With new album Rise arriving June 21, Hollywood Vampires, a side project of Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and actor Johnny Depp, began a brief tour at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas last night (May 10). We've got exclusive photos from the show, as well as the set list and videos, below.

Unlike their 2015 covers-fueled debut, Rise features mostly original material, and five of the newly penned songs -- the album and concert opener "I Want My Now," first single "Who's Laughin' Now," "The Boogieman Surprise," "Git' From 'Round Me" and "We Gotta Rise" -- were performed. They also broke out the three covers that appear on the new work. Perry took lead vocal chores on Johnny Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory," and Depp sang both Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" and David Bowie's "Heroes," the latter of which featured a slideshow of photos of Bowie behind the band.

They also played several of the covers and three originals -- "Raise the Dead," "Bad as I Am" (from the deluxe edition) and "Dead Drunk Friends" -- found on the debut. Cooper's own career was represented with "18" and "School's Out," as was Perry's Aerosmith history, with a cover of "Train Kept a-Rollin'," the Johnny Burnettet jump blues that the Yardbirds recorded in 1965.

As Cooper told us last month, he took a back seat in the songwriting process for Rise, allowing Depp to write the bulk of the lyrics, with Perry and producer Tommy Henriksen also contributing their ideas.

“On a lot of these songs, I did not go there. I said, ‘I’m not going to add what I would do here, because I don’t want it to sound like an Alice Cooper album,’” he said. “I want this to be the personality of the Vampires. And if that means that the B section goes too long, good, let it go too long. Normally, I would cut that in half, but I said, ‘No, no, let’s let it go long.’ ... To me, it was really interesting to do this album and kind of keep myself out of arranging it. It’s just more exciting for me to be the last voice in this thing.”

Hollywood Vampires, Las Vegas May 10, 2019 Set List

1. "I Want My Now"
2 "Raise the Dead"
3. "Bad as I Am"
4. "5 to 1" / "Break on Through"
5. "The Jack"
6. "Who's Laughin' Now"
7. "The Boogieman Surprise"
8. "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory"
9. "Dead Drunk Friends"
10. Baba O'Riley"
11. "Heroes"
12. "Git' From 'Round Me"
13. "18"
14. "Train Kept a-Rollin'"
15. People Who Died"
16. "School's Out"

Encore
17. "We Gotta Rise"

 

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