Hypocrite alert? Johnny Depp joins supergroup Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper and Aerosmith's Joe Perry
The Pirates star said just a few weeks ago that actor-musicians 'make him sick'
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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
Johnny Depp has arguably just confirmed himself the most hypocritical actor in the history of hypocritical actors by forming a supergroup with Alice Cooper and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.
Just weeks after claiming that actor-musicians “make him sick”, the Pirates of the Caribbean star has taken up a place in the line-up of new band Hollywood Vampires.
Cooper announced the news on Instagram last Saturday, with a live date scheduled at the Rock in Rio festival this September alongside Queens of the Stone Age and System of a Down.
Depp’s appearance in the line-up will come as surprise to many, seeing as he apparently “hates the idea, ‘Come see me play the guitar because you’ve seen me in 12 movies’”.
“You want the people who are listening to the music to only be interested in the music,” he told reporters in Berlin recently. “I’ve been very lucky to play on friends’ records and it’s still going. Music is still part of my life. But you won’t be hearing The Johnny Depp Band. That won’t ever exist.”
Former Beatle Paul McCartney has also teamed up with the group, with Perry sharing details of their recording session in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times last year.
“I was in the studio with Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp, playing guitar, and the three of us are looking at each other like, ‘Hey, we’re sitting here with Paul McCartney,” he said. “We’re all looking at each other like open-mouthed kids…it’s the great ego leveller.”
Cooper first used the name Hollywood Vampires for a group of famous musical drinking buddies that included John Lennon and Keith Moon.
He played “School’s Out”, “Brown Sugar” and “My Generation” with Depp for a charity benefit concert in Calirfornia last December, as well as at London’s 100 Club four years ago.
The pair are close friends, with Cooper starring in a cameo role in Depp’s 2012 vampire comedy Dark Shadows.
Depp has joined Perry on stage before as well, when he performed “Train Kept a Rollin’” with them live last year.
Perhaps Depp should consider Hollywood Vampires a permanent career move, after a string of box office flops has many critics believing his glory days are behind him.
His latest movie, Mortdecai, grossed just $7.6 million at the US box office and $16 million overseas, despite costing $60 million to make.
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