The Hollywood actor’s guitarist bandmate Joe Perry has revealed the band are plotting a huge tour of Europe and the UK next year in support of their latest LP, ‘Rise’, and the actor will be making the band his priority once he’s wrapped on World War II drama ‘Minamata’ and ‘Waiting For The Barbarians’ – which is based on the allegorical novel by J.M. Coetzee, which tells the story of a British magistrate living in a colonial town who starts to develop a growing sense of unease about the Empire.
According to the Daily Star newspaper’s Wired column, Joe said: “It will be a real tour worthy of the name.”
Speaking about Johnny’s “original” work on ‘Rise’, which also sees the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star put his own spin on David Bowie classic ‘Heroes’, the Aerosmith rocker continued: “You could say that ‘Rise’ is the very first original album by Johnny, it made sense for us to leave him to write most of the lyrics.
“We realised Hollywood Vampires could be much more than just a covers band. Johnny came with a book full of poems that he’d written for lyrics.”
The band – completed by ‘Poison’ hitmaker Alice Cooper – “laid down” ‘Heroes’ at the Hansa Tonstudio in West Berlin, where Bowie recorded the original for the 1979 album of the same name, as the second instalment of his ‘Berlin Trilogy’ release.
Joe admitted it was an emotional experience and they all felt like they were “with the angels”.
He said: “We laid that down last year in Berlin, in the same studio that David Bowie made the album of the same name.
“It was crazy hot. We recorded the whole thing live, we all felt a lot of emotion recording it.
“It was a sacred lucky moment because the studio was free during that one day off on tour. Johnny was with the angels, like we all were!”
‘Rise’ was largely recorded at Johnny’s very own “well-outfitted” studio.