Alice Cooper has released his latest single, a cover of the Velvet Underground gem “Rock & Roll.”

You can listen to both the Alice Cooper and Velvet Underground versions below.

The Lou Reed-penned track originally appeared on 1970's Loaded. Cooper is backed by Johnny "Bee" Badanjek, Steve Hunter, Paul Randolph, Joe Bonamassa and Tommy Henriksen on the new version.

This song helped forge a long-lasting friendship between Reed and Cooper, as well as productive partnerships for each with both Hunter and producer Bob Ezrin. Reed decided to work with Ezrin on his 1972 solo album Transformer after hearing Bee and Hunter's group Detroit cover "Rock & Roll". Hunter and Ezrin would go on to work with both Cooper and Reed many times after that, perhaps most famously on Cooper's 1975 album Welcome to My Nightmare.

"Rock & Roll" gives fans a very appropriate first taste of Cooper’s upcoming album Detroit Stories. Inspired by and largely recorded in the Motor City, the LP serves as an homage to Cooper’s hometown.

“Detroit was the birthplace of angry hard rock," Cooper noted in a press release announcing the album. The singer and his band famously fled to Detroit in 1970 after failing to establish a fanbase in either Phoenix or Los Angeles. Once in the Motor City, the group’s popularity began to build, paving the way for future success. "After not fitting in anywhere in the U.S. (musically or image-wise), Detroit was the only place that recognized the Alice Cooper guitar-driven, hard-rock sound and our crazy stage show. Detroit was a haven for the outcasts. And when they found out I was born in East Detroit ... we were home.”

All of the surviving original members of the Alice Cooper band appear on Detroit Stories. “The O.G.s, we call them - the original guys,” the frontman told Consequence of Sound. “There’s two or three songs that we wrote with the original guys, and they’re pure Detroit. … We're probably more Detroit than we are L.A. or Phoenix or any place else.”

Detroit Stories will be released on Feb. 26 and is available for pre-order now.

Listen to Alice Cooper's Update of 'Rock & Roll'

Listen to the Velvet Underground Perform 'Rock & Roll'

 

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