2000 Great Songs #1310: Hello Hooray

I'm not a fan of Alice Cooper (the dude playing hard rock/metal since the mid-70s), but I love a lot of the music scattered across the early 70s records of Alice Cooper (the band), a mix of glam and prog and hard rock that could be surprisingly catchy and melodic. 

"Hello Hooray," off 1973's Billion Dollar Babies--an LP probably much better known for the more straightforward rocker "No More Mr. Nice Guy" (effectively needle-dropped in Dazed & Confused)--is a big, melodramatic piece somewhat incongruously first written by a Canadian singer-songwriter for Judy Collins back in 1968. As glammed up by Alice Cooper, it seems ready-made for a flashy stage entrance, but also not hard to imagine it opening a darkly gothic musical--which isn't surprising, given that Bob Ezrin produced, and you could hear this meshing well with Lou Reed's Berlin or Pink Floyd's The Wall. (Indeed, I used it on one of my favorite imaginary soundtracks, and it works great.)

Yet for all its bombast, there's a pretty catchy hook jabbed into the chorus.

Video:

Live (then):

Live (more recently):

Judy Collins original version:

Richard Barone (of the Bongos!):

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