Johnny Depp has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine six times, and his latest cover is the sexiest. He’s shown with his shirt half open and a serious look on his face. A tattoo with his daughter’s name “Lily Rose” is visible just over his heart. (It’s not a new one, and he also has his mother’s name “Betty Sue” in a heart on the outside of his left bicep, and a sparrow flying over water with the his son’s name “Jack” on his right forearm. A tattoo on his upper right arm that said “Winona Forever” for his then-fiancé Winona Ryder has been changed to “Wino Forever.” Here’s a link to more information about his tattoos, but I digress.)

Inside Rolling Stone Johnny talks about his drug use and jokes around with the interviewer. He quipped about the pope’s gender getting checked by an elderly church member who “waddles up to you and reaches under your dress.” As for his wild youth, he said that “I’m a dumb-ass, and I poisoned myself for years. Now I understand things better.”

The interview with Depp available online at Rolling Stone just includes the part where he talks about his musical influences, though, and only gives those brief quotes as hints of the other topics that were touched on in the interview. We’ll have to see if he gets any more revealing in the interview once it’s out.

Johnny talked about how he learned to play guitar, and said he’s ashamed to say he stole a music book from a store in order to learn to play chords. He also spoke about how great it was to jam out when he was a teen.

How did listening to music become making music?

When I was twelve, I talked my mom into picking up a Decca electric guitar for me for twenty-five dollars. It had a little blue plush amp. And then, this is horrible, the first thing I did was steal a Mel Bay chord book. I went to this store, stuffed it down my pants and walked out. It had pictures — that’s why I needed it so badly, because it was immediate gratification. If I could match those photographs, then I was golden. I conquered it in days. I locked the bedroom door, didn’t leave, and taught myself how to play chords. I started learning songs by ear.

What was the first song you could play through?

Every kid with a guitar at that time, the first things that came up were almost always “Smoke on the Water,” obviously, and “25 or 6 to 4,” by Chicago. But the first song I played all the way through must have been “Stairway to Heaven.” I remember getting through the fingerpicking and just cursing Jimmy Page.

What was your first band?

When I was about thirteen, I got together with some other kids in the neighborhood. This one guy had a bass, we knew a guy who had a PA system, we made our own lights. It was really ramshackle and great. We’d play at people’s backyard parties. Everything from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Cheap Trick to Devo — and “Johnny B. Goode” was the closer.

You’ve got that wistful look in your eyes.

You’re thirteen years old and you’re playing rock & roll. Loud. Poorly. But somebody’s letting you do it in their back yard. And it was absolute perfection. It was freedom. Right off the bat, there was no question: I had found my future.

[From RollingStone.com]

The article notes that Depp’s critically acclaimed performance in Sweeney Todd is the first time he’s sung on screen. When he starred in Cry Baby seventeen years ago his singing was dubbed over.

Depp’s singing in Sweeney Todd has been praised. The NY Times‘ A.O. Scott said “Mr. Depp’s singing voice is… amazingly forceful. He brings the unpolished urgency of rock ’n’ roll to an idiom accustomed to more refinement, and in doing so awakens the violence of Mr. Sondheim’s lyrics and melodies.” Sweeney Todd has been out three weeks and is ninth at the box office. The dark subject matter and violence in the film may have deterred movie-goers despite incredible reviews. