There is something cinematic about Hollywood Vampires before they have played a note.
A film shows the four members as skeletons before they transform into their human forms; smoke fills the stage, and Johnny Depp looks as though he has risen from the grave or wandered straight off the set of The Lost Boys. A wind machine sends his hair flying before he hits the first note. Alice Cooper walks onto the extended stage like a pirate on the plank, pointing his cane at members of the audience before eventually throwing it into the crowd. Joe Perry arrives puffing on a cigar, his Les Paul slung low, and joins his fellow guitar players and Cooper for a lean, bringing his own swaggering style.
It is rock ’n’ roll theatre, but there are several different audiences inside the Hydro tonight. Some are here for Depp, some for Alice Cooper, some for Joe Perry and others simply for a night of loud guitars and classic rock. There are generations of shock rock fans in Alice Cooper T-shirts; some have even dressed as their hero in a top hat and makeup. Some are parents and grandparents who have passed the music on to their children. Movie fans are calling out for Depp, trying to get close enough to their hero to snap a photo. At times the security operation threatens to puncture the atmosphere. One fan carrying a message for Depp is barely able to unfurl her flag before being frogmarched away. It feels unnecessary and heavy-handed. Audience interaction is part of what makes a live concert different from watching a film. When the stage is built around spectacle, fantasy and rock ’n’ roll mythology, there should surely be some room for the audience to play its part.
‘Raise the Dead’ sets the tone perfectly before Cooper’s ‘I’m Eighteen’, which is greeted like an old friend. The song became Alice Cooper’s breakthrough, taking the band from cult status towards the mainstream and helping establish them as one of the defining acts of the early 1970s. By now, the Hollywood Vampires are a well-oiled machine. What began as a gathering of rock stars paying tribute to their dead friends has become a meaty and atmospheric rock show in its own right.
The story behind them is central to the show. Cooper’s original drinking circle included John Lennon, Keith Moon, Micky Dolenz and Harry Nilsson. During ‘My Dead Drunk Friends’, photographs and references to Bowie, Jim Morrison, Lennon and Moon turn the stage into something resembling a rock ’n’ roll memorial. The Who’s ‘Baba O’Riley’ follows, another connection to Moon and the great lost generation of rock.
