A Hollywood star who makes you look like a rock star, some say. A genuine musician who actually wanted to be a professional guitarist first, but then became one of the most famous actors of all, others say. Or to put it more simply with Amber Heard: Old men playing guitar! At the latest since Johnny Depp started touring in 2015 together with Alice Cooper, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry and other heavyweights as the all-star collective (or posh cover band) Hollywood Vampires, it was clear that the actor was serious about the music.
Now that he not only plays concerts with Jeff Beck — one of the greatest guitarists of all time — but has even recorded an album together, many people are asking themselves all the more: Is Johnny Depp actually such a good guitarist that a caliber like Beck can want to work for him? Or is he just lucky that everyone — including Keith, including Jeff — just wants to be Captain Jack Sparrow’s buddy? A big supporter of Depp’s guitar talents is Hollywood Vampires bandmate Alice Cooper. He recently told the Mistress Carrie podcast: “He just recorded an album with Jeff Beck! He’s a much better rock star, and it’s in him, he was a guitarist long before he was an actor. So when he’s on stage with Joe Perry, he trades lead parts with Joe, and Joe says, ‘Yeah, he’s good’. And I can totally trust Johnny to do any lead part up there.”
Let’s just take a look at Depp’s guitar playing on the basis of some YouTube videos from the last few years and try to classify it.
The thing with the guitar solos
In 2016, a video of a Hollywood Vampires concert in Wisconsin, in which Depp performed the guitar solo on the Led Zeppelin classic Whole Lotta Love, made the rounds. Johnny, of course in full rock star gear with lots of cloths hanging out, begins the slide solo on his Les Paul Junior at about 3:35. He earned a lot of ridicule on the Internet for this. The reason: From a purely visual point of view, the demeanor might look good, but Depp plays rather atonal and awkward slide cacophonies here. Looks casual (however it doesn’t, on a guy like Depp), but isn’t in any way adept, nor pleasant to listen to…nor does it make any sense playfully. “I bet he was on really good stuff and feeling like a guitar hero,” wrote one YouTube commenter of Depp’s performance — and another snarled, “I don’t know why his first time with a slide has to happen on stage.” “. Let’s put it very, very carefully: At least in terms of slide use, Depp is not necessarily in a league with Derek Trucks and other bottleneck experts.
Just because of a failed solo one shouldn’t assume that he always plays the lead guitar so miserably. In the following backstage video he cuts a much better figure (this time on an SG Junior).
At a blues session with Paul McCartney and a number of other musicians, Depp also grabbed the bottleneck, but held back with the slide game and fits in well.
Depp, the rhythm guitarist
Depp made a far better impression in 2015 when he performed with the Hollywood Vampires at Rock in Rio. Here he was relatively reserved – no wonder, since he shared the stage with two other guitarists, including Joe Perry. Here Depp played some solid rock rhythm guitar, playing back and forth with Joe Perry riffs and licks and acting more consistently than seen in other performances.
Johnny on acoustic guitar
At a concert in 2010, Eddie Vedder brought his buddy Depp on stage for an acoustic version of Vedder’s solo song “Society”. This is a very simple piece in A minor: standard chords, standard voicings, no great finesse, no complicated rhythms or sequences. Here, Depp — acoustic guitar hung knee-deep like he’s about to start an acoustic skatepunk band — lets Vedder do the rhythm work, carry the song. He plays a few chords, keeps pausing, accentuates one or the other triad. He does so with a touch of Keith Richardian laissez-faire. Of course Keith is much better at it, but Johnny must have picked it up from his friend Keith. Then he can start the solo. He keeps this quite simple, outlining the vocal melody and playing small ornaments. Guest appearance was successful, but the mouths were probably more open because of his person than because of his guitar playing.
In the following video, Depp performs a solo acoustic version of the Dylan song “The Times, They Are a-Changin'”. Simple chords, Johnny lingers on some of them a little too long, stretching out the bars. That might pass as artistic liberty, and we don’t want to be too strict, but it doesn’t really make the performance feel smooth either.
The thing with Johnny Depp and Jeff Beck
No question, Jeff Beck is an exceptional guitarist. One who not only has his very own sound, but who is also constantly evolving in his late 70s, pushing his sound and his playing forward. His playing is virtuoso and captivating, still. When Beck takes someone into his band, they’re usually very good at it — aren’t they? Let’s just think of the great Tal Wilkenfeld on bass, who joined Beck’s band in her early twenties and caused amazement.
So does that make Johnny Depp a guitar virtuoso? Not really – because from what we know so far from the collaboration (for example the single “This Is A Song For Miss Hedy Lamarr” from Depp’s pen), the virtuoso guitar playing is of course Jeff Beck’s account – Depp rather accompanies, with the mentioned Song only relatively sporadically, but takes over the lead vocals. Let’s be honest: nobody assumes that Jeff Beck invited him to work with him because he sees him as a guitarist of equal stature. Two friends have fun with Beck and Depp — Beck also emphasized that when he spoke of the first meeting with Depp and said: “We haven’t stopped laughing ever since”.
Depp’s signature guitar
By the way: Johnny Depp has even had his own signature guitar for several years — the Duesenberg Alliance Johnny Depp.
Brief biographical look back
Johnny Depp hasn’t just been a musician since yesterday, that’s well known. He dropped out of school in the late 1970s to become a musician. While his first band, Flame — later renamed The Kids — never found the fame they wanted (Depp was just a teenager at the time), some support slots included Iggy Pop, Talking Heads, and The B-52s but inside. Here’s a video from The Kids that also features Depp. We know how it went on: Depp devoted himself to acting, the band broke up. It wasn’t the last group he played in — but it wasn’t until the last few years that the music really got going again.
Conclusion
As a guitarist, Depp gets a lot of malice as well as a lot of effusive praise. This simply has to do with the fact that he is not only one of the most well-known, but also one of the most polarizing actors. All of that stuff aside, the malice, the premature praise, the bias, the Hollywood star bias and the like, and Depp passes for a solid rock guitarist at heart. He keeps it playfully simple, moves in the familiar area of the pentatonic or the blues scales. His playing is rooted in blues and rock, many of his friends are superstars in the genre.
It remains to be seen whether Alice Cooper is right and Depp could actually take the leads in every situation — Depp’s playing works in a band context with more than a solid rhythm base and top-class co-guitarists. Especially when he doesn’t want to come across as cool as he did with his notorious slide solos.