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In 2016 John Myung’s supergroup The Jelly Jam – also featuring Ty Tabor of King’s X and Rod Morgenstein of Winger and Dixie Dregs – released their fourth and most recent album, Profit. It was the perfect opportunity to compare his role to a power trio to his sometimes-unheard contribution to his main band, Dream Theater.

In a world of instant media, where fans can be bombarded with the hourly, trivial minutia of a musician’s life, it’s pleasantly reassuring to find that some characters retain a certain mystique. Dream Theater’s bassist John Myung is just such an anachronism, maintaining a palpable distance and dignity away from the always-on social media spotlight.

Never throwing himself into the limelight and rarely interviewed, he has a reputation for being a private man and a deep thinker – and so it comes as a shock to find him in such an ebullient and verbose mood.

That excitement centres on a new album from The Jelly Jam, ostensibly a side project created by Myung alongside drummer Rod Morgenstein (Winger, Dixie Dregs) and singer/guitarist Ty Tabor (King’s X). They released their self‑titled debut album in 2002, delivering a blend of accessible, 70s-influenced songs with a progressive quirkiness.

However, on their latest release, Profit, there’s a commerciality that has the potential to appeal to the mass market. Given the enthusiasm that’s radiating down the phone line from his New York studio, it’s clearly a recording Myung is proud of.

“It felt like the next logical step to up the level of promotion – make the band a little more known to people out there,” he says. “At the moment, we’re in a really cool situation. I just love music in general and to me, it’s all about resonance, so I’m open to many types of music. ‘Does this music move me? Does it do anything to me?’ Pretty much in every genre, I can find an appreciation. It’s like that with lyric writing, where you can find a creative flux.”

He’s referring to a stream-of-consciousness approach, when everything comes together to allow music to be easily made; a condition of the mind where writers’ block is non-existent and ideas flow perfectly. Myung firmly believes that if you can achieve such a state with the other members of a band, there’s the potential to create something special.

“We’re constantly going through cycles, but all of a sudden you get into a certain space where everything is sort of aligned,” he explains. “It seems to be like a natural phenomenon that you can see in other bands’ music too. They reach a certain point in their career when they’ve had tremendous success; they’ve written a couple of records that seem to be their best.

“I think The Jelly Jam, up until now, has been a pretty transitional thing – by nature it’s always been, ‘We’ve got 10 days, let’s see what we can do.’ During those sessions a lot of great things have happened. For this particular record, I think it’s a moment when everything has aligned in that way, and I think it’s really commercially viable.”

He reports that their latest standout musical moments appeared unexpectedly during jam sessions. “Happy accidents make it incredibly satisfying to write music,” he says. “The song Perfect Lines is a good example; we got to a point where we thought, ‘What are we going to do now?’ Then Rod played this piano part and it was just the most perfect thing. Luckily Ty was recording it – I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was a perfect thing and it became an integral part of the song.

“Lyrically, there’s a central concept about the stranglehold of greed: greed gets the best of us and the best of the planet. In my eyes it’s not sustainable, and if everyone really put their heads together, we could accomplish a hell of a lot more. We’d be far better off – but there’s almost a dark, controlling energy that I guess has always been there. It seems to be more prevalent than ever. That’s what the storyline touches upon.”

Profit is potentially their most accessible to date. That’s not to say it lacks ambition or progressive acumen – rather, alongside experimental moments, songs such as Care have an aura of radio friendliness about them. The album was created over two 10-day sessions at Myung’s studio, and although much of the material flowed easily, there was still a sense of concern over some of the songs.

“We got together the second time because we had songs we felt we could have pushed, but it didn’t feel natural, it felt forced. So we got together for a second session where we were able to write more than enough songs. We narrowed the selection down to what we thought were the best . When I heard the finished album, it definitely struck me as something that a lot of people could appreciate.”

One recurring criticism that comes from a corner of the Dream Theater fanbase is that Myung’s inventive, technical and regularly alluring bass playing sometimes gets lost in the band’s time changes and complex riffs. As part of The Jelly Jam power trio, his playing has been given a refreshing prominence. One might imagine that would give him a sense of satisfaction – but it’s clear that he simply enjoys making music in a professional capacity.

