Johnny Depp/Alice Cooper Supergroup to Pay Tribute to Lemmy Kilmister at Grammys

Supergroup Hollywood Vampires will pay tribute to late Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister at the Grammys telecast later this month. The supergroup will also be debuting a new single.

Rolling Stone delivers the details.

“Alice Cooper and his Hollywood Vampires bandmates will bring some edge to the Grammys next week with a tribute to late Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister and the premiere of a hard-rocking, brand new song, ‘As Bad as I Am.'”

Alice Cooper also added the following.

“We started this band as a means to toast our ‘dead drunk friends’ at the Rainbow, all the ghosts in the bar, and now I guess Lemmy is involved in that, too.”

Lemmy died just four days after his 70th birthday last December and being diagnosed with prostate cancer that was described as “extremely aggressive.” The official autopsy showed that the official cause of death was a combination of prostate cancer, cardiac arrhythmia and congestive heart failure. Motörhead manger Todd Singerman wanted to keep the diagnosis private, but Lemmy wanted to make a public announcement. Sadly, Lemmy passed before his diagnosis and the future of the band could be announced.

Alice Cooper shared his reflections with Rolling Stone.

“Lemmy was one of those salt-of-the-earth guys… Find me somebody who didn’t love Lemmy. He’s just one of those guys that’s impossible not to like. He was always funny.”

This will mark the first time that Hollywood Vampires’ new single, “As Bad As I Am,” will played to the general public. The single will appear as a bonus track on a deluxe edition of the band’s first album aptly titled Hollywood Vampires.

Rolling Stone describes the song.

“With a scratchy guitar riff and locomotive, Aerosmith-y rhythms, ‘As Bad as I Am’ and its catchy chorus – ‘Here’s to you, as good as you are/ Here’s to me as bad as I am’ – came from Depp.”

“Johnny says to me, ‘My dad was a bit of a rounder, one of those guys that was in and out of trouble all the time,'” Cooper explains to Rolling Stone. “During Thanksgiving or Christmas, when we’d toast, he’d say, ‘Good as you are, bad as I am.'” Cooper laughs. “And I went, ‘Wow, that’s really good.’ That actually sounds like an old, Irish toast of some sort. So once again, almost everyone in the band is a recovered alcoholic and it refers back to alcohol.”

Although the band is still in the planning stages of what it will perform in Lemmy’s honor on the Grammy’s telecast. Alice Cooper is hoping to perform the Motörhead classic “Ace of Spades.”

“I might do it more ‘Alice Cooper style,’ but it would still have to have that growl, that guttural voice to make it work,” he says, via Music Feeds. “I can’t picture, like, Creedence Clearwater [Revival] doing that song.”

Hollywood Vampires was formed in 2015 as a way to honor the rock stars who died of from excess in the 1970s. The name derives from a drinking game formed by Cooper in the 70s. The initiation to become a member was to outdrink all of the members. Those members included John Lennon and Keith Moon.

Hollywood Vampires debut album featured many notable guests such as Paul McCartney, Dave Grohl, Joe Walsh and late actor Christopher Lee. The band’s live shows have brought in guests such as Tom Morello, Perry Farrell, Geezer Butler, and Lzzy Hale of Halestorm from time to time.

The band consists of actor Johnny Depp, shock rocker Alice Cooper, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, and Guns ‘n’ Roses Duff McKagan.

[Photo by Xander Deccio/Deccio Creative]