The Hollywood Vampires began as a softball team in Los Angeles and mutated into a social club. Or, perhaps more accurately, a notorious drinking club with famous rock musicians who entertained and outdid themselves at the Rainbow Bar & Grill, up in a VIP loft called The Lair. It was 1973. Alice Cooper and the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz were ringleaders. John Lennon, John Belushi, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Bernie Taupin and Harry Nilsson, among others, were often in the intoxicated, celebratory mix.
The Hollywood Vampires rock band was started in 2012 by Cooper, by then a recovering alcoholic, and his pal, actor-guitarist Johnny Depp, the two having met on the “Dark Shadows” film set. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, a recovering drug addict, came aboard. The fourth official Vampire guitarist is Tommy Henriksen, who does double duty in Cooper’s touring band.
Their main aim: to celebrate the music of their “dead drunk friends” — songs by the likes of David Bowie, Jim Carroll, AC/DC and Lou Reed. (They also play Cooper and Aerosmith songs.)
Both vampiric entities are now being saluted on film. “Unleashed Spirits: The Rise of the Hollywood Vampires,” directed by Daniel E. Catullo III, kicks off the Boston Film Festival Sept. 18 at the Boch-Wang Center. It focuses on the band — there are segments of all parts of their career through the Vampires’ 2023 show at the Boch-Wang — but it delves into the original club’s inebriation-over-all ethos as well.
“I’ve seen long segments of it, but I haven’t seen the whole thing,” Cooper, 78, said last week on the phone from Prague. “All the parts I saw, I really like. We didn’t gloss over anything.”
He will see it Friday in total when he and Perry will take to the red carpet at 6 p.m. and watch the film at 7 p.m. Depp won’t be here; he’s in Shanghai at his art show.
Initially, no one had plans for the Vampires to go beyond two one-off gigs in September 2015 at the Roxy in Los Angeles. But it began to take shape as a more serious concern – with various other musicians filling slots in the band – and the group has released two albums. At the time of our interview, the Hollywood Vampires were wrapping up an Eastern European tour.
“I got to be honest with you,” said Cooper. “It’s become a surprise to me of how many people love it.”
What he loves most: not having to play the Alice Cooper character full-tilt. “My regular Alice Cooper show goes on forever, right? For me, this is a much easier show than the Alice Cooper show. The Alice Cooper show is more technical. Alice never talks to the audience. I have to be Alice all night long. And in this show, I talk all night to the audience because I’m the lead singer in the Vampires. I’m not the Alice Cooper you see in the Alice Cooper show.”
With Aerosmith retired from the touring arena, the Vampires present Perry, 76, with the opportunity to get out and play live. There was one big hiccup: Perry collapsed on stage in 2016 and was hospitalized. His wife, Billie, rushed to his side, and gave him mouth-to-mouth.
“I definitely have some heart things and lung things that I probably wouldn’t know about now if that hadn’t happened,” Perry said, “but it happened in the normal course of the show. I’m not talking about substances, legal or illegal. If it wasn’t for Billie, I wouldn’t be here.”
A central theme of the film is Depp’s position, namely, his ability as a guitarist. Depp, 63, who at age 20 moved to L.A. to play rock, brings it up right away. “That was an all-star band except for me, being the thing in the punch bowl,” he said in the film. “I wasn’t thinking ‘How unfair!’ It was right. If you’re gonna be standing up there with these guys, you have to earn your stripes … Going from movies to music, you’re frowned upon.”
“I think he’s great,” Perry said. “He could hold his own right from the start. He loves music, lives it and breathes it and it shows in his playing, using the instrument to get that part of your soul and heart out there, he’s as good as he needs to be and he’s naturally gotten better.”
The Hollywood Vampires may be a side project, but, Cooper said, “Everybody knows that whatever they do during the day, they need to be at least 90 to 100% that night onstage. You don’t even have to talk about that. Basically, we’ve become the world’s most expensive bar band.”
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