Respectability was never the point for Alice Cooper. That doesn’t mean the shock rocker didn’t want the respect of his peers.
With 1973’s Billion Dollar Babies, he finally began to get it, ing admiration from some of rock’s most revered songwriters. No song illustrates that turning point — or Cooper’s growth as a songwriter — better than “Generation Landslide,” a sharp-eyed meditation on how commercialism, money and drugs were eroding traditional American values.
“I see them as the best lyrics I have ever written,” Cooper told rock journalist and Creem cofounder Jaan Uhelszki. “I still, to this day, remember sitting down and writing them as a flow of consciousness in the Canary Islands.
“I was leaning against a wall with a pen and a piece of paper while a big lightning storm went on, and 20 minutes later there it was.”
Billion Dollar Babies is packed with notable musical achievements, several of which are radical reworkings of existing material. “Elected” was a revamped version of the band’s debut single, “Reflected,” rewritten to match Alice’s new persona as a pop-culture provocateur. “No More Mr. Nice Guy” evolved from a song by Cooper guitarist Mike Bruce, reshaped into a pointed origin story for rock’s most notorious antihero. And there was “Hello Hooray,” a transformational take on a 1960s folk song by Canadian songwriter Rolf Kempf that would provide the bombastic overture to Cooper’s electrifying live shows.
“Generation Landslide,” however, was something else entirely: a brand-new creation with a remarkable origin story of its own.
Billion Dollar Babies was written and recorded between tour dates from August 1972 through January 1973. By early November, the band had relocated recording sessions to Morgan Studios in London while continuing to play dates across Europe. The album was nearly finished, but it was still one song short.
Complicating matters, the band had come down with the flu. The solution was to retreat to the Canary Islands for a few days of rest and recovery. While there, the band pulled together “Generation Landslide” during an impromptu rooftop jam at their hotel.
We wrote it as a group and everyone participated. Usually last songs can be filler, but I think that was an incredible song.”
— Neal Smith
It wasn’t just the last song written for the album; according to drummer Neal Smith, it was “one of the last songs we ever wrote together,” before the group broke up in 1975.
“We went down to the Canary Islands and there was a brand-new hotel being built,” Smith recalled. “We rented the whole top of the hotel, moved in, took our equipment — just enough to set up a little studio and write a song.
“I started playing the drum beat to ‘Generation Landslide,’ Mike joined in, and in a couple of days we’d developed the song. We wrote it as a group and everyone participated. Usually last songs can be filler, but I think that was an incredible song.”
Opening with a descending acoustic guitar figure reminiscent of the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence,” “Generation Landslide” quickly settles into a groove closer to the Who, with slashing electric guitar chords riding atop Smith’s syncopated, almost martial drum pattern. Over that ominous churn, Cooper sneers lyrics that invert the American Dream, pitting parents fighting to survive against a new generation of well-financed children indulging in sex, drugs and greed.
Lyrically, the song invites comparison to Bob Dylan’s work just a few years earlier, recalled the urgent frustrated couplets of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and the magical realism of “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” As Cooper told Uhelszki, Dylan himself took notice.
“After Billion Dollar Babies came out, even people like Bob Dylan and members of the Beatles started saying nice things about us, which was the final stamp of approval,” he explained. “Dylan loved ‘Generation Landslide,’ and John Lennon’s favorite song for a while was ‘Elected.’ It didn’t get better than that.”
Bass guitarist Dennis Dunaway remembers the moment just as vividly. “It’s my favorite song for many reasons,” he told Uhelszki. “Even Bob Dylan cited the lyrics as being great. We had never seen Bob Dylan compliment anybody’s lyric writing before that.”
After ‘Billion Dollar Babies’ came out, even people like Bob Dylan and members of the Beatles started saying nice things about us, which was the final stamp of approval.”
— Alice Cooper
The band made several attempts at the song in the studio. One outtake appeared on the 2001 CD reissue of Billion Dollar Babies under the title “Son of Billion Dollar Babies.” Lead guitarist Glen Buxton’s exact contributions remain unclear, given his frequent absences and performance struggles at the time. What’s known is that session ace Steve Hunter played the song’s lead guitar solo.
Hunter — who handled much of the album’s lead work, including pedal steel on “Hello Hooray” — was thrilled to tackle the track.
“It’s well written, has terrific lyrics, some great guitar parts, wonderful performances by everybody, and a very cool vibe,” he told Guitar Player in the January 2016 issue. “I was definitely looking forward to playing a solo on it.”
He and producer Bob Ezrin approached his guitar solos for Cooper with a specific philosophy. “Back in those days, guitar solos were supposed to add to the song in a couple of ways,” Hunter explained. “They had to add to the overall vibe and help move the story along based on what the lyrics were about.”
Before recording, Ezrin made sure Hunter absorbed the song in full. “I would listen to the lyrics, the melody, how the track moved from section to section,” Hunter said. “Often I’d use part of the vocal melody in the solo itself. Bob and I wanted the solo to ‘speak,’ not just fill space.”
Even so, inspiration didn’t come immediately. “After a few passes, we weren’t really happy,” Hunter recalled. “So I asked to listen in the control room — and a little louder than I’d been hearing in my headphones.
“As the song played, the Yardbirds popped into my head. Suddenly I had an approach I hadn’t tried. I ran back into the studio while the idea was still hot, and out came the solo that’s on the record.”
As the song played, the Yardbirds popped into my head. I ran back into the studio while the idea was still hot, and out came the solo that’s on the record.”
— Steve Hunter
The result, he says, was an unconscious tribute. “It was a little tip of my hat to that great ’60s band and to Mr. Jeff Beck. Inspiration can come from anywhere — you just have to be ready when it hits.”
Despite the band’s affection for the track, “Generation Landslide” was never released as a single, although it did serve as the B-side to “Hello Hooray.”
“There was a general feeling that each of our albums was a little better than the last and that we weren’t just a flash in the pan,” Cooper told Uhelszki. “We kept raising expectations with songs like ‘Eighteen,’ ‘School’s Out’ and ‘Under My Wheels.’
“We were becoming better players, the stage act was getting tighter, and people could relate to the theatrical aspect of what we were doing. There’s a great tradition of show business in America — and we were the rock version of Hollywood. We just tap-danced across the United States.”
