Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music and musicians from the 60’s to today. Enjoy the trip!

Hollywood Vampires is an American rock supergroup formed in 2015 by Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Joe Perry to honor the music of the rock stars who died from excess in the 1970s. The members included Alice Cooper, Bernie Taupin, Harry Nilsson, Micky Dolenz, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Keith Moon.

In 2015, Alice Cooper formed The Hollywood Vampires band with actor/guitarist Johnny Depp and Aerosmith axeman Joe Perry. Their eponymous album was released on September 11, 2015. Cooper told Digital Spy: “It was one of those things we realized that – doesn’t matter what band you’re in; The Beatles, The Stones – every band was a cover band at one time. We all started in bars and we all started by playing other people’s music. So I said, ‘Why don’t we do an album dedicated to our drinking club The Hollywood Vampires?’ “In the early ’70s we used to go to the Rainbow every night; Keith Moon, Harry Nilsson, and John Lennon when he was in town, and it was just a bunch of guys who met there every night and it was last man standing,” he continued. “Everybody was at the top of their game at the time, but now there’s only three of us left. Most of the guys, John, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison are all gone, so I said, ‘Let’s do an album dedicated to all our dead drunk friends.'”

Alice Cooper penned “My Dead Drunk Friends” with Johnny Depp and producer Bob Ezrin. It is one of two new tracks written for the album, (the other songs are covers). The track does what it says on the tin by paying tribute to his late drinking buddies. “Yeah, it was sort of a bar drinking song,” said Alice. “This one goes out to the crew, this one goes out to the wives, this one goes out to all of our dead drunk friends.”

Bob Ezrin came up with the idea for the song. Cooper told Eddie Trunk: “I like the title ‘All My Dead Drunk Friends.’ It’s just offensive enough to work, but all those guys would have totally got it. They had the same sense of humor. If you told them you were going to do an album after they were gone called ‘All My Dead Drunk Friends,’ they would have died laughing.”