With the help of Johnny Depp and Joe Perry, Alice Cooper once again parodies rock-and-roll excess on Hollywood Vampires.

(Published at ThinkChristian.net)

Halloween comes early this year thanks to everyone’s favorite shock-rocking, snake-handling, perennially decapitated, thoughtfully Christian crypt keeper Alice Cooper. Along with Johnny Depp and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, Cooper has assembled the super-est of supergroups to offer a loving yet chilling parody of rock-and-roll excess. The self-titled debut album by Hollywood Vampires is here – trick or treat indeed!

Over the span of its 14 songs, Cooper, Depp and Perry present a tightly conceived tribute to Cooper’s 1970s drinking club called, you guessed it, The Hollywood Vampires. They use humor and swagger to honor their fallen friends, celebrate a pivotal era of rock and roll and sneak in a subtle lesson in the process. Like the best horror movies, there is a point to this story.

The original Hollywood Vampires included John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, Micky Dolenz and Bernie Taupin, but other luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were also known to join Cooper’s infamous lair at the storied Rainbow Room on the Sunset Strip. Their debauchery is the stuff of rock legend. Cooper, the charismatic ringleader of the Vampires, is one of the few left standing. That he parlayed his recovery into a well-documented journey toward the Christian faith is an amazing plot twist, to be sure.

On Hollywood Vampires, Cooper crawls into some of the deep cuts in FM rock history, all connected somehow to one of his Vampire buddies, and inhabits them with sinister glee. In his leather-fisted grip, the Spirit classic “I Got A Line On You” feels like a valentine from Satan himself. Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” is even creepier, as Cooper’s baritone snarl hisses like a snake alongside ACDC’s Brian Johnson. On “One,” Cooper slithers again like an evil snake that will gladly turn your need for community against you. He makes the repeated line of “Jump IntoThe Fire” – “We can make each other happy” – sound like another desperate lie. The winks become far more obvious in the rollicking cover of The Small Faces’ “Itchycoo Park,” a psychedelic pop classic about getting high. In the context of the rest of the songs, even this stoner favorite comes off as a gentle farce.

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