“Every band has a chemistry,” he reflects, “and it’s natural that, in order for a band to work, you have to fall in line and realise what your part is. But I honestly just love being a musician and the fact I can make a living playing. I enjoy what I do on such a fundamental level that everything else is a minor detail.

“A lot of people tell me that with Dream Theater they can’t hear the bass, and I kind of know what they mean. It doesn’t really stand out. But I’ve been in the mixing room and said, ‘I can’t hear myself.’ Then they pull the bass out of the mix, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it sounds empty!’ A lot of that is because the bass and guitar in Dream Theater almost become one instrument. With The Jelly Jam, it’s more dynamic – there’s a different sense of space that has to be filled. But I find it to be just as satisfying. It’s a different group of people producing different work.”

There’s the obvious quandary for Myung should Profit make any substantial commercial breakthrough. With Dream Theater taking up most of his time, there are only a few gaps in his schedule to focus on The Jelly Jam. They’re embarking on their first North American tour this summer, but can Myung ever see a point when there could be conflicting demands?

“It would be a wonderful problem to have!” he laughs. “I’d be open to it. Who wouldn’t want success with two bands? During the Dream Theater break in the summer, we have some Jelly Jam shows, so there’s no downtime. But I’m enjoying every minute of it. It’s more satisfying to stay busy and do rewarding things than it is to sit around.

“Certainly, when comparing this album to anything we’ve done up to this point, this record lends itself to that sort of thing happening. That’s really because of the way the whole thing came together. It seems to be a magical point in our career.”

Whichever way you look at it, 21 years is a bloody long time. Since 2005 we’ve had economic crashes, global lockdowns, political upheaval and several threats of World War III. It’s also how long it’s been since A released an album. Having formed in 1993, they toured their arses off before finally tasting chart success with 2002 album Hi-Fi Serious.

Three years later, they’d been dropped by their label and were history. But now they’re back, with Prang, a record that has the unmistakable 90s Britrock-meets-US-alternative stamp of the Suffolk five-piece.

Lead single Hello Sunshine was born out of a riff brought into the rehearsal room by guitarist Mark Chapman, a blast of distortion-laden lo-fi rock, pushed by frontman Jason Perry’s high-pitched vocals. The band – completed by more Perrys Adam (drums) and Giles (keyboards), and new boy Richard Trigg (bass) – were off and running. Before long they had an album in the bag.

“It was recorded really quickly, super-DIY,” Perry explains. “In two hours we had a song, and then the floodgates opened.”

Lyrically, A were always the archetypal cheeky chappies. Across their first three albums – How Ace Are Buildings, Vs Monkey Kong and Hi-Fi Serious – they evolved from mischievous young upstarts berating Rocky V, indie rock and GMTV (Bad Idea) to twentysomethings celebrating endless summers (I Love Lake Tahoe), before taking a swipe at corporate adulthood (Starbucks).

But that was then. Prang sees them coming from a very different place. There’s the typically-A take on modern life in the shape of Comment Leaver – a snipe at people who vent their every thought on the Daily Mail website. But today’s A are also a band more weathered by life than before; beaten, not broken, but certainly bruised by two decades out in the world.

“I’d had a bit of a rough time personally,” Jason admits. “I was trying to work out what men in their fifties that were known for their love for life sing about.”

The emotional rawness is never more apparent than on Shit Summer. The song addresses the separation from children that divorce brings (‘I’m really missing my kids and the noise that they bring/I don’t see them till Friday but it’s Wednesday and the weeks go on and on and on’], and Jason admits that it had him in tears in the vocal booth. “

I’ve never had that before where I’ve cried while recording a song,” he says. “It still makes me cry when I listen to it. I’m really proud of that song. But how do you sing a song about depression without resorting to clichés like ‘I’m banging my head on these four walls’ or whatever? Calling it Shit Summer seemed a very A way to sing about it, because it had been a shit summer, so just say that.”

Getting up from knockbacks is nothing new for A. They put in serious road miles before scoring a hit with 2002’s Nothing, a big-riffed, foot-stomping rocker of a tune. They were three albums in and suddenly enjoying the trappings of major-label success. When their label encouraged them to cancel a gig so they could appear on Top Of The Pops, the band remained resolute.

“We did Top Of The Pops with the Chili Peppers, who were on the same label as us,” Jason recalls. “The Chili Peppers cancelled a gig to do it, and the label were putting pressure on us to do the same, and we said no. There’s no way we’re cancelling a gig for a TV programme, even though since the age of eleven all I wanted to do was go on Top Of The Pops.

