Man who signed Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses calls Johnny Depp “the worst guitarist I’d ever seen”

The man who signed Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses has said that he thought Johnny Depp was “the worst guitarist I’d ever seen”.

Tom Zutaut is a celebrated A&R executive, and in a recent interview on the X5 Podcast he disclosed that after seeing an early audition of a band that Depp was playing in before rising to Hollywood fame, he dismissed his musical talents offhand.

“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?”

“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.'”

Only a few months later, Zutaut recalled, Depp managed to secure an acting agent and landed a role in the television series 21 Jump Street.

Now, Depp is a member of the supergroup Hollywood Vampires alongside Alice Cooper and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry. They have released two albums together to date and embarked on multiple world tours. The most recent of which took place in 2023, although Depp had to withdraw from a series of shows on that tour after fracturing his ankle.

A longtime guitarist and rock fan, Depp has also featured on a number of high-profile recordings, including on songs by Oasis, Shane MacGowan and Iggy Pop.

In other news about the actor and musician, last month Depp’s co-star in 2001’s Blow, Lola Glaudini, accused him of verbally abusing her on the set of the film.

Depp also caused confusion recently after sharing and then deleting an apparently-Photoshopped an image of Robert Downey Jr with himself after the latter’s Oscar win.

Back in 2022, Depp won a defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard over a 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post. Two years prior, Depp lost a libel case against The Sun after it published an article that referred to him as a “wife beater” – claims Depp has always denied.