Aerosmith’s Joe Perry spoke about the future of his Hollywood Vampires supergroup featuring Alice Cooper and Johnny Depp and revealed the band’s plans for a new album as follow-up to their sophomore album, ‘Rise,’ which came out in 2019.
Perry told InBoston, “The second album, it started to really feel like a band, because we started using a couple of guys from Alice’s band. So that became the solid band.”
“The drummer [Glen Sobel] and [guitarist] Tommy [Henriksen]. And then we brought in Buck Johnson, who plays for Aerosmith and also plays on some of my solo stuff. And then Chris Wyse, who used to play with The Cult, who’s a killer bass player. And we got the best of the best. And then the four of us are out there, and it’s a pretty good band.”
“But we don’t operate like a regular band. You’d think we would be on the road more, put out more records, but everybody has other things they do. It was almost three years since the last tour. And it was great getting back together [for the 2026 European run of shows]. And it took us a little while to get rolling. Our second gig was at the O2 Arena in London. We did probably five or six shows in U.K., and then we went over to the [rest of the European] continent and played some of the places we’d been playing.”
“And it just didn’t work out that we could play in the States. But I think the next time we go out, we’ll focus on playing in the States. And I think with the documentary [‘Unleashed Spirits: The Rise Of The Hollywood Vampires’], we’re talking about doing another album sometime after the first of the year. Johnny’s gonna be — I think he’s gonna have some space. So we’ll see — we’ll see what happens. We’ll just have to play it by ear.”
Perry’s comments come at a busy moment for the group, which has spent the past several months touring Europe and promoting a new documentary about its history. The supergroup has never operated on a conventional schedule, and Perry’s remarks suggest that pattern will continue as the members balance Hollywood Vampires with their other projects.
The band’s origins trace back well before its first album. Hollywood Vampires is an American rock supergroup formed in 2012 by Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry. The name comes from the 1970s celebrity drinking club that Cooper led, which describes the latter-day group as a supergroup comprising Cooper, Perry, Depp, and Cooper’s bassist Tommy Henriksen.
The group’s formation story is closely tied to Cooper’s recovery and his friendship with Depp. The band was started in 2012 by Cooper, by then a recovering alcoholic, and his friend, actor-guitarist Johnny Depp, who met on the set of the film “Dark Shadows.” Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, himself a recovering drug addict, then came aboard.
The 2026 run of shows marked a long-awaited return to the stage. The band announced its UK and Europe tour with the message, “After almost three years away, we’re finally coming back to tour the UK and Europe!!” Additional dates in Croatia, Austria, and Prague were later added to the routing.
The documentary Perry referenced has already drawn attention on the festival circuit. “Unleashed Spirits: The Rise of the Hollywood Vampires” had its world premiere at the Boch Center Wang Theatre on Friday, September 18, opening the 42nd Annual Boston Film Festival, with Emmy Award winner Daniel E. Catullo III directing. The film then won Best Documentary Film at the festival.
Beyond touring and film, the band has also revisited its live archives. Hollywood Vampires announced “At Montreux Jazz Festival,” a live album drawn from their 2018 performance at the storied Swiss festival. The release adds another entry to a catalog that has remained sparse since “Rise” arrived in 2019.
