Hollywood Vampires: The Real 1970s Drinking Club Behind the Band

In the early 1970s, a small room above a Los Angeles restaurant became the unofficial headquarters of a society whose members included Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, John Lennon and Harry Nilsson. There were no membership cards, no respectable agenda and very little interest in conducting business during daylight hours.

They called themselves the Hollywood Vampires.

Long before the name belonged to a rock supergroup, the Hollywood Vampires drinking club was an informal gathering of musicians, writers and professional night owls whose extraordinary social circle helped define the excesses of 1970s rock culture.

Their headquarters was the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Boulevard. Their principal activity was drinking. Their survival strategy was apparently to remain in bed until the sun went down.

The Rainbow: Hollywood's After-Hours Headquarters

The Rainbow Bar & Grill opened on 16 April 1972 at 9015 Sunset Boulevard, occupying a building with an already colourful Hollywood history.

Its predecessor, the Villa Nova restaurant, had been a favourite of the film industry. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio famously met there on a blind date in 1952.

The new establishment belonged to a different Hollywood. Founded by figures including Elmer Valentine, Lou Adler and Mario Maglieri, the Rainbow became a gathering place for the musicians, managers, actors and assorted hangers-on who populated the Sunset Strip.

Nearby stood the Whisky a Go Go and, from 1973, the Roxy Theatre. The neighbourhood was an extraordinary collision of music, money, ambition and conspicuous bad behaviour.

The Rainbow provided something the musicians increasingly needed: somewhere to go when the performance was over.

The Upstairs Room Nobody Wanted to Leave

Alice Cooper has recalled how he and lyricist Bernie Taupin began spending their evenings at the Rainbow, frequently joined by the Monkees' Micky Dolenz.

Their gatherings attracted other famous drinkers. Eventually, according to Cooper, the management gave them a private loft upstairs, partly to provide some protection from the attention of other customers.

It became known as the Lair of the Hollywood Vampires.

The name was reportedly suggested by the Rainbow's staff, who noticed that the regulars seemed to exist almost entirely after dark.

There was even a commemorative plaque naming the club's principal members, with Cooper as president and Keith Moon as vice-president.

Membership was less a formal honour than an endurance test. Cooper described the initiation as an attempt to outdrink the existing members.

Not exactly the Rotary Club.

Who Were the Original Hollywood Vampires?

The regular company included Cooper, Dolenz, Taupin, Moon and Harry Nilsson. John Lennon and Ringo Starr were among the famous visitors who joined the gatherings when circumstances allowed.

The atmosphere was apparently less sinister than the name suggested. Cooper's recollections describe an unpredictable mixture of practical jokes, elaborate costumes, arguments and laughter.

Keith Moon was particularly celebrated for arriving in outrageous disguises. Cooper remembered him appearing in everything from royal costume to women's clothing, treating an ordinary evening at the bar as another opportunity for theatrical chaos.

Lennon and Nilsson, meanwhile, were notorious for their argumentative drinking sessions, particularly during Lennon's separation from Yoko Ono in the mid-1970s.

The Hollywood Vampires were not a performing band. They were a social circle, loosely organised around a shared appetite for nightlife and the peculiar companionship of people whose fame made ordinary friendships increasingly difficult.

The club was also a reminder that the supposedly glamorous lives of rock stars could be surprisingly repetitive. After the concerts, interviews and parties, they often ended up in the same room, telling the same stories to the same people.

The Darker Side of the Legend

It is tempting to remember the Hollywood Vampires as a charming collection of rock eccentrics, permanently suspended somewhere between their second and third bottle.

But the mythology conceals a less entertaining reality.

Keith Moon died in September 1978, aged thirty-two, from an overdose of medication prescribed to help him withdraw from alcohol. Harry Nilsson survived his years of excess but struggled with serious health problems later in life.

Cooper himself eventually confronted his alcoholism and has spoken openly about the damage it caused.

The original Vampires belonged to an era when spectacular self-destruction was frequently treated as an essential part of rock authenticity. The consequences were considerably less romantic than the anecdotes.

Behind the laughter and celebrity photographs was a generation of performers discovering that fame provided little protection from addiction, loneliness or mortality.

From Drinking Club to Rock Supergroup

Decades later, Cooper revived the Hollywood Vampires name for a musical project with actor and guitarist Johnny Depp and Aerosmith's Joe Perry.

The group's self-titled debut album appeared in September 2015, featuring reinterpretations of songs associated with musicians who had influenced Cooper or belonged to the original social circle.

The project was conceived partly as a tribute to departed friends rather than a celebration of the drinking itself.

That distinction gives the name an unexpectedly melancholy afterlife. What began as a joke shared by celebrities hiding from daylight became a memorial to a remarkable, frequently troubled generation.

The Rainbow Bar & Grill remains one of the Sunset Strip's most recognisable landmarks, while the Hollywood Vampires survive in photographs, recollections and the stories that accumulate whenever famous people gather behind a closed door.

The real mystery is not what happened upstairs. Much of it has been told, embellished and retold for decades.

It is how any of them managed to get up the following afternoon.

Hellwood's Hollywood Vampires T-Shirt recreates the distinctive lettering and names associated with the original club's legendary upstairs headquarters.

For more Alice Cooper history, discover the Welcome to My Nightmare T-Shirt, or explore Hellwood's Classic Rock collection and Twisted Americana T-Shirts.

HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES T-SHIRT

The original creatures of the night.

A Hellwood tribute to the legendary 1970s drinking club that brought together Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Harry Nilsson and other notorious figures from rock history.

Featuring a distressed recreation of the Lair of the Hollywood Vampires plaque, with its distinctive lettering and roll call of legendary members.

VIEW THE HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES T-SHIRT