Billion Dollar Babies

Three former members of Alice Cooper's lineup formed an obscure project in 1977 without the celebrated shock rock icon and adopted the name Billion Dollar Babies. Mike Bruce on guitar and vocals, Dennis Dunaway on bass, and Neal Smith on drums collaborated that same year with keyboardist Bob Dolin plus guitarist and singer Mike Marconi, drawing their title from Cooper's 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies, one of his strongest commercial successes. The group delivered serviceable yet undistinguished hard rock and arena rock far less memorable or compelling than Cooper's distinctive style when they cut Battle Axe for Polydor in 1977. That release failed to attract buyers, after which the Billion Dollar Babies produced no further recordings. Battle Axe has remained unavailable since the late 1970s with little prospect of a CD edition, though the bootleg imprint Tendolar lifted three tracks—"Too Young," "Need Your Love," and "Dance With Me"—during the 1990s for the Cooper unauthorized collection Camelback Kids.