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The Dracula Among Social Vampires: The Hollywood Vampires At Montreux Jazz Festival (Album Review) Release: 8/7/26



Something is fitting about a band built on remembering the dead playing a festival as steeped in music history as Montreux. Hollywood Vampires, consisting of the almighty Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry, backed by the ever-reliable Tommy Henriksen, have brought their traveling wake-slash-celebration to the Swiss lakeside, and the result was exactly what longtime fans have come to expect: sloppy in the best way, sincere underneath the sleaze, and absolutely unconcerned with subtlety.

The band has always worn its concept proudly. Named for Cooper's real 1970s drinking club, where he'd hold court with the likes of Lennon, Keith Moon, and Micky Dolenz, Hollywood Vampires exists as much as a tribute act as an original project. That duality was on full display tonight, with the setlist weaving between covers honoring rock's fallen and cuts from the group's own catalog, including selections from their latest record, "Rise." Cooper remains the group's ringmaster, and he opened the set the way he tends to with a mix of menace and mischief that's aged into something closer to affection than shock. "I Want My Now" and "Raise the Dead" set an appropriately unruly tone early, the latter functioning almost as a mission statement for the whole project: this is a band that exists to keep certain ghosts loud and present. From there, the group leaned into deep-catalog covers that only a band this steeped in rock history would attempt back to back: a rowdy take on the blues-rock staple "I Got a Line on You," followed by the compact garage-rock burst of "Seven and 7 Is," a song that's over before the crowd even catches its breath.

"My Dead Drunk Friends," one of the band's more personal originals, landed with real weight. This song could easily read as maudlin in lesser hands but instead comes off as genuinely elegiac, Cooper and company treating their fallen friends and heroes with humor rather than solemnity. It bled into a medley pairing The Doors' "Five to One" with "Break On Through," a combination that let Depp and Perry trade off guitar duties with obvious relish, before Perry took center stage for a chugging run through "The Jack." The back half of the main set was where things really caught fire. Motörhead's "Ace of Spades" arrived with the kind of unpretentious ferocity the song demands, and then came the night's most audacious swing: a full-band assault on The Who's "Baba O'Riley," clocking in at nearly seven minutes and somehow earning every second of it. It's a bold choice for a band this size to take on, but the arrangement leaned into scale rather than shying from it, letting the song's synth-driven build translate into something suitably massive live.

From there, the Vampires dipped into deeper original territory with "As Bad As I Am" and "The Boogieman Surprise" before Cooper reclaimed the spotlight for "I'm Eighteen," a song that's lost none of its snarl across five decades. "Combination" kept the momentum going before the night pivoted into one of its most affecting stretches: Jim Carroll's "People Who Died," a song practically tailor-made for this band's whole ethos, followed immediately by Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion," which gave Perry every reason to remind the crowd exactly why he's still one of rock's most reliable guitarists. At over seven minutes, it became one of the night's centerpiece performances, unhurried and confident. "Welcome to Bushwackers" kept the originals coming before the band offered its most surprising cover of the night, David Bowie's "Heroes." Handling a song this iconic is always a risk. Still, the arrangement stayed respectful without becoming reverent to the point of stiffness, letting Cooper's voice carry the song's yearning without trying to imitate Bowie outright. 

'The Yardbirds' "Train Kept A-Rollin'" kept things moving with a rockabilly-tinged sprint before the night barreled toward its inevitable, theatrical conclusion: a "School's Out" pairing with Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall," a mashup Cooper has made something of a signature, and one that never fails to send a crowd into a frenzy. If there's a criticism to level at Hollywood Vampires, it's one the band would probably shrug off entirely: this isn't a show built on innovation. It's a bar band, as they've always insisted, just one staffed by genuine rock royalty with the chops and connections to make an eighteen-song, multi-genre victory lap feel effortless rather than indulgent. The covers work because the affection behind them is real, not performative, and the originals hold their own precisely because they're written with the same reverence for rock history that fuels the tribute half of the set. By the time the confetti (metaphorical or otherwise) settled after the closing medley, the Montreux crowd had gotten exactly what Hollywood Vampires promises every time: a night less concerned with reinventing rock 'n' roll than with keeping its ghosts audibly, joyfully alive.

The best bar band in the world just proved it - again. Go listen to their rendition of Motorhead's Ace of Spades:


Follow them online if you don't already: The Hollywood Vampires

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