Mikkey Dee Is Playing Two Las Vegas Legacies This Autumn, and Only One of Them Still Has a Band

Scorpions were meant to open an eight-show run at Planet Hollywood on 17 September. It moved to 2027. Four kilometres west, the band Mikkey Dee drummed with for 23 years becomes a room you can plug into.

The trend that isn’t

Three announcements landed in Las Vegas inside eight months, and read together they look like a boom: Scorpions returning to PH Live for a fourth casino residency, a Motörhead exhibition opening at The Punk Rock Museum, and Alice Cooper adding autumn dates to a show he built with an illusionist. Rock veterans take over the Strip: classic-rock section, 400 words, done.

Except one of those three isn’t happening, one of them has no band attached, and the third is a magic show.

What connects them is a Swede behind a drum kit.

Mikkey Dee is the thread

Mikkey Dee drummed for Motörhead from 1992 until Lemmy Kilmister died in December 2015. He joined Scorpions in 2016. Two of the three Vegas legs are the same man’s résumé: the residency is his current band, and the exhibition is his former one.

Three legends in one city is the aggregator’s version. What’s actually there is one drummer whose working life is split between a band that still tours and a band that now exists as an exhibit, both booked in the same town in the same season.

The half of his career that still has a pulse is the half that got postponed.

What happened to the residency

Caesars announced it on 17 February 2026: Scorpions: Coming Home to Las Vegas, eight shows at PH Live at Planet Hollywood, 8 p.m. starts, Buckcherry as special guest. Dates ran 17, 19, 22, 24, 26 and 29 September, then 1 and 3 October. Klaus Meine’s line in the press release was “Our residency in Las Vegas last year was pure rock ’n’ roll joy!!”

This was residency number four, after Sin City Nights in 2022, Love at First Sting Las Vegas in 2024, and the Coming Home to Las Vegas 60th Anniversary run in 2025, all in the same room and all sold out.

On 2 September, Live Nation said the band “regret to announce that, due to unforeseen circumstances, their upcoming September shows in Las Vegas will need to be postponed.” Live Nation gave no reason, and the band has not commented. The whole run moved to September 2027: the 9th, 11th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 23rd and 25th, now listed on the band’s own tour page. Nobody has said whether Buckcherry carries over, or what happens to the tickets.

One note on the branding, because it gets repeated wrong: Scorpions formed in Hanover in 1965, so the 60th anniversary was 2025. That’s where the campaign started, and the name travelled with it. By the rescheduled dates the band will be in year 62. The name belongs to the anniversary campaign, not to the band’s age.

The anniversary did produce one thing that shipped. On 27 February 2026 the band announced a reissue of Lonesome Crow, their 1972 debut, on transparent vinyl, DigiSleeve CD, download, and a Dolby Atmos mix.

The other band is at 1422 Western Avenue, and you can plug in

The Punk Rock Museum sits about four kilometres off the Strip, at 1422 Western Ave, 89102. Its Motörhead exhibition opens on 2 October 2026 and runs to 1 February 2027, included in general admission.

Lemmy’s Rickenbacker bass is in the room, and so is his own Marshall stack, and there is no glass between you and either of them. You can play the bass through the amp. That choice says more about what this band was than a plaque would.

Around it: handwritten lyrics, photographs, personal items, and a custom Victory motorcycle presented to Lemmy in December 2011, built by CBP Custom Bikes & Parts with artwork by Terje Aspmo. Opening night runs at the Three Star Punk Bar, with Brian Slagel of Metal Blade Records DJing, and the museum’s record store, Vinyl Threat, stocking Motörhead vinyl.

Motörhead ended up in a museum because the one part it couldn’t replace was gone. The band had replaced drummers before Dee, and Phil Campbell held a guitar chair for decades, but there was exactly one Lemmy, and days after he died, Dee said out loud that Motörhead was over. Scorpions have survived departures for six decades, and Cooper has cycled through guitarists since the 1970s.

Alice Cooper solved the same problem by making the show the thing

Cooper’s autumn dates are 27 and 28 November and 4 and 5 December 2026, at the Criss Angel Theater inside Planet Hollywood. Welcome to Our Nightmare pairs him with illusionist Criss Angel; the fall run was added after the March, April and May shows sold out.

Nita Strauss plays those four nights, and the way this has been reported elsewhere is worth correcting. She has been Cooper’s guitarist since 2014 and never left the band. She took a leave of absence in 2026 to have a baby, Anna Cara covered the year’s touring, and Anna Cara keeps the “Alice’s Attic” dates in September, October and November. Strauss comes back for Vegas. Cooper’s own framing: “Nita opened our 2026 touring season in Las Vegas back in March and is now returning to close out 2026 with us there.”

A band deep enough to lend out a chair and take it back doesn’t need a comeback story.

Three answers to the same question

Strip away the geography and all three Vegas stories are the same question asked at different stages: what do you do when a person stops being available?

Scorpions swapped parts for sixty years and then hit September 2026 and couldn’t play. Cooper hired a substitute for a season and handed the guitar back for four nights. Motörhead faced a vacancy with no substitute and became a room instead.

Mikkey Dee is standing in two of those three answers at once. This autumn his old band’s bass is in a museum four kilometres from the casino where his current band was supposed to play, and the museum is open while the casino is dark.

The thread to pull

We went looking for a fourth leg — a Lemmy credit on an Alice Cooper record — and came up empty. Hey Stoopid isn’t it: the guest list is Slash, Ozzy, Satriani, Vai, Sixx, no Lemmy. If there’s a session we’re missing, tell us.

If you know which record it was, and who else was in the room, come tell us: @realrocklab on Threads, same handle on Instagram and X. Somebody reading this owns the vinyl and can check the sleeve faster than we can.

Sources: Caesars Entertainment newsroom, 17 Feb 2026 · Blabbermouth, 2 Sept 2026 (postponement) · the-scorpions.com (2027 dates, Lonesome Crow reissue, 60th-anniversary launch) · The Punk Rock Museum · Live-Metal, 8 Sept 2026 · Consequence · Ultimate Classic Rock · BraveWords