Alice Cooper’s latest project is a cover supergroup featuring Joe Perry, Johnny Depp, Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum, and more. They call themselves Hollywood Vampires and if you like rock you should listen to their self-titled album. Anyway, there are obviously a lot of stories, mostly focusing on Cooper’s past with the original Vampires, but this one from Rolling Stone feels more sincere.

Depp and Cooper met on the set of Depp’s 2012 film Dark Shadows. Hollywood Vampires started with the idea of recording a covers album, giving them an excuse to fool around in the actor’s well-appointed studio (“He has the best guitar collection I’ve seen,” says Perry). The band took its name from a 1970s L.A. drinking collective that included Cooper, Keith Moon, Harry Nilsson and guest stars like John Lennon and Ringo Starr. Eventually, the new Hollywood Vampires cut an album, with a number of tracks paying tribute to rock greats who drank or drugged themselves to death — Moon, John Bonham, Jim Morrison — some of whom were friends of Cooper. (Cooper himself quit drinking in the 1980s after his doctor told him he could either stop or join his friends in the hereafter.)