What could have been better than The Hollywood Vampires on a hot summer evening in the shadow of a castle! We went along to check it out!

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Sometimes the location of a gig can almost feel like another member of the band, and the Hollywood Vampires playing in the shadow of Colchester Castle was definitely one of them. On a warm August evening, thousands of rock fans packed into Castle Park and a stage full of people who have collectively lived about twelve lifetimes of rock ’n’ roll between them was always going to be special.

Throw The Damned into the mix as support, and the show quickly starts to feel like somebody had raided the record collection of every ageing punk, metalhead and classic rock obsessive in Essex.

The Hollywood Vampires were back in the UK for their first run of shows in three years, with Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and Tommy Henriksen at the heart of the band. And while there will inevitably always be people who look at the lineup and think “celebrity supergroup,” the reality on stage was a lot more straightforward: this was just a bunch of experienced musicians having an absolute blast playing loud rock music.

THE DAMNED

Before the Vampires appeared, we got an hour with The Damned, which is one hell of a support band. After 50 years in the game, The Damned have absolutely nothing left to prove. They were there at the beginning of UK punk, they’ve survived countless lineup changes, arguments, reunions and musical reinventions, and somehow they still manage to walk onto a stage and immediately feel unmistakably like The Damned.

Street of Dreams was a great opener, setting things off with that slightly darker, gothic side of the band rather than immediately smashing everyone over the head with punk rock. Dave Vanian remains one of the coolest frontmen in British music. He barely seems to need to do anything particularly dramatic; he just has that presence. Sunglasses, dark clothes, that wonderfully deep voice;  he still looks like he should be wandering around a Victorian graveyard at three in the morning.

From there we got Wait For The Blackout, which sounded fantastic in the evening sunshine. It’s one of those Damned songs that sits somewhere between punk, goth and psychedelic rock, and hearing that keyboard line drifting across Castle Park was brilliant.

Then came Love Song, and suddenly the old-school punk contingent in the crowd woke up properly. The guitars from Where’s Wally lookalike Captain Sensible got nastier, the pace picked up and for a few minutes it felt like we’d been dropped back into a sweaty little club rather than standing beside an 11th-century castle.

That’s always been one of the things I like about The Damned. They were one of the original British punk bands, but they were never content just playing three-chord thrash forever. The History Of The World (Part 1), Stranger On The Town and Is It A Dream showed how strange, theatrical and melodic they can be, while Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde suited Vanian perfectly.

Ignite kicked things up another gear before Neat Neat Neat arrived like somebody had suddenly thrown a pint over the evening’s nice summer atmosphere, and that riff still sounds filthy. Then came New Rose. The first single released by a British punk band still sounds ridiculously alive all these years later. There’s no ceremony required. No massive introduction. Captain Sensible hits that guitar, the drums explode and off it goes. Hearing hundreds, if not thousands, of people shouting along to it in 2026 was one of those lovely reminders that genuinely great punk songs don’t age.

Their set finished off with both parts of Smash It Up, which was exactly how it should end. The Damned weren’t perfect in the sense of being ridiculously slick, but you wouldn’t want them to be. There’s still a slightly ramshackle edge to them; that feeling that things could wobble off the rails at any moment, and that’s part of their charm.

HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES

Formed as a tribute to the legendary rock stars Alice Cooper knew and lost, as well as a nod to his 70’s drinking club, the Hollywood Vampires combine original material with songs from the artists who helped shape rock history. Their self-titled debut album, released in 2015, featured a mixture of covers and new songs, while 2019’s Rise pushed the band further towards its own identity with a larger collection of original tracks alongside carefully chosen tributes.

That balance between new material and classic covers is central to the Hollywood Vampires experience. They can move from songs written by Cooper, Perry and Depp to tributes to The Doors, David Bowie, The Who, Aerosmith and AC/DC without the set ever feeling like a simple nostalgia exercise. This wasn’t just four famous men standing at the front either. The touring band behind them sounded absolutely enormous, giving the whole show much more weight than you might expect if you’ve only casually heard of Hollywood Vampires through Depp, Cooper and Perry’s names.

