The Hollywood Vampires - Live at Colchester Castle 21st August 2026

Hollywood Vampires — Castle Park, Colchester

21 August 2026

Review by Robert Corich

There are tribute bands.

There are supergroups.

And then there are Hollywood Vampires — a band whose entire raison d’être is to drag the ghosts of rock’s greatest sinners back into the room, plug them into amplifiers and see what happens.

At 8:50pm in Castle Park, Colchester, the Vampires opened with “I Want My Now”, before “Raise the Dead” established the evening’s rather obvious theme. This wasn’t going to be a greatest-hits set in the conventional sense. It was going to be a history lesson delivered at considerable volume.

And what a history.

Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen” was followed by “My Dead Drunk Friends”, before “The Boogieman Surprise” brought the Alice Cooper connection roaring back into focus. Then came “Venus in Furs” — The Velvet Underground’s dark, druggy classic — and suddenly the musical geography of the evening stretched from Detroit to New York, London to Los Angeles and pretty much everywhere in between.

The Hollywood Vampires have never pretended that rock’n’roll was invented by them.

They know exactly who they owe.

And they wear those debts rather proudly.

“People Who Died”, originally by The Jim Carroll Band, was a particularly inspired choice. It’s one of those songs that gets under your skin because the subject matter isn’t some abstract rock mythology. These were people. Friends. Heroes. Lost lives. Lost possibilities.

Then comes “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory”, Johnny Thunders’ beautifully battered masterpiece. Love and hated by many at the same time.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Because if the Hollywood Vampires concept occasionally threatens to become a rather expensive rock’n’roll jukebox, songs like this remind you that there is something considerably more serious underneath it. Thunders wasn’t simply a rock star. He was part of that magnificent, doomed lineage of musicians who seemed to exist permanently on the wrong side of the tracks.

And then, because subtlety has never really been the Vampires’ stock in trade, we’re into “Who’s Laughing Now”, followed by Aerosmith’s “Livin’ on the Edge.”

The latter is a reminder of just how many lives the members of this band have lived within rock music.

Then comes The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”, followed by Aerosmith’s “Bright Light Fright.”

It’s a slightly bonkers setlist when you stop and look at it.

The Velvet Underground.

Jim Carroll.

Johnny Thunders.

The Who.

Aerosmith.

Alice Cooper.

David Bowie.

AC/DC.

The Doors.

Killing Joke.

Tiny Bradshaw.

Jeff Beck.

This isn’t so much a setlist as a pub conversation between several generations of rock musicians who probably shouldn’t all be in the same room.

Fortunately, nobody told them.

“Rumble / Beck’s Bolero” is another wonderful left turn. Link Wray’s primitive, menacing instrumental colliding with Jeff Beck’s virtuoso legacy is exactly the sort of thing that makes sense in the Vampires’ world.

Then “Roadhouse Blues.”

The Doors’ spirit has always fitted this band like a battered leather jacket, and the song remains one of those great pieces of rock’n’roll architecture: swaggering, dirty and built for a live audience.

“The Death and Resurrection Show” — Killing Joke’s post-punk monster — takes things somewhere darker again, before David Bowie’s “Heroes” changes the emotional temperature completely.

And what follows is glorious, shameless rock’n’roll excess.

“Highway to Hell.”

“Walk This Way.”

“School’s Out / Another Brick in the Wall.”

At this point, subtlety has been put into a taxi and sent home.

And thank God for that.

Because this isn’t an evening for restraint. It’s an evening for the great riffs, the great songs and the great characters who made rock music dangerous, exciting and occasionally downright stupid.

The encore begins with “The Train Kept A-Rollin’”, that ancient rock’n’roll locomotive that has been rattling through the genre since the 1950s.

And what better way to bring a British summer evening to a close?

Except they aren’t finished.

Because lurking at the bottom of the setlist is Jeff Beck’s “Hi Ho Silver Lining.”

A fun if not rather incongruous choice as Jeff himself was never really a champion for the song even if it was a massive hit for him.

Maybe it was chosen because its all certain members on stage could play from Jeff’s vast catalogue. I’d love to have heard anything from ”Wired” or “Guitar Workshop” but somehow I doubt we’ll ever hear the likes of those numbers again.

Then suddenly the whole evening comes full circle.

Because for all the Hollywood mythology, the famous names and the enormous rock-star history represented on that stage, the fundamental ingredient remains the same one that powered punk, garage rock, blues, glam, metal and every other rebellious mutation of the form:

attitude.

Hollywood Vampires aren’t trying to convince you that they’re the bands whose songs they’re playing.

They’re doing something more interesting.

They’re reminding you why those bands mattered.

Why I’m Eighteen still sounds young.

Why Venus in Furs still sounds dangerous.

Why Johnny Thunders still breaks your heart.

Why Baba O’Riley still makes the hairs rise on the back of your neck.

Why Highway to Hell still demands to be played loud.

Why Heroes still carries that strange mixture of hope and desperation.

And why School’s Out can still make a perfectly respectable evening in Colchester feel like someone has just thrown a petrol bomb through the windows.

That, ultimately, is the appeal of Hollywood Vampires.

It’s not nostalgia.

It’s resurrection.

They raise the dead, give them back their amplifiers and let them loose for another night.

And judging by Castle Park, the dead aren’t complaining.

Neither was I.

Oh, and the screaming every time Johnny Depp hit the big screens plumbing on his guitar strings….

That’s another review in itself…