(Album ©1971, Warner Bros. Records)
Alice Cooper was a band out of Phoenix that 
evolved slowly through the mid to late-’60’s, finally settling on a name that they thought sounded innocent, a “sweet little old lady name” that would contrast with their music and stage show. They were initially signed on Frank Zappa’s Straight Records and released two largely forgettable albums in 1969 and ’70.
Then, in 1970, the band moved back to lead singer Vincent Furnier’s hometown, Detroit, Michigan, where the burgeoning hard rock scene was exploding, led by the Stooges and the MC5. They connected with up-and-coming producer Bob Ezrin, who had the band actually rehearse their new tunes to get them into shape. In fact, they recorded their best of the new songs, “I’m Eighteen,” and released it as a single to gauge the public’s interest in their improved sound. Apparently, there was interest, as the single hit #21 on the Top 40 chart, which got the third record green-lit by Straight/Warner Bros.
The album was released in early 1971 and took off quickly, reaching #35 on the Billboard 200 and earning a Gold Record before the end of the year. Combined with the band’s increasingly outrageous stage show, Love It to Death turned Alice Cooper into one of America’s biggest hard rock acts, putting them in the same conversation as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath.
But the album’s influence went well beyond the early ’70s hard rock scene. Love It to Death helped lay some of the groundwork for both Heavy Metal and Punk, and its fingerprints showed up for decades afterward. “I’m Eighteen” reportedly inspired Pat Smear to learn guitar and eventually form the Germs, influenced the Ramones’ “I Don’t Care,” and was supposedly the song John Lydon used to audition for the Sex Pistols. Anthrax later covered it, while bands as different as the Melvins and Sonic Youth covered other songs from the album. Rolling Stone eventually included Love It to Death on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. More than fifty years later, you can still hear where this record led.
As with many of the albums on this list, the third album was not Alice Cooper’s magnum opus, but was the record where the band established it’s sound on record, and was the springboard to their biggest album, in Alice’s case, 1973’s Billion Dollar Babies. The formula was laid out on Love It to Death.
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