Harry Nilsson attended the final recording sessions at Morgan Sound Studios in London for Alice Cooper's song "Billion Dollar Babies."
It’s too bad we didn’t get more. It would have been great to have had backing vocals from Flo and Eddie. And Harry Nilsson had an incredible voice. It’s just unfortunate that it was uncontrollable because he was drinking so much. He would fall across the mixing board and knock all the faders out of whack. But then he would stumble out into the studio and sit down at the piano, and his voice and what he was playing would sound incredible. I was like, ‘I can’t believe this guy. Why doesn’t he just stay there and play and sing for the rest of his life?’ Keith Moon was the same way. Moon was hilarious, but when he sat at the drums he couldn’t even stay on the stool.
That was possibly the most drunken brawl I've ever seen in my life. Everybody there -- I think Harry Nilsson drank at least two bottles of Scotch straight down. Marc Bolan was so drunk we had to carry him off the floor of the BBC. Keith Moon is always crazy. We played about two hours of Elvis songs. We did Nilsson's "Coconut" for about an hour in the dirtiest lyrics you can think of.
-- Alice Cooper (1973) [2]
It's not clear if Nilsson made any contributions that actually appear in the released version of the song.
- [1] Based on interviews for an earlier article published in Performing Songwriter. Best Classic Bands (2019) "Alice Cooper’s #1 Breakthrough: Billion Dollar Babies" (https:/
/ )bestclassicbands. com/ alice- cooper- billion- dollar- babies- 2- 10- 177/ - [2] Star-Phoenix (Saskatchewan, Canada), Larry LeBlanc (1973-04-19) "Alice Cooper tip of cultural iceberg"