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Met begins with a drum, very loud: da-doom-ba-CHA, da-doom-ba-CHA, da-doom-ba-CHA, da-doom-ba-CHA-CHA. Cheap and affordable electric guitars. The song is played, and even though it was originally produced by at least 60% Blockbuster by Sweet. What is going on in Tony Visconti? This is supposed to be the third season of Interview with the Vampire! Has it turned into glam-rock?
Yes. Yes, it has. The show based on Anne Rice’s book Vampire History – a text that has been unfaithful for a long time to remain faithful to the source material, a melange camp of the sinful, disgusting and deep, honest – was already established in a vivid vision of the past, starting in New Orleans in 1910. There romanced the Lestat de la Louis (Jacob And dumpires) Louis (Jacob And dumpires) Lioncourt (Sam Reid), a kind student and disabled, whose troubled relationship was recalled in the second season set in 2022 during an interview with Louis conducted by journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). At the end of the second season, Molloy published a famous book.
In this new set, the old theme song, an orchestral chorus that responds with horror to a restless scream, has been replaced by that glitter stomp. Velvet jackets and opera glasses are out; tight pants and coke lines are inside. Lestat responded to the salacious biography by creating a glam band, and recorded an album that channeled his anger. Now looking around the US, we join him in 2025 as he makes his way through a chaotic Detroit stop. A flashforward has taken us recently, where an elite auctioneer sells memorabilia related to the project, including many audio stories, recorded by Lestat on vinyl and creating the sound of the show. The seller refers, interestingly, to “the events of the 2025 album and the support tour, and the national disasters that came from (them)”.
This didn’t come from anywhere else: Lestat being a rock musician happens in Rice’s books. But, as the 2002 film Queen of the Damned by Elton John was quickly forgotten in 2006 Broadway musical Lestat all showed, part of the oeuvre in which the vampires mesh with popular music and hypocritical ideas.
Canon or not, the big change of voice in The Vampire Lestat, like the show changing its name, is scary. Even if Lestat chooses 1970s guitar music as his signature style in the 2020s, and does it well, it can be justified by its immortal power that transcends time and fashion, it still threatens to turn what was the most beautiful, the most brutal and perhaps the best vampire drama on TV into a bad mashup of Hedwing & Jones the Six.
To get into it, you have to go along with Reid’s unbridled performance as the king of blues Jim Morrison, while forgiving the retro music – set somewhere between Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople and Dandy Warhols – and the subject’s refusal to accept the limits of how to call a rockman. “I christened them ‘The Beautiful Not Good’,” says Lestat of his fans, a well-known group of weirdos and rejects. Referring to his constant association with women, which classical scholars refer to as groups, he explains that his immortality has given him an “immortal peak”. Reid’s attempt at a mid-Atlantic voyage adds to the spoofy humor.
Keep all that and The Vampire Lestat is a roaring joy, from the man who was hired by the management of the group to take Lestat at night after the gigs, thus giving him an alibi for every murder he commits in the city – the best doppelganger he can find is the Albanian gangster, also played by Reid – to the place where Lestat is very close to the MD of LSD. “Torvill is the Dean of hallucinogenics”.
More and more is a simple but beneficial comparison that is made between the famous artist and the bloodless, each of them hides isolation behind hedonism, each of them is elevated above ordinary people and sometimes longs to return to culture. Vampires who bleed humans have long been known to be sexually promiscuous, and the show has attracted the attention of celebrities who are taking part in it to the next level. Lestat is mostly empty of romantic disappointment, which only deepens the loneliness of the platinum-selling singer.
Vampire Lestat wants to be taken seriously and work to earn your respect, before mercilessly insulting you with more stupidity if you give in to his demands. Believing wholeheartedly would be a mistake, but there is something inspiring about a drama that is unapologetic and knows no shame. Let it in and surrender.
