Songfacts®:

• This song is a salute to the actor Dwight Frye, who played maniacal characters in many Universal horror films, including Renfield from the original Dracula (1931). Cooper dropped the "E" from the name to avoid a lawsuit.
• In concert, Cooper would perform this song in a straitjacket from which he would escape and strangle a nurse. Later live performances of this song included a mock beheading of Cooper onstage with a fake guillotine. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alan - Zanesville, OH, for above 2
• The shock rock legend wrote this song with guitarist/songwriter Michael Bruce, who was an original member of the Alice Cooper Group. During his tenure with the band, Bruce wrote or co-wrote many of their biggest hits, including "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "I'm Eighteen," and "School's Out." He also played keyboards and contributed vocals on their records.
• The child's voice at the song's intro was actually a woman in her early 20s, who was a friend of the band. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Mark - Windsor, Canada
• This is a track from Love It To Death, the third studio album by Alice Cooper (the band). Co-produced by Bob Ezrin and Jack Richardson, the album climbed to #35 on the US Billboard 200 album chart and #28 on the UK album charts. It also featured the track "I'm Eighteen," which brought the band its first big mainstream hit and became one of Cooper's most recognized songs. The band established their accessible Heavy Metal sound on this collection.
  
  The album also marked the beginning of a productive, long-term working relationship between Cooper and Ezrin. Following Love It To Death, Cooper recruited Ezrin to produce a number of albums for both the Alice Cooper Group and his solo releases. Among the notable albums he produced for Cooper include School's Out, Billion Dollar Babies, Welcome to My Nightmare and Lace and Whisky. Throughout the '70s, Ezrin was one of the most successful and in-demand music producers on the rock scene. In addition to Cooper, other notable acts he has worked with include KISS, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Dr. John and Rod Stewart.
• In addition to this song, Michael Bruce also contributed to the writing of five other tracks on the album, two of which he penned entirely on his own: "Caught in a Dream" and "Long Way to Go."
• A gaggle of inmates at an insane asylum were among the first to hear this song. The Alice Cooper Band worked it up after moving from Los Angeles to the Detroit area in 1970. They were living and rehearsing at an abandoned farm in Pontiac, just north of Detroit, right next to an insane asylum.
  
  "The inmates would stand by the fence and listen to them rehearsing, working on the songs in a barn," Gary Graff, author of Alice Cooper @75, explained on the Songfacts Podcast. They had the doors thrown open and the window of the hay loft thrown open. How appropriate was it that Alice Cooper's test market would be the residents of an asylum next door? That had some influence on 'Ballad Of Dwight Fry.'"