Named after the 1970s celebrity drinking club of which Alice Cooper was a ringleader, the latter-day Hollywood Vampires are a supergroup comprising Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, silver-screen superstar Johnny Depp, and Cooper/Crossbone Skully bassist Tommy Henriksen.
Since forming in 2012 they’ve released two studio albums – Hollywood Vampires (2015) and Rise (2019) – both crammed with special guests including Dave Grohl, Slash and Jeff Beck.
“We’ve been away for a while,” says Cooper, as Perry joins him on screen for a Zoom chat to preview a string of arena and outdoor dates, adding with a grin: “It’s about time to drag Johnny out of his castle again.”
Do you remember the first time that the two of you met?
Alice Cooper: Wow, that would have been in blurry days [both laugh].
Joe Perry: Well, we were in the same movie…
Alice:… Oh yeah, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [1978].
Joe: But I don’t remember if we actually met.
Alice: I called up Joe one time because I had to write two songs. They would have been the first thing I did after getting sober [in 1983]. And we ended up working in a haunted house – a genuinely haunted house. I stayed for just one night.
Whose idea was it to form The Hollywood Vampires? Take us back to that discussion, if you will.
Alice: Until the movie Dark Shadows [2012] I had never met Johnny Depp. I was telling Johnny about the drinking club with John Lennon, Keith Moon and Harry Nilsson. During the shooting, I played the 100 Club on Oxford Street and invited Johnny along. He got up with us and nailed every song. I said it would be fun to be a bar band again and play all the songs of my dead drunk friends.
Joe: I was staying at Johnny’s house working on a solo record and I was the last to join. We have so much fun playing together. I always think of the Vampires as the best unknown garage band in the world.
Alice: And certainly the most expensive one. And you know what, we’ve been together for ten years and there has not been one single argument.
Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Tommy Henricksen is the ‘secret weapon’ of the Vampires, right?
Alice: Yeah. Tommy is in my [solo] band and we use him as a musical director. He knows where everything is at all times, and it’s the same in the Vampires. You get lost in song, you look at Tommy.
Joe: He’s got the production chops, too. [Henricksen produced the second Hollywood Vampires album, Rise]. Tommy also writes songs and he’s the backbone of the band.
There’s a concert release coming out from the 2018 Montreux Jazz Festival. Do you remember anything about that particular Vampires show?
Alice: The band got better the more it played, and I remember that show. It’s like when you have all the songs together, suddenly you find little places to make the show happen. I drop out and Johnny sings, you know? And then I sing a couple more songs and I drop out and Joe sings.
And Johnny is a part of that?
Alice: People are shocked that we are so good, and I can see why. It’s sorta glam and you’ve got the movie star in there.
Joe: Johnny has always wanted to be in a band, and now, finally, he’s in one. After the second or third song people get over the shock of seeing Johnny Depp up there with a guitar. And it’s legit. The band really plays. And you know what? He’s a great player.
Alice, you’ve spoken about playing songs by your “dead drunk friends”, but you also play originals and standards from your own catalogues. How do you work out a setlist?
Alice: The thing is, I love playing songs by The Doors, Jimi or the Small Faces, and we worked hard to really nail them as a good tribute to the bands concerned. And yeah, we have two albums of original songs, and songs of our own. How many albums have Aerosmith made? I’m on my thirtieth. Setlists are always the hardest part of any show.
Joe: Tommy really helps. He writes a list, sends it around, and we all make suggestions.
Is there going to be a third Hollywood Vampires studio album?
Alice: I can’t imagine there not being one. But we all have pretty demanding day jobs. And you want to try getting Johnny out of his forty-four-room castle.
Joe: I can tell you that some people in his camp are not happy he’s taking a couple of months out to play music. But when it’s time for Johnny to play guitar, he knows it’s time.
Alice, you’ve described your brand new memoir, titled Devil On My Shoulder, as “definitive”.
Alice: Well, with the first one, Me, Alice [published in 1976 and long since out of print], we never let the truth get in the way of a good story. But with this book we went really deep. We spent a lot of time on it.
Alice, for four of the dates on your book tour of the UK in October, Arthur Brown will act as moderator.
Alice: Arthur and I go all the way to 1968. I always liked him because he’s a total original. What a voice that guy was. He used to be an opera singer.
Joe: When we [Aerosmith] played with Arthur he brought along the flaming hat.
Alice: A perfect moment for Spinal Tap potential right there. The weirdest thing was, I was doing the make-up thing without knowing he did it too. I’d never heard of Arthur Brown – nobody in America had. I was like: “Wow, this guy’s my brother or something.”
What’s the current state of play with Aerosmith, Joe?
Joe: We’re right in the middle of working on a documentary, the story of the band from the beginning. Everyone has a different perspective on what happened back then. We also did a thing with Yungblud [a five-song EP that included a remake of Aerosmith’s Back In The Saddle].
Alice [interrupting]: I just met Yungblud. Wow, what a guy. He out-Iggys Iggy, with some early Mick Jagger in there too, but he’s also his own character.
Joe: Watching Yungblud dance around the studio made me remember what it was like to be twenty-seven years old. He is the real deal, with such incredible energy. When he talks, every other word is: “I love rock’n’roll” and you can tell that he does.
Alice: Until meeting Yungblud I had never heard the F-bomb used as an adjective, a verb and adverb and a noun in the same sentence.
The Jesus And Mary Chain are an interesting choice as special guests on this next tour, although at some shows The Damned will take that spot.
Alice: I know all about The Damned, of course, but I love the fact that the Jesus And Mary Chain don’t necessarily fit. Back in the days of the Fillmore [in San Francisco] – and you’ll remember this, Joe – Alice would play on bills with Paul Butterfield, Melanie and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. None of us connected musically. It was four entirely different worlds of music, and I always thought that was pretty cool.
The Hollywood Vampires’ European tour begins at London’s O2 Arena on August 12. For full dates and ticket links, check the Hollywood Vampires website. Live At Montreux Jazz Festival is out on August 7.
