Alice Cooper has released a cover of the Bob Seger song “East Side Story,” which appears on the shock rock icon’s new Breadcrumbs EP.

Seger’s original, released in 1966, was his first single with the Last Heard and marked his early steps toward a solo career. You can hear both Cooper’s new version and Seger’s original below.

“I had never heard that song on the radio," Cooper admitted in a new interview with Billboard, saying that he and producer Bob Ezrin had seen a live performance online “and went, ‘We could jazz that song up a little bit and turn it into something else.’ ... It has a great story, and I love the chord structure and everything to it. We just treated it a little more hard rock.”

He previously explained that the EP was part of his rediscovery of the sound of his hometown. “When people say, 'Well, what is your music?' I say it's Detroit rock – we just put a different slant on it,’” he noted in the new interview. “At the bottom of it, all Alice Cooper records are Detroit, Chuck Berry, hard rock and then twisting it up into what we are lyrically and performance-wise. But you take the bottom of all those songs and they're all guitar-driven rock 'n' roll songs, which is what I associate as the Detroit sound. I wanted to use all Detroit players and songs either about Detroit or written by" local musicians.

Cooper added that he told Seger about his plans when the pair met on tour recently: “I said, 'We're gonna do one of your songs,' and he probably thought I wanted to do one of the hits. I told him 'East Side Story,' and he goes, 'What?!' I said, 'Yeah, we're gonna do that one.' I hope he likes it. I'm glad we gave it a second life.”

Breadcrumbs will be out on Sept. 13 and serves as a taster for Cooper’s next album, which will also focus on the Detroit sound but feature original material. It’s expected sometime next year.

 

 

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