They opened with I Want My Now, which is actually a very smart choice. Rather than immediately reaching for a famous cover, they started with one of their own songs and made it clear that Hollywood Vampires isn’t entirely a covers project. It has that sleazy modern Alice Cooper feel; a stomping riff, a big chorus, plenty of swagger, and gave everyone on stage a chance to settle into their roles.

Raise The Dead came next, another original track that actually got me into the band back in 2015, and it explains the entire concept of the band in one song. The Hollywood Vampires were originally created partly as a tribute to Alice Cooper’s rockstar friends, and that celebration of fallen musicians remains at the heart of the live show. Images of departed rock icons appearing throughout the evening gave the concert a surprisingly affectionate tone. For all the skulls, guitars, and theatrical imagery, there is something genuinely heartfelt underneath it all.

And then Alice Cooper properly took control with I’m Eighteen. What can you really say about Alice at this point that hasn’t already been said? He’s 78 years old and still somehow walks onto a stage with more charisma than frontmen half his age. The voice is still unmistakably Alice that gravelly sneer immediately cuts through everything, and within seconds the whole place was singing along.

One of the biggest surprises of the night was how evenly the spotlight was shared. Obviously, Johnny Depp attracts a huge amount of attention simply by existing. Every time he wandered towards the front of the stage, a forest of phones immediately went into the air. Depp largely behaved like a guitarist in a rock band. He looked relaxed, occasionally slightly detached from everything happening around him, but clearly enjoying himself, and when it came time for him to take center-stage, he handled it impressively.

Joe Perry, meanwhile, was exactly what you would expect Joe Perry to be: effortlessly cool. There’s something incredibly satisfying about watching somebody who has spent more than fifty years playing guitar wander forward, bend into a riff and make the whole thing look like absolutely no effort whatsoever.

Tommy Henriksen deserves a massive mention too. He’s the glue holding the whole operation together, and he’s been a collaborator with Alice Cooper for many years; making for some wonderful chemistry. He’s constantly moving, constantly interacting with the crowd and adding plenty of energy while the bigger names get much of the attention.

My Dead Drunk Friends continued the Vampires’ own material before The Boogieman Surprise, but then the show began diving properly into the band’s wonderfully strange jukebox of influences. Johnny helms a fantastic version of Velvet Underground’s Venus In Furs brought things down into a darker, moodier place before Jim Carroll Band’s People Who Died pushed the tribute element right back to the front.

Then Depp took lead vocals once again on Johnny Thunders’ You Can’t Put Your Arms Round A Memory, and this was one of the quieter moments in the set as well as one of the better ones. Depp isn’t going to overpower anyone vocally, but that isn’t really the point. His slightly worn, understated delivery suits songs like this. It felt far more like someone playing a song they genuinely love than someone trying to prove they can front a rock band.

Who’s Laughing Now brought us back into Vampires’ territory after a short bass solo (with a hint of Black Sabbath for Ozzy) from Chris Wyse, drenched in fog and red lighting (to hide the giant set of vampire fangs inflating) before Joe Perry stepped forward for one of the night’s biggest crowd reactions. That opening guitar to Livin’ On The Edge is instantly recognizable, and hearing an Aerosmith song played by Joe Perry himself while standing beside a medieval castle is one of those wonderfully bizarre sentences you don’t expect to find yourself writing.

If that wasn’t enough classic-rock ammunition, next came Baba O’Riley. This is where the whole Hollywood Vampires idea really makes sense; on paper, a supergroup playing famous rock covers could easily turn into expensive karaoke. Live, though, when the musicians involved actually knew, toured with, influenced or were influenced by many of these people, the songs have a completely different weight. Thousands of people yelling “teenage wasteland!” beneath the castle walls was every bit as ridiculous and brilliant as you’d imagine.

