11/08/2026
AFTER THIS... ALICE COOPER BECAME A SOLO ARTIST.
ON THIS DATE (52 YEARS AGO)
August 9, 1974 – Alice Cooper released Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits.
ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5
At first glance, Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits looked like a routine compilation.
It wasn't.
Released while the band was on hiatus, it became the final album issued by the original Alice Cooper band, quietly bringing to a close one of the most successful and theatrical groups of the early 1970s.
Within a year, Alice Cooper would return as a solo artist with Welcome to My Nightmare, while the original band—Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith—would never record another studio album together during its classic era (Note: the surviving members reunited more than 50 years later for 2025's The Revenge of Alice Cooper.)
The collection gathered the band's remarkable run of hits from Love It to Death, Killer, School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies, and Muscle of Love, including "I'm Eighteen," "Under My Wheels," "School's Out," "Elected," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and "Billion Dollar Babies."
Rather than simply recycling familiar recordings, producer Jack Richardson remixed every track specifically for the album. A newly remixed version of "I'm Eighteen" was even released as a single, giving longtime fans something genuinely different instead of a straightforward greatest-hits package.
The album's elaborate artwork, created by Ernie Cefalu with illustrations by Drew Struzan, paid tribute to Hollywood's Golden Age. The band appeared outside a 1930s garage surrounded by dozens of legendary film stars, making it one of the most distinctive album packages of 1974.
Commercially, the collection became another success, reaching #8 on the Billboard album chart and introducing a new generation of fans to the band that helped redefine theatrical hard rock.
Although Alice Cooper's career was far from over, this album marked the end of the original band that created one of rock's most unforgettable runs of albums.
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STEREO REVIEW EXCERPT
Steve Simels argued that Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits was perhaps the best place to appreciate the band's strengths, calling "School's Out" "the masterpiece" of the collection. He praised its unforgettable chorus, savage production, and ability to capture youthful rebellion, concluding that even longtime fans would want the album—if only for what he considered one of the year's best album covers.
TRACKS:
Side one
"I'm Eighteen" (Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith) – 2:58
"Is It My Body" (Cooper, Buxton, Bruce, Dunaway, Smith) – 2:41
"Desperado" (Cooper, Bruce) – 3:29
"Under My Wheels" (Bruce, Dunaway, Bob Ezrin) – 2:46
"Be My Lover" (Bruce) – 3:22
"School's Out" (Cooper, Buxton, Bruce, Dunaway, Smith) – 3:30
Side two
"Hello Hooray" (Rolf Kempf) – 4:18
"Elected" (Cooper, Buxton, Bruce, Dunaway, Smith) – 4:08
"No More Mr. Nice Guy" (Cooper, Bruce) – 3:07
"Billion Dollar Babies" (Cooper, Bruce, Smith) – 3:43
"Teenage Lament '74" (Cooper, Smith) – 3:54
"Muscle of Love" (Cooper, Bruce) – 3:45
