The Hollywood Vampires with The Tubes, Swansea Arena.

It’s 45 years since I bought The Tubes’ “What do you want from Live” and was keen to hear either ‘I was a punk before you were a punk’ or ‘White punks on dope’ played live; one out of two wasn’t bad!

Mr. John Waldo Waybill, aka Fee Waybill, followed the very colourfully dressed band onto the stage and got right into it. Songs were taken from the early albums mostly, with ‘What do you want from life?’ and ‘If you’re looking for trouble’ taking in just a few of the Fee Waybill on-stage personas.

At 72, Mr. Waybill is far from what he was and at times the vocals got a little ‘industrial’ but the personality broke right through each time. The closure to the set started with ‘Let there be drums’, a short interlude giving Fee the chance to go offstage and change into what is unquestionably his most famous character – Quay Lude – dressed in a silver jumpsuit with 12inch platforms. Gone are the days when he could wobble his way onto the stage unaided, these days he had 2 stagehands and a rather naughty looking nurse for company. The appearance of Quay Lude meant only one thing, and in this case it was the finale, it was time for ‘White punks on dope’! Disappointingly, few of the audience joined in, they seemed quite genuinely perplexed by the band in general. Quay was helped off the stage in the same manner that he arrived and that signalled the end of the set and the start of a quite frantic turnaround to get the Hollywood Vampires on stage.

Now it’s open to debate as to whether this assemblage of musicians is a genuine supergroup or a super covers band, or maybe something in between because the band have produced a significant amount of original material to mix in with the various covers. Having said that the number of original songs has increased greatly so I guess ‘supergroup’ is a justified title.

While the show doesn’t quite offer the theatrics of a full-blown Alice Cooper show, it is full of energy and visual effects including the biggest set of vampire teeth I’ve ever seen!

The band enter the stage to Bauhaus’s ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’ before launching into ‘I want my now’, an HV original taken from the bands second studio album, “Rise”. As expected, Alice Cooper takes centre stage flanked by Johnny Depp on his right and Joe Perry & Tommy Henriksen to his left. At the rear there is Glen Sobel on drums, Chris Wyse on bass and Buck Johnson on keys.

‘Raise the dead’ follows and then the first cover, if that’s what you can call it, Alice Cooper’s ‘I’m eighteen’. Mixed in with the original songs there were covers of songs by The Doors, Johnny Thunder, The Who, David Bowie – and more!

Throughout the set the band were bathed in a fabulous light show punctuated by a projected backdrop of some stunning imagery. As the band hit half way a set of ‘curtains’ fell from the ceiling, or so it seemed, but these were no ordinary curtains because as they unfurled they were inflated impressively into a gigantic set of vampire teeth!

Each of the vampires had a go on vocals, and all worked very well, I was impressed by how good Johnny Depp was.

The set closed with a single encore, a rousing version of ‘School’s Out’ which seemed to leave around 3,500 people pretty happy at what they’d seen – I know I was.