“We said to the label that we’re not going to pull the gig, so they gave us a helicopter. We did Top Of The Pops, ran to the limo to the heliport, jumped in a helicopter, flew to Plymouth, landed in the car park, ran on stage with five minutes to spare, did the gig. That was an expensive day, but a great day.”

The success was fleeting, however. Album four, the Terry Date-produced Teen Dance Ordinance – saw A chase a sound that wasn’t them. They sidestepped their rough-around-the-edges rock for a big-budget, highly polished, American-sounding arena record. And it fell flat. It left Jason facing a vocal identity crisis.

“I haven’t got the voice or the personality for that [kind of record],” he says. “I’m not Chris Cornell, I’m Jason. I sound like Sting and my voice is really high. We should have been making a Yes record or a Beastie Boys record or something.”

By the end of the Teen Dance Ordinance cycle, A had been dropped by their label and were flat-broke. They had to sell their equipment to pay the bills, and, as thirtysomething rockers, look to find a new path.

“The day my son was born, I went to get some money out of the cash machine to pay for the car park at the hospital and couldn’t even get ten quid out,” Jason recalls. “I’d just spent ten years doing two hundred and sixty shows a year, and I couldn’t even get ten quid out. I went to the Job Centre, and someone recognised me and started laughing. I went back to the car and cried my eyes out.”

Jason eventually found his way, becoming an in-demand songwriter and producer for the likes of McFly and Don Broco. The experience left him well-placed to produce Prang, a record with which the band rediscovered what they lost with Teen Dance Ordinance.

“You always need creative parameters,” he suggests. “I think that’s where we got lost in the end. We had big budgets, big studios. What I need is that kind of DIY, punk rock mentality where you can just do whatever makes you excited on the day. That’s what we did [with Prang]. I’m really proud of it. I can’t believe how good it is. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be.”

With the new record now released, in December they head out supporting fellow Lowestoft guys The Darkness on a run of arena dates. Jason is looking forward to getting reacquainted with old friends and playing at London’s O2 for the first time.

“Dan [Hawkins] used to live with us when we moved to London,” he says. “I got him a job at [publishing company] Rondor as an A&R assistant. I love The Darkness. It was amazing to see what happened to them and how they went crazy-big so quick. I can’t wait for that tour. I’ve never played at the O2. It’s the only London venue, really, that we haven’t played at. It was still called the Millennium Dome when we were in the band last time.”

Prang is out now via Cooking Vinyl.

Named after the 1970s celebrity drinking club of which Alice Cooper was a ringleader, the latter-day Hollywood Vampires are a supergroup comprising Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry, silver-screen superstar Johnny Depp, and Cooper/Crossbone Skully bassist Tommy Henriksen.

Since forming in 2012 they’ve released two studio albums – Hollywood Vampires (2015) and Rise (2019) – both crammed with special guests including Dave Grohl, Slash and Jeff Beck.

“We’ve been away for a while,” says Cooper, as Perry joins him on screen for a Zoom chat to preview a string of arena and outdoor dates, adding with a grin: “It’s about time to drag Johnny out of his castle again.”

Do you remember the first time that the two of you met?

Alice Cooper: Wow, that would have been in blurry days [both laugh].

Joe Perry: Well, we were in the same movie…

Alice:… Oh yeah, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [1978].

Joe: But I don’t remember if we actually met.

Alice: I called up Joe one time because I had to write two songs. They would have been the first thing I did after getting sober [in 1983]. And we ended up working in a haunted house – a genuinely haunted house. I stayed for just one night.

Whose idea was it to form The Hollywood Vampires? Take us back to that discussion, if you will.

Alice: Until the movie Dark Shadows [2012] I had never met Johnny Depp. I was telling Johnny about the drinking club with John Lennon, Keith Moon and Harry Nilsson. During the shooting, I played the 100 Club on Oxford Street and invited Johnny along. He got up with us and nailed every song. I said it would be fun to be a bar band again and play all the songs of my dead drunk friends.

Joe: I was staying at Johnny’s house working on a solo record and I was the last to join. We have so much fun playing together. I always think of the Vampires as the best unknown garage band in the world.

Alice: And certainly the most expensive one. And you know what, we’ve been together for ten years and there has not been one single argument.

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Tommy Henricksen is the ‘secret weapon’ of the Vampires, right?

Alice: Yeah. Tommy is in my [solo] band and we use him as a musical director. He knows where everything is at all times, and it’s the same in the Vampires. You get lost in song, you look at Tommy.

Joe: He’s got the production chops, too. [Henricksen produced the second Hollywood Vampires album, Rise]. Tommy also writes songs and he’s the backbone of the band.

There’s a concert release coming out from the 2018 Montreux Jazz Festival. Do you remember anything about that particular Vampires show?

Alice: The band got better the more it played, and I remember that show. It’s like when you have all the songs together, suddenly you find little places to make the show happen. I drop out and Johnny sings, you know? And then I sing a couple more songs and I drop out and Joe sings.

And Johnny is a part of that?

Alice: People are shocked that we are so good, and I can see why. It’s sorta glam and you’ve got the movie star in there.

Joe: Johnny has always wanted to be in a band, and now, finally, he’s in one. After the second or third song people get over the shock of seeing Johnny Depp up there with a guitar. And it’s legit. The band really plays. And you know what? He’s a great player.

Alice, you’ve spoken about playing songs by your “dead drunk friends”, but you also play originals and standards from your own catalogues. How do you work out a setlist?

Alice: The thing is, I love playing songs by The Doors, Jimi or the Small Faces, and we worked hard to really nail them as a good tribute to the bands concerned. And yeah, we have two albums of original songs, and songs of our own. How many albums have Aerosmith made? I’m on my thirtieth. Setlists are always the hardest part of any show.

Joe: Tommy really helps. He writes a list, sends it around, and we all make suggestions.

Is there going to be a third Hollywood Vampires studio album?

Alice: I can’t imagine there not being one. But we all have pretty demanding day jobs. And you want to try getting Johnny out of his forty-four-room castle.

Joe: I can tell you that some people in his camp are not happy he’s taking a couple of months out to play music. But when it’s time for Johnny to play guitar, he knows it’s time.

Alice, you’ve described your brand new memoir, titled Devil On My Shoulder, as “definitive”.

Alice: Well, with the first one, Me, Alice [published in 1976 and long since out of print], we never let the truth get in the way of a good story. But with this book we went really deep. We spent a lot of time on it.

Alice, for four of the dates on your book tour of the UK in October, Arthur Brown will act as moderator.

Alice: Arthur and I go all the way to 1968. I always liked him because he’s a total original. What a voice that guy was. He used to be an opera singer.

Joe: When we [Aerosmith] played with Arthur he brought along the flaming hat.

Alice: A perfect moment for Spinal Tap potential right there. The weirdest thing was, I was doing the make-up thing without knowing he did it too. I’d never heard of Arthur Brown – nobody in America had. I was like: “Wow, this guy’s my brother or something.”

What’s the current state of play with Aerosmith, Joe?

Joe: We’re right in the middle of working on a documentary, the story of the band from the beginning. Everyone has a different perspective on what happened back then. We also did a thing with Yungblud [a five-song EP that included a remake of Aerosmith’s Back In The Saddle].

Alice [interrupting]: I just met Yungblud. Wow, what a guy. He out-Iggys Iggy, with some early Mick Jagger in there too, but he’s also his own character.

Joe: Watching Yungblud dance around the studio made me remember what it was like to be twenty-seven years old. He is the real deal, with such incredible energy. When he talks, every other word is: “I love rock’n’roll” and you can tell that he does.

Alice: Until meeting Yungblud I had never heard the F-bomb used as an adjective, a verb and adverb and a noun in the same sentence.

The Jesus And Mary Chain are an interesting choice as special guests on this next tour, although at some shows The Damned will take that spot.

Alice: I know all about The Damned, of course, but I love the fact that the Jesus And Mary Chain don’t necessarily fit. Back in the days of the Fillmore [in San Francisco] – and you’ll remember this, Joe – Alice would play on bills with Paul Butterfield, Melanie and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. None of us connected musically. It was four entirely different worlds of music, and I always thought that was pretty cool.

The Hollywood Vampires’ European tour begins at London’s O2 Arena on August 12. For full dates and ticket links, check the Hollywood Vampires website. Live At Montreux Jazz Festival is out on August 14.