When Alice Cooper Revealed Joe Perry’s Unexpected Music Teacher

The musicians can be divided into two categories: self-taught instrumentalists and the artists who attended art schools or took private lessons from the professionals. Regardless of their origins, the most important thing about a musician, especially a guitar player, is to keep developing themselves and being open to learning more from one another.

Many artists are willing to accept help and consider new approaches and ways of playing a song to improve. While this doesn’t happen very often for already famous musicians, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry doesn’t mind learning from his fellow rockers. In fact, Alice Cooper once revealed one of Perry’s unexpected teachers in a conversation.

Who Is Joe Perry’s Guitar Instructor?

Alice Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, and famous Hollywood actor Johnny Depp founded the rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires in 2012. The name was inspired by Cooper’s celebrity drinking club named The Hollywood Vampires, including John Lennon, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, and many famous musicians.

Hollywood Vampires quickly drew significant attention after releasing their self-titled debut studio album on September 11, 2015, and 2019’s ‘Rise’ followed it. The group also performed various live performances worldwide, and the trio’s harmony received very positive reviews from their longtime fans and music critics.

They had awesome and crazy memories, and Cooper once told one of them. He revealed that Perry was taking lessons from another band member, Depp, and they shared an exclusive moment when the actor played music from one of his movies. While preparing for his role as a musician in the 2000 comedy-drama film entitled ‘Chocolat,’ Depp learned and played songs from Romani-French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt which fascinated Perry.

The Aerosmith guitarist was listening to them, and he wanted to play the chords from what Depp was performing. After Perry asked to learn to play it, Deep taught the guitarist how to play the music. Their fans could find this story very interesting, considering an actor was tutoring something to one of the most famous guitarists.

In Cooper’s words, he said:

“The great thing about Johnny Depp and Joe Perry is, Joe Perry takes guitar lessons from Johnny Depp sometimes. Johnny was a guitar player way before he was an actor. We all knew that. I didn’t know how good he was until he came up and played with us two or three times. When we put the Hollywood Vampires together, one night, Joe got sick and couldn’t play, and Johnny played all the leads.

Everybody in the audience was shocked because Johnny’s a great guitar player. He’s not an actor trying to be a rock star; he’s a rock star that accidentally became an actor. There was a movie that he did, called ‘Chocolat’ where he played a gypsy jazz guitar player, and he plays all the Django Reinhardt stuff, and that’s the stuff Joe was sitting there listening to going, ‘What is that?’ Johnny goes, ‘Let me show you how to play this stuff.’ I’m watching Joe trying to pick up the chording on the stuff, and I’m going, ‘That’s great! These two guitar players are teaching each other stuff!'”

In addition, Cooper drew attention to Depp’s being a rock star and excellent guitar player years before beginning his professional career as an actor. The Godfather of Shock Rock reminded everyone that Perry got sick and couldn’t attend the concert in one of their live performances, so Depp became the savior and performed the lead guitars by himself.