Alice Cooper states that Joe Perry sometimes takes guitar lessons from actor Johnny Depp

Alice Cooper states that Joe Perry sometimes takes guitar lessons from actor Johnny Depp

Alice Cooper was recently interviewed by Hilary Hughes for Billboard and the shock rocker spoke about touring with Ace Frehley which led to talking about Hollywood Vampires, which also includes actor Johnny Depp and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.

In terms of having Frehley play the LA and Las Vegas dates for the Paranormal Evening Tour, Cooper stated: “Well, we did Australia together. Ace is one of those guys — he gets up, and he’s just a pure hard rocker. Him and Slash are very much the same kind of guitar player. In fact, I had them onstage together in Phoenix for the Alice Cooper Christmas Pudding Show. It was a battle of the volume. They both play unbelievably great hard rock guitar, and so it’s the perfect fit.

I’ve known Ace since the old Kiss days. He had some physical problems for awhile, and now he’s come back strong and with a great band. His bass player is playing bass for the Hollywood Vampires. We picked up his bass player and Aerosmith’s keyboard player, also. The great thing about Johnny Depp and Joe Perry is, Joe Perry actually takes guitar lessons from Johnny Depp sometimes.”

The suggestion that Perry was taking guitar lessons from Depp seemed crazy to Hughes so Cooper went on to explain: “Well, Johnny was a guitar player way before he was an actor. We all kinda knew that. I didn’t know how good he was until he came up and played with us two or three times. When we put the Hollywood Vampires together, one night Joe got sick and couldn’t play, and Johnny played all the leads. Everybody in the audience was in shock, because Johnny’s a great guitar player. He’s not an actor trying to be a rock star; he’s a rock star that accidentally became an actor. 

There was a movie that he did called Chocolat where he played a gypsy jazz guitar player, and he plays all the Django Reinhardt stuff, and that’s the stuff Joe was sitting there listening to going, “What is that?” [Johnny] goes, “Let me show you how to play this stuff.” I’m watching Joe trying to pick up the chording on the stuff and I’m going, “That’s great! These two guitar players are teaching each other stuff!””

You can read the rest of the interview with Alice Cooper at Billboard.