Hollywood Vampires Salute Lemmy With Fiery Grammy Tribute
The supergroup Hollywood Vampires, which features Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, Joe Perry and Duff McKagan, among others, paid tribute to late Motörhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister at the Grammy Awards Monday night. The group added some harmony to the growly hard rockers’ calling card, “Ace of Spades,” as Cooper and McKagan sang together in tribute to the vocalist and bassist who died in December. Depp and Perry played opposing solos, and Kilmister’s face graced a giant screen behind them as they played.
“Lemmy was one of those salt-of-the-earth guys,” Cooper told Rolling Stone earlier this month. “Find me somebody who didn’t love Lemmy. He’s just one of those guys that’s impossible not to like.”
In addition to the tribute, Hollywood Vampires performed a new original tune, “As Bad as I Am,” live for the first time. Amid uncountable candelabras and fire graphics, the group shredded through the jammy tune, which included a spoken-word segment by Depp. The track appears on the band’s new, deluxe edition of its self-titled debut. Depp came up with the idea for the tune, which Cooper says plays off one of the actor’s favorite phrases.
“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,'” the singer told 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.”