Alice Cooper has put together a supergroup of odd, yet impressive proportions. For the reincarnation of the Hollywood Vampires — a drinking club of well-known male rockers in the ’70s which included Keith Moon, John Lennon, and Harry Nilsson — Cooper has tapped Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, along with actor/rock star-wanna-be Johnny Depp. Also on board for the new project are former Guns N’ Roses’ bassist Duff McKagan, and drummer Matt Sorum. The group is set to debut a new record next month.
The 14-song self-titled LP consists mostly of covers: tracks like Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, Cooper’s own School’s Out, Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, the Who’s My Generation, and the Door’s Break on Through. Depp will back Cooper on vocals, guitar and keyboard. And the record’s list of guest performers is shockingly impressive: Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Slash, AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, and even Ringo Starr’s son Zack Starkey all make cameos on the record.
“We decided to put the band together and kind of celebrate all of our dead, drunk friends,” said Cooper to NME. “You know, all of our big brothers died at 27 years old. Jim Morrison, we toured with The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix was one of our best friends, and we drank with these guys, and Johnny Depp and I were doing that movie Dark Shadows, and we decided that we were gonna go to the 100 Club and just be a bar band. No glitz, no glam.”
It’ll be a different vibe when they hit the Sunset Strip, where the original Hollywood Vampires used to meet in the ’70s, to perform at the Roxy on September 16 and 17. While those are currently the band’s only U.S. dates, we can all listen to the Hollywood Vampires when their album drops on September 11.
