The latest Alice Cooper release is a cover of a song by Bob Seger called “East Side Story,” which is on the notorious rocker’s new Breadcrumbs EP.
The track was originally released by Seager in 1966, it was his first single performing with the Last Heard and the start of his journey in becoming a solo artist.
According to UCR, Cooper describes how he came to record the song, he revealed: “I had never heard that song on the radio,” but himself and producer Bob Ezrin had come across a live performance online “
The singer continued: ‘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.”
Cooper also described that the EP as a voyage into rediscovering the sounds from his hometown. He said, “When people say, ‘Well, what is your music?’ I say it’s Detroit rock – we just put a different slant on it.’”
Later in the interview, the shock rocker confessed, “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 had shared his ideas with Seger when they 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 is out on Sept. 13 as a prelude to Cooper’s next album due to be released sometime next year. The new album which will also feature the Detroit sound but with more original material.
