Hollywood Vampires: Don’t give up the day job, Johnny Depp

“We are the Hollywood Vampires,” announced Alice Cooper to the O2 on Sunday night, “and we play music for our dead, drunk friends.”

With Cooper flanked on guitar by Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and actor Johnny Depp, Hollywood Vampires are essentially a very high-profile jam band that’s got out of control. Dealing mostly in classic rock covers by friends no longer with us, and named after the frontman’s 1970s West Hollywood drinking club – which comprised Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Micky Dolenz and occasionally John Belushi, among others – they are a celebration of rock’s golden era, as well as something of a warning about its excesses. It’s an apt description for the show itself.

At first, things weren’t so far from a normal Alice Cooper gig. Strutting out in a military jacket, Droog-ish eye make-up and brandishing a riding crop, at 75 he is still rock’s finest ringmaster. His own songs – I’m Eighteen, an inevitable, final School’s Out – sound fantastic, while during The Doors’ Break On Through (To the Other Side) and The Who’s Baba O’Riley he captured the spirit of the originals perfectly.

Roles were frequently changed, though. Perry took the mic while Cooper picked up a guitar for a version of Can’t Put Your Arm Around a Memory by late New York Doll Johnny Thunders, and then a harmonica on Aerosmith’s Bright Light Fright.

In these moments, the Vampires’ strengths – plugging in and playing rock’n’roll bangers – were plainly clear. When Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood arrived to jam though a tribute to the late Jeff Beck, with Perry on one of the blues icon’s own guitars, it was genuinely thrilling. The few originals of their own aren’t bad, either, basically sounding like missing Alice Cooper tracks.

But the switching around interrupted momentum, as did some of the song selections. Case in point: AC/DC’s The Jack. Its trudging boogie is boring enough when its authors do it. Here – accompanied by Jack playing card motifs, as if to distract from the song’s actual theme of STD – it was just baffling.

And then there’s Johnny Depp. For some, his presence is reason enough to miss Hollywood Vampires entirely. For those watching, he’s a talented – if obviously Keith Richards-y – guitarist, but his turns as frontman were surprisingly bland. During Heroes, his mumbling vocals failed to articulate David Bowie’s optimistic romance. Attempting Killing Joke’s The Death and Resurrection Show – a song surely unfamiliar to most here – the original’s essential threat and menace were nowhere to be found.

At their best, Hollywood Vampires are exactly what you’d expect when a showman, a guitar hero and an actor walk into a bar. Too often, though, their over-extending of the idea and inconsistent flow robbed them of what should be a much deadlier bite.

On tour until July 12; aegpresents.co.uk