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Billion Dollar Babies Tour 1973-1974

In the late Sixties, Alice Cooper was accused of murdering a chicken during a concert. But while the shock-rock trailblazer has always staunchly denied the allegation (claiming he innocently tossed the bird into the audience, where the slaughter was then enacted by rabid fans), there has certainly been no shortage of blood and guts intentionally left on the stage at a Cooper show. And the jaunt organized in support of his Billion Dollar Babies album may have been the goriest of them all.

The album and tour came at a time when Cooper and his band, on the heels of the breakout success of the 1972 School's Out album, suddenly found themselves with plenty of cash at their disposal to explore their deepest and most disturbing onstage desires. As such, the Billion Dollar Babies show, which at the time was deemed the most elaborate live undertaking in rock history, came off like a sociopath's vision of a glossy, Broadway production, the stage set littered with mannequin body parts and capped by a massive, laser-shooting Egyptian statue.

At the helm was Cooper, outfitted in a torn and bloodstained white leotard (and occasionally wearing a huge boa constrictor around his head and neck). The singer played both the assailant and the victim. At various points of the show, he impaled baby dolls on a sword, molested the disembodied legs and breasts of the female mannequins and beat up a Richard Nixon impersonator. At other times, he was splayed across a medical table while a mad dentist attacked him with an oversized drill and, as the coup de grace to the main set, decapitated in a guillotine, a stunt that would go on to become a Cooper trademark.

The Billion Dollar Babies tour proved a massive success, so much so that it continued on through the early part of 1974, by which time Cooper and his band were supporting their follow-up effort, Muscle of Love. The jaunt was reported as the highest grossing rock tour in U.S. history to date, and it proved to be the swansong of the original Alice Cooper band. Soon after, they broke up and Cooper launched his own solo career. To this day, he's still having his head chopped off on stages around the world.

(Originally published in Guitar World, Winter 2013)