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No guillotines, just 'grave-robbing' when Alice Cooper gigs with Johnny Depp and Joe Perry

The trio of Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry bring their rock-and-roll cover band to casinos in AC and Bethlehem this weekend.

It makes perfect sense: If a band is going to engage in musical grave robbing, who else should be the front man but the coolest ghoul in rock history?

Alice Cooper, 68, is touring as the lead singer of the Hollywood Vampires. Joining him in this extracurricular bit of sonic necrophilia are Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry, 65, and A-list actor and current gossiparazzi obsession Johnny Depp, 53. Also in the band, who are to perform Friday at the Sands Bethlehem Event Center and Sunday at Borgata Hotel, Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, is Matt Sorum, best known as Guns N' Roses' drummer. Original GN'R bassist Duff McKagan, who appears on the Vampires' 2015, self-titled debut CD, has been replaced for the tour by Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots.

The star-studded unit has some original songs, but its stock-in-trade are covers by deceased artists - The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, and glam-rock progenitor Marc Bolan. Which makes Cooper - who introduced over-the-top theatrics to the live rock music aesthetic with his steeped-in-gore stage shtick - the perfect front man.

Born in the 'Shadows'

The band's beginnings date to 2011 London, where Depp was filming the big-screen version of 1960s vampire soap opera Dark Shadows, in which Cooper did a musical cameo as himself singing "No More Mr. Nice Guy."

"When we got done filming . . . we were going to go to a little club that night called the 100 Club, which is where everyone from The Yardbirds to The Who has played," Cooper recalled during a recent phone chat. "You just become a bar band: You don't bring any makeup, you don't bring any snakes, you don't bring any show biz with you.

"That night Johnny came in and played guitar with us and nailed . . . everything we played - 'Back in the U.S.S.R.' to 'Brown Sugar' to 'You Really Got Me.' Anything the audience would yell out, we would play. It just kind of moved from there. I said, 'It would be a great idea to kind of tip our hats to all of our dead, drunk friends.'"

Cooper's reference to "dead, drunk friends" points to a group of 1970s hell-raisers who partied heartily at a West Hollywood lounge called On the Rox. This Watergate-era version of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack included Cooper, John Lennon, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, and Keith Moon, The Who's storied drummer. The Vampires' current set pays tribute to all three.

"When you started listing - the Jim Morrisons, the Jimi Hendrixes, the John Lennons, and Keith Moons - it really was an impressive bunch of guys," said the Detroit native whose real name is Vincent Furnier (pronounced forn-YAY).

Because guitar-hero Perry was staying at Cooper's Arizona estate at the time, it was a no-brainer for Cooper to invite him along.

Once the principals committed to the project, they were joined by Bob Ezrin, whose production credits include the classic Alice Cooper albums Billion Dollar Babies and School's Out. The wild card, obviously, is Depp, far better known for his eclectic body of film work (Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco, Ed Wood, the Pirates of the Caribbean series) than for his guitar playing. But don't dismiss Depp's six-string prowess, Cooper said.

"Joe Perry is one of the great rock guitar players of all time, right? He takes lessons from Johnny. That gives you the level of guitar player Johnny is."

Speaking of Johnny . . .

The Vampires' tour is sharing headlines these days with the scandal surrounding Depp's recent breakup with his wife, actress Amber Heard. Heard filed for divorce in May, around the time the Vampires tour started in Europe. Soon, allegations of abuse surfaced, and Heard sought a restraining order against Depp.

Asked about the controversy, Cooper replied, "Johnny keeps all that to himself. He gets onstage, and he has the time of his life. I think being in Europe on tour with us might have been the greatest thing" for him.

"None of us sit there and ask him anything. None of us sit there and comment on it. It's none of our business. As far as we're concerned, he's the guitar player, and if he wants to volunteer anything, great. But honestly . . . I don't think I heard the word once while I was on the whole tour. Honestly, I read it in the paper, and I saw it on TV.

"I'd get onstage, and Johnny would be there, 'Let's go! Let's get 'em!' He was the guitar player in the band. None of that ever came up."

Alice makes a promise

Cooper is hopscotching between Vampires gigs and his own tour this summer, and he says the former are a refreshing break from the latter.

"I'm doing my show, which is full-out Alice Cooper: guillotines and strait jackets. And you have to be at the right place at the right time. It's totally choreographed," he said. "And then with the Vampires, I actually talk to the audience. Alice Cooper never does. In my show, I would never talk to the audience, because the Alice Cooper character just does not do that. He's a mysterious character. He would never say, 'Thank you,' in the middle of a show. At the end of the show, yeah. But he never talks to the audience.

"But in the Vampires' show, I talk to them all the way through. It's kind of fun to just be the lead singer in the band."

Cooper is writing material for the next Vampires LP. Beyond that, he pledged that, unlike so many of his contemporaries who have dabbled in everything from bluegrass to Cole Porter-style classic pop, he is forever wedded to good old rock-and-roll.

"I'm a rock singer," he said. "I've always promised my audience that I'll never go 'unplugged.' There never will be a time when you see Alice Cooper sitting there with a piano and an acoustic guitar. That's never going to happen. Alice Cooper is a rock-and-roll guy. I'm a Detroit guy. It's all about the electric guitars, the drums, the bass.

"And I always tell my band I am the last person who's going to say, 'Turn it down!'"

Hollywood Vampires, 8 p.m. Friday, Sands Bethlehem, 77 Sands Blvd., Bethlehem, $49.50 and $109.50, 800-745-3000, sandseventcenter.com. And 8 p.m. Sunday, Borgata, 1 Borgata Way, Atlantic City, $84.50/$69.50, 866-900-4849, theborgata.com.