beer a day.."

While Alice looks over a caricature of himself that appeared in a local student paper, short, polite questions begin coming.

"How many cities are on your tour;" "Fifty-six."

"What about the guillotine?" "It has only one safety device, and if that fails..."

A voice from the back of the hall, exclaims "Then there’s hope!" to which Alice jokingly yells, "Get him out of here!"

"How do you respond to people who say that you’re substituting gimmics for musical ability?" "They don't know how to have a good time.""

The voice from the back of the hall pipes up again: "Can you think of any reason we were all called here today?" to which Alice replies, with a querulous look, "I don’t think I like his attitude!"

Flo and Eddie the other group in the show, come in. Flo is wearing a hard hat with a plaster pink flamingo tied to the top. Now Alice, Flo and Eddie exchange quips about how much they love to be in the same production and how devoted they are as friends. The conference continues in this light vein until it breaks up. Alice leaves. Flo and Eddie leave. The press leaves. Everyone feels light. The conference was relaxed. Everyone is thinking, "Nice folks, these entertainers. Very professional, these Warner Brothers."

Scene: Later that evening. Outside Cobo Hall hundreds of people are standing, waiting to show their tickets and come into the hall.

Inside, ushers direct people to their seats. Slowly, Cobo fills up. On the stage in Cobo a large scaffolding has been erected. Shiney silver mannequins hang suspended from the ceiling above the scaffold. Cobo continues to fill and then the lights are dimmed and the MC announces Flo and Eddie.

Strangers to neighbors Detroit or the rock entertainment business, Flo and Eddie open with a familiar combination of tight instrumentals, lyrical satirics and a few swift gags. Their high energy, up performance comes off very well on this particular night, so well that it seems to infect them and carry them on, as if they didn't notice or couldn't care about the large numbers of the audience on downer drugs. But this same aduience response will have a much deeper effect on Alice Cooper later this evening.

When they leave the stage a small but persistent clapping and stomping begins for an encore, and generally people seemed to have enjoyed the performance because a lot of them are nodding to each other or talking about Flo and Eddie.

Now the lights come and quickly people leave their seats for food or drinks or the john. On stage a dozen roadies set up platforms, steps, lights, microphones. There is a center elevation with neon lighted steps leading up from the stage. At the left the guillotine apparatus stands shrouded. The roadies leave the stage as the crowd has almost returned and then, almost quickly, Alice Cooper is on stage.

"Hello, hooray," he sings stomping to the center microphone in seven-league, leopard skin boots. He attacks everything on the stage, the mike stand the mike, the audience, the other musicians, and himself.

The performance continues musically with Elected, Billion Dollar Babies, Unfinished Sweet, No More Mr. Nice Guy, and I Love The Dead, among others. On stage there are smoke and strobe lights, mannequin corpses and a huge costumed tooth and dentist with accompanying brush and toothpaste tube. At one point Alice puts his head in the guillotine (one safety device, right?). At another point he assaults a buxom mannequin.

Although, musically, the performance is good, it’s short of excellent and in places it drags considerably. Alice's singing is great, though, and maybe the problem is that the "stage show" obstructs the musical flow. The show, incidently, follows the theme of the music, sort of acts it out: Violence. The dentists drill, which makes that noise; the dismembered bodies; the guillotine, all of these things seem designed to elicit horror or revulsion as a response to the violence.

Throughout all this, the audience stays relatively passive and largely downed on "ludes". Alice asks whats wrong with the people, saying "Don’t you know that this is my hometown?"

At the end, a large crowd has developed at the stage. Alice has thrown posters of the band and few plastic "Billion Dollar Babies" into the crowd. The crowd leaves, clutching its prizes. Why was the response from the audience at such a low level? Was it the downers, fogging and slurring peoples minds? Perhaps. Was it that the music just wasn’t enough for Detroit? Probably not. Was it the theme of the performance? Probably.

For here in Detroit, Alice's home town, the violence which forms much of the satirical tone of Alice Cooper’s music is very alive and probably much too real as a part of people's everyday lives to be held up for curious inspection like it must be in Boston, or London or Pheonix. It may be, Alice Cooper, that when you came home to Detroit, you came entirely too close to home.

(Originally published in Fifth Estate, August 12-25th, 1972)