Welcome to My Nightmare

After the band broke up in spring 1974, Cooper started his solo project with Ezrin. Shep Gordon had a clause in his contract allowing the group to make a soundtrack album for another label, so the record went to Atlantic and needed a storyline that could become a film or television show. Ezrin and Cooper built it around a child named Steven. Ezrin hired all four members of Lou Reed's live band, Dick Wagner, Steve Hunter, Prakash John and Pentti Glan, plus Tony Levin, and Wagner and Ezrin co-wrote most of the songs with Cooper. Vincent Price speaks the monologue on Devil's Food.

Only Women Bleed began as a song Wagner wrote for his late-1960s band the Frost, with a new title from Cooper and revised lyrics by Wagner and Cooper. The album led to the television special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare, a world tour and the 1976 concert film. Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone called it a TV soundtrack that sounds like one. Greg Prato of AllMusic counted it Cooper's best solo work. It is the album most represented in his live sets.