No matter what the question, money was the answer: “Do you want to bring that snake into this auditorium?” — $166 in German marks. “Do you have the special papers to bring the guitars through customs?” — $500 cash. “Mr. Cooper’s suitcases? We’ll find them within the hour. What do you mean he’ll miss his plane?” — $50 and a bottle of VO. Everybody had questions for us. “Billion-Dollar Babies” was supposed to be the final answer.
The object of the “Billion-Dollar Babies” tour was to pull a show business coup based on the concept of greed. We wanted to blitz the public with a single tour and album of such overwhelming proportions we could retire afterwards. The basic plan was to release a Billion-Dollar Babies album followed by a swift, hard tour across the country, playing as many dates in the largest halls in as short a time as possible. We would have a chance of propelling the album to number-one position and gross nearly $6 million on the tour. In the end, “Billion-Dollar Babies” stood to gross $20 million. In the end, we tried to play sixty-two concerts in fifty-nine cities within ninety days. In the end, it wrecked us all.
We tried to record part of Billion-Dollar Babies album at the Morgan Studios in London. We invited Harry Nilsson and Marc Bolan by to join a session, but by the time the evening was over all we had was four hours of unusable tape and a L 300 bar bill. We finished recording on a mobile unit at the Cooper mansion in Connecticut and at the-Record Plant in LA and New York. The album cover was quite an extravaganza. It was shaped like an overstuffed wallet, snakeskin, naturally. Inside there was a billion-dollar bill, wallet-sized photos of the group, and a strikingly handsome sleeve jacket printed with a picture taken of us by David Bailey in his London studios. We made special arrangements with the FBI and the Treasury Department to have a million dollars in U.S. cash flown to London for the photograph. We posed in white satin suits, surrounded by dozens of white rabbits and green money, holding a little baby in Alice Cooper makeup. The album included “Elected,” which was already a best-seller, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” my ode to the press, and several songs that became Alice Cooper classics, including an infamous version of Rolfe Kemp’s “Hello Hooray.”
The stage was designed and executed by award-winning set designers Joe Gannon and Jim Newborn at a cost of $250,000. It looked like a giant TV quiz show, with luminous platforms and multileveled areas for me to dance across. Every moment of the show was carefully rehearsed and planned. People were beginning to respect the fact that Alice Cooper was reviving vaudeville, and that “Billion-Dollar Babies” was not just another rock and roll slop show. I began the show with “Hello Hooray,” slithering down the steps like a drunken Dietrich, enticing the audience from the edge of the platform to come join me in the fun. From there we pounded into “Raped and Freezin’,” “Elected,” and “Billion-Dollar Babies.” The lights dimmed for “Unfinished Sweet.” I was strapped onto an operating table and attacked with a giant drill, after which I got chased by a huge dancing tooth which I finally clobbered with a four-foot toothbrush and a five-foot tube of toothpaste. Then into “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “Sick Things.” During “Sick Things” I raped and chopped apart baby dolls and mannequins, soaring into an anthem, “I Love the Dead,” which the kids sang along with.
For “Billion-Dollar Babies” I gave up the noose and had a guillotine designed by The Amazing Randi, a magician who went on the road with us and played the parts of dentist and executioner. The guillotine had a real forty-pound blade in it. After “I Love the Dead,” Randi led me to the guillotine. As always the audience got quiet, waiting breathlessly for the sound of the falling blade. From my hiding place behind the set I could always tell when the dummy’s head got lopped off and fell into the barrel from the cheering in the audience. The rest of the band retrieved the bloody head from the basket and kicked it around the stage as a football.
In the end of the show I return dressed in white, the good Alice back again. During the finale we had a recording of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” I walked around the stage waving an American flag and spitting Budweiser at the audience with an actor named Richard M. Dixon who looked just like the ex-President. When the lights came up in the auditorium we beat the hell out of him. (We knew what we were doing way back then.)
The logistics of moving the set, sound, and people through the country were staggering. The tentative crew included the five members of the band, Shep, Dave Libert as tour director, Mike Rozwell as advance man, Shep’s assistant Gail Rodgers, The Amazing Randi, Richard Dixon, a four-member road crew, three members for stage production, a master electrician, a master carpenter, Charlie Carnal for lights, three technicians from Showco Sound, two truck drivers, and six guys in an opening act.
Then there were incidentals: 400 comic books, 3,000 pounds of crunchy Granola, 5,000 pre-prepared meals, 140 cases of Seagram’s VO, 250,000 cans of Budweiser, 300 deeks of cards, and 1,000 Alice Cooper poker chips. (And Flo and Eddie, who are two of my best friends and kept me going through all of this.)
We took this assortment with us on our own plane, a huge F-27 Electra dubbed the AC-I. We had a snake in the shape of a dollar sign painted on the tail. Most of the seats were torn out and replaced with pillows. We had a blackjack table installed, at which I won $4,700. The walls were papered with nudes and Alice Cooper paraphernalia, and the plane was equipped with everything Alice Cooper, right down to napkins that said “Fly Me, I’m Alice.” The two stewardesses had both been dismissed from commercial airlines on morality charges.
On the ground, in two tractor-trailers, along with the set, traveled forty tons of equipment, including the sound system, the dentist’s giant drill, a surgical table, six whips, six hatchets, 22,000 sparklers, 23,000 program books, 10,000 patches, 3,000 baby dolls, 58 mannequin torsos, 14 bubble machines, 28 gallons of bubble maker, 280 spare light bulbs, 6,000 mirror parts, 250,000 packets of bubble bath, five pounds of gold glitter, a carton of mascara, and 20 mice a week for the snake.
We set off on this venture March 1, 1973, not healthy and strong from rest but worn and with no confidence. I had resumed a drinking schedule for the tour. There was no question that I could remain on the road sober. I had a physical when I got back from Jamaica, and it was decided that the most sensible drinking plan was to hold off on the VO until eight at night.
They woke us at ten every morning. Dave Libert did this himself, bounding through the halls with a room list in his hand, pounding on doors and cursing. Mandi Newall, who we stole from Derek Taylor in London, woke up the heads of each crew and the crew chiefs who in turn woke up their own people. At 10:45 A. M. everybody put their luggage outside their doors and Libert got to the phone to call people, praying not more than a dozen or so had taken their phones off the hooks and gone back to sleep. The band, at least, was always still in bed.
Somebody cheeked with the bus company and limousine service to make sure they were on their way. Libert called the airport to cheek on weather conditions here and in the next town. Rozwell, on advance in the next city for a day already, called his limousine service to make sure the cars are waiting at our destination. He also confirmed interviews and put hotel room keys in separate envelopes that included room lists. Then there was one person to count people. He stood in the lobby or the plane and checked names of a master list to make sure nobody got stranded in a bathroom in Toledo.