The Hollywood Vampires
O2 Area, London
ninth July 2023

The Hollywood Vampires swoop down on Outdated London City for a rocking night of covers, tributes and gigantic fangs. Paul Grace takes the images.

If I’m trustworthy I don’t know what to anticipate of The Hollywood Vampires tonight on the O2 Area. We get Aerosmith’s Joe Perry on guitar, Alice Cooper’s Tommy Henriksen on (one other) guitar, actor Johnny Depp on (yet one more) guitar and Alice Cooper’s, errr, Alice Cooper on vocals. A band of Tinseltown misfits that play primarily covers to a capability room of 20,000 individuals. How’s that even attainable? Nicely, I’m glad to say my issues are swiftly crushed as quickly as the home lights dim and the intro tune of Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosi’s Lifeless comes blasting by way of the audio system.

A set of creepy visuals flicker across the giant screens displaying ghoulish caricatures of the band’s members, barely seen by way of a spooky sea of dry ice. It’s fairly an entrance that ramps up an extra gear as quickly as frontman Alice Cooper arrives bathed in sensible gentle, trademark strolling stick in hand, and the capability crowd screams the roof off the venue. He’s slowly joined by fellow band members, the cries getting louder, and the frenzy reaches fever pitch as Cooper thrusts his stick stage proper and Johnny Depp seems wanting considerably happy with himself. Cooper is the right lead after all; half circus ringmaster, half Freddie Krueger, half my gran (god bless her soul), and at 75 he nonetheless clearly has what it takes to entertain a room filled with 20,000 screaming followers. In buckets.

Tonight’s set listing consists primarily of covers and tributes to musical pals now not with us. The Doorways get a few raunchy reworkings (5 To One and Break On By means of), as do AC/DC (The Jack) and Johnny Thunders (You Can’t Put Your Arms Round A Reminiscence). As is typical with Alice Cooper, the present has a theatrical really feel to it and we gape in awe as a set of illuminated vampire gnashers seem from the ceiling midway by way of the set.

Joe Perry and Tommy Henriksen pull some ace textbook axe poses and Johnny Depp will get on vocal duties for a fab model of Bowie’s Heroes. The actor stays up entrance for a tribute to Jeff Beck throughout which Ronnie Wooden makes an look together with Beck’s personal guitar which Joe Perry will get the honour of enjoying. Clearly a succesful singer, Depp does nevertheless often disappear into the shadows of the larger rock egos he’s sharing the stage with and will undoubtedly take a leaf out of the Perry/Henriksen e-book of rockstar posing.

After all, it’s not an Alice Cooper present with out College’s Out which we get as a riotous encore leaving the followers greater than glad.

It’s genuinely a extremely enjoyable present – so long as you don’t take it too severely – and I needn’t have anxious because the O2 Area is unquestionably a justified venue for a present of this magnitude.

Observe The Hollywood Vampires: web site, Fb, Twitter, Instagram

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All images © Paul Grace. For extra of Paul’s writing and images go to his archive. Paul is on Fb, Twitter, Instagram and his web sites are www.paulgrace-eventphotos.co.uk & www.pgrace.co.uk.