Movie star Johnny Depp occasionally moonlights as a guitarist with the supergroup Holllywood Vampires. The band includes Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and shock rock legend Alice Cooper on vocals.
Before he hit it big on the big screen, Depp wanted to a be rocker. In a new interview via the X5 Podcast, legendary A&R man Tom Zutaut, known most notably for signing Guns ’N Roses and Motley Crue, revealed that Depp auditioned for him, but didn’t have much in the way of guitar chops at the time.
“I thought that Johnny Depp wasn’t going to be a rock star,” he said. “You know, Johnny Depp auditioned for me twice. This is a funny story. I go to a rehearsal, the manager’s a friend of mine, and he goes, ‘I got this band from Jacksonville, they’re great.’ I go see ’em, and they were terrible. Johnny Depp was the worst guitarist I’d ever seen — but his charisma was insane, you know?”
Zutaut continued: “Afterwards, I look at his manager, and I said, ‘Listen, buddy, he can’t make it, but you should get this kid an agent and put him in TV or on a movie; this kid’s a star. But the songs suck, and musicianship is terrible.'”
Apparently, Depp’s manager ended up getting the future actor an agent, and he secured a role in “21 Jump Street” to help kick-start his acting career. Zutaut saw Depp play music again about a decade later after he had achieved acting success.
“Johnny Depp pops up again in my life, 10 years later,” he recalled. “He’s, like, the biggest actor in the world. And I get a phone call. Somebody goes, ‘Hey, there’s this band playing the [Hollywood nightclub] Coconut Teaszer tonight. They’re great. They’re from Jacksonville, and they got a famous guitar player, but I’m not gonna tell you who it is. Just come.’ So, I go, and I see f*cking Johnny Depp up on the stage, and the band is Rock City Angels … And he was not the greatest, but he’s doing it. He finally learned how to play, I guess. When you’re born on the set, you can teach yourself to play guitar when they’re filming everybody else’s scenes.”
Zutaut’s full interview can be viewed below.
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