Three weeks before Aerosmith’s name went up on the Hollywood Bowl marquee, Joe Perry was on a different stage in Boston. On 18 September, Unleashed Spirits: The Rise of the Hollywood Vampires opened the 42nd Boston Film Festival at the Boch Center Wang Theatre, with Perry, Alice Cooper and Tommy Henriksen on hand for the world premiere.
The Back-Burner has never covered the Vampires. With Aerosmith back in the news, this is the right time to start. The band has been Perry’s main live outlet since Aerosmith came off the road, and between the premiere Q&A and a long sit-down with InBoston Magazine taped the day before, he said more about it than he has in years.
He said nothing about Aerosmith’s plans. The rest of the night said plenty.
A Film Years in the Making
The documentary was directed by Daniel E. Catullo III, with Ernie Boch Jr. and Paul Geary as executive producers. Geary has managed Perry’s solo career for years. In the InBoston interview, Perry explained that the idea started with the two of them, who wanted the band on film while it still existed, because nobody could be sure the Vampires would play again.
It has been a long road. A first extended trailer appeared on 23 March 2024, and clips have surfaced over the two years since. By June 2025, Perry told Eddie Trunk he had seen a rough cut. The crew kept filming through the band’s 2026 European tour to bring the story up to date. A second camera team was there too, Perry said, working on a separate documentary about Johnny Depp, so the band played most nights in front of a wall of lenses.
Perry described the approach as fly-on-the-wall. He also admitted that some of the interviews the band filmed did not sit right with them, so they were redone. Henriksen scored the bulk of the film, and Perry brought in composer Marco Beltrami, whom he had met while looking into soundtrack work, to help pull the music together. A new trailer arrived ahead of the premiere.
At the Q&A, hosted by Eddie Trunk, none of the band had seen the finished cut before that night. Perry’s verdict was that it felt like the way the band came together: natural and unplanned, one thing leading to the next. He said there were small things he might move around, mostly chronology. Catullo, for his part, said he had worked on over 300 films and had never before given an artist a producer credit. Henriksen, he said, earned it, driving all night between Depp’s house and Cooper’s home in Arizona to get vocals finished while the editors worked in shifts.
How Perry Got There
In the InBoston interview, Perry traced his history with Cooper back to the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film, where they shared a cast but only met at the premiere. Their paths crossed again around Wayne’s World, without much contact.
The first real hang came in the mid-eighties. Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon, had a huge old house in upstate New York, and Cooper needed songs for a film he was about to shoot in Spain, most likely Monster Dog. Perry went out with Billie, newly together at the time. He insists the place was haunted: objects moving when backs were turned, and Cooper leaping from behind a kitchen door at 3 a.m. with a large knife, doing his best Psycho. Perry and Billie stayed on a few extra days after Cooper left.
Decades later, Cooper and Depp met while making Dark Shadows and began an album honouring the original Hollywood Vampires, the drinking club Cooper ran with Keith Moon, Micky Dolenz, John Lennon and others in the early seventies. Perry was living at Depp’s house at the time, working on a solo record, with all his gear already there. Depp asked him to add guitar. Weeks later, standing in the studio, the three of them decided it would be fun to take it to a few clubs.
The first gig was the Roxy on Sunset. The second was Rock in Rio, which Perry put at around 300,000 people. He also mentioned the stop-start pace of his solo record during those years, which suggests this was the album that became Sweetzerland Manifesto in 2018.
Inside the Sessions
Henriksen supplied the studio stories at the Q&A. He recalled Depp turning up at 3 a.m. with fresh lyrics just as Henriksen was heading to bed, with Perry due in later the same day. He also said he never edited or tuned the guitar parts. Depp sits on one side of the stereo picture and Perry on the other, playing the way each of them plays, slightly out of tune included. When Cooper first heard the tracks, he compared the record to a lopsided ship, and he meant it kindly.
“Mr. Spider” came from Depp’s journals. Henriksen was going through them at 6:30 in the morning when the phrase jumped out. Depp explained it was a real spider he used to talk to. Henriksen pictured Cooper delivering it in a Roger Waters style, and Cooper recorded his vocals in hotel rooms on the road. Henriksen also revealed he kept a written diary of every day in the studio, with Depp’s blessing.
McCartney, Beck and the Brooklyn Night
Trunk singled out the arrival of Paul McCartney as the moment nobody on stage could play it cool. McCartney joined the sessions for “Come and Get It”, the song he wrote for Badfinger. Perry asked him, half joking, whether he had written it in five minutes. McCartney told him he had worked it out at the piano one night, cut a demo before the band arrived the next day, and had not played it since. He then sat down and played it from memory. He also opened his Höfner case and tossed the bass to Perry. Henriksen missed the whole thing because he had flown to Switzerland for his father-in-law’s birthday.
Henriksen also explained why the Vampires play “Rumble”. He was watching a Jeff Beck show when Beck introduced Depp and the two opened with it. The band’s later tribute to Beck, with Depp handing the guitar to Perry, is in the film.
The heaviest scene is Perry’s collapse on 10 July 2016 at the Ford Amphitheater on Coney Island. Perry called it one of the worst moments of his life, and said the episode was how he found out about a heart and lung condition he now treats with medication. Cooper told the other side. Perry was calling him daily within days, asking to come back, while Steven Tyler phoned to complain that Cooper was killing his guitar player. Cooper remembers finally allowing Perry two songs in San Francisco, after which Perry played the whole show.
What Comes Next for the Vampires
Perry said the 2026 tour took a while to get rolling and never reached the States. He wants the next run to focus on America, and said the band is talking about another album after the new year, when Depp should have some free time. He was unsure whether the Rock in Rio live album had come out. It had, as Live in Rio in 2023, and a Montreux set has followed this year.
Depp missed the premiere. According to Perry, he was on his way to China to promote either his paintings or his rum.
The Aerosmith Threads
Aerosmith ran through both conversations. Perry told the Q&A audience he doubted the band would have survived, or lasted as long, if they had moved to Los Angeles like Cooper’s group did. Boston was always where they came home. In the InBoston interview, his list of things he has to eat in town included lobster rolls from a South Shore spot the band used during Aerosmith rehearsals.
Buck Johnson, Aerosmith’s touring keyboard player, is part of the Vampires line-up. Cooper admitted that every new Aerosmith record annoyed him because it was so good. And the band’s 2026 European set included “Livin’ on the Edge”.
The audience held more Aerosmith than the stage did. A highlights video from the premiere shows Brad Whitford and Tom Hamilton among the guests. Fan chatter afterwards had Whitford telling one of them that Aerosmith had something coming around the end of the month. If that was the Bowl, the timing was close. Aerosmith posted its marquee teaser on 5 October and confirmed California Dream On: Aerosmith & Friends for 29 October and 1 November two days later.
That leaves a bigger question. In December 2025, Perry told Guitar World that the band had been discussing at least one show tied to a documentary about the band’s story. That came after reports that the 50th-anniversary retrospective had been shut down in October 2025. Two Bowl shows with Aerosmith back under its own name would give that film the ending it lacked. Perry’s own film took years and a tour’s worth of extra footage to finish. Aerosmith’s may be on the same clock.
Where Fans Will See It
For now, Unleashed Spirits has only been seen in Boston. A second premiere is expected later this month. No distributor or release date has been announced. The usual route for a music documentary like this is a sale to a streamer or a digital release first, with festival and event screenings building interest along the way. The Hollywood Bowl shows land in the same week, with Perry on stage under the Aerosmith name. That may be the best moment the film’s producers get to close a deal.