Joe Perry then dug deeper into Aerosmith history with Bright Light Fright before the instrumental Beck’s Bolero allowed the guitarists to stretch out a little, but one of the real highlights arrived with Roadhouse Blues. It’s dirty, bluesy, loose rock ’n’ roll, and Alice’s voice works brilliantly with it. Nobody was trying to imitate Jim Morrison; they just took the bones of the song and played it like a bar band that happened to contain some of the most famous musicians in the world.

Killing Joke’s The Death And Resurrection Show was a really interesting inclusion and gave the set this pounding, almost industrial edge. It stuck out from some of the more obvious classic-rock covers, in a great way.

Then came Johnny Depp’s biggest moment, Heroes. Depp singing Bowie beneath the night sky could very easily have tipped into something overly sentimental, but it worked. The arrangement didn’t try to compete with Bowie’s original; instead it felt restrained and respectful, building gradually while images and lights helped turn it into one of the emotional peaks of the show. His vocal was brilliant on this, and he’s only gotten better and more confident with each tour.

Tommy Henriksen then delivers a killer vocal on Highway To Hell in tribute to Bon Scott and Malcolm Young, and suddenly everyone was shouting, horns were in the air and the whole place became one enormous AC/DC pub singalong.

Joe Perry then delivered another Aerosmith classic with Walk This Way, a riff that remains one of the greatest guitar riffs ever written, and hearing Perry himself tear through it with Cooper on vocals was worth the ticket price on its own. By this point, The Hollywood Vampires had stopped bothering with restraint, so naturally they finished the main set with School’s Out, which cleverly eventually collided with Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall.

Alice Cooper doing School’s Out remains one of rock music’s greatest moments. Everybody knows it, everybody sings it. The encore kicked off with The Train Kept A-Rollin’, another song drenched in rock history and closely associated with Aerosmith, before they somehow found room for Hi Ho Silver Lining. Yes, Jeff Beck’s Hi Ho Silver Lining, at a Hollywood Vampires gig, and naturally everyone knew every word.

If there was one slight issue with the night, it was the volume. For a band built around huge guitar riffs, there were moments where you really wanted everything to be just that little bit louder. Other people around me at the Colchester show noticed the same thing, with one attendee suggesting the outdoor location and nearby residential areas may have contributed to noise restrictions.

There is also no escaping the fact that Hollywood Vampires are essentially a very expensive rock ‘n’ roll covers band for large parts of the evening, but I’m not convinced that’s actually a criticism. If your covers band contains Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, you’re probably allowed to play Alice Cooper and Aerosmith songs, and when you’re throwing The Who, Bowie, AC/DC, The Doors, Johnny Thunders, The Velvet Underground, Killing Joke and the Sex Pistols into the same set, complaining about it feels slightly miserable.

More importantly, the band never came across like they were simply cashing in on famous names. There didn’t appear to be much ego involved at all. Even fan reactions afterwards repeatedly mentioned how much fun the musicians seemed to be having together, and that’s exactly how it came across from the audience too. That is probably the Hollywood Vampires’ greatest strength: they’re fun.

Rock music doesn’t always need to be challenging, groundbreaking or incredibly serious. Sometimes you just want Alice Cooper strutting around a stage, Johnny Depp playing Bowie, Joe Perry ripping into Aerosmith riffs and several thousand people yelling the chorus to Highway To Hell beside a castle, and on that level, the Hollywood Vampires absolutely delivered.

The Damned supplied the punk history, the Vampires supplied the classic-rock excess, and Colchester Castle supplied one of the best backdrops you could ask for. No pretence, no reinvention of the wheel, just great songs, great musicians and a ridiculous amount of rock history standing on one stage; and sometimes that’s more than enough. Vampires, punks, dead rock stars and a castle. What more do you want from a Friday night? Plenty to sink your teeth into as the Vampires took a bite out of Colchester.

All concert photography by Graham Hilling. You can check out more of his work on his website, here.

Hollywood Vampires: Website

The Damned: Website

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