Conversation with the quick-witted Depp can careen from whether new popes get their genitals cupped to ensure the leader of the Catholic Church is sufficiently male (“I think an elderly man waddles up to you and reaches under your dress”) to his out-of-control life before he met Paradis (“I’m a dumb-ass, and I poisoned myself for years. Now I understand things better”).
It’s been seventeen years since Depp starred in Cry-Baby, the Fifties musical pastiche from John Waters, where his singing voice was dubbed. Since Depp performs his own songs in Sweeney Todd, it seemed like the right time to revisit his musical career and how it improbably led him to become one of the most compelling actors of his generation.
Was your family musical at all?
My mom and my dad weren’t particularly musical, no. But I did have an uncle who was a preacher, and he played hillbilly bluegrass guitar. So Sunday church services, it was like, “Hallelujah, brothers and sisters,” and then he would start picking “Stepping on the Clouds.” That was where I got the bug: watching my uncle play the guitar with his little gospel group, right in front of me.
What was the first record you bought?
I don’t know if I bought it, but the first record I remember listening to nonstop, oddly, was Dean Martin, Everybody Loves Somebody. And then Boots Randolph. And then the record album of Blackbeard’s Ghost, with Peter Ustinov. I’d never seen the film — I didn’t see it until I was in my late thirties. But I knew it verbatim. Slightly ironic. And then I turned that corner into preteen and I remember listening to Frampton Comes Alive! too much.
Continue reading ›
Tagged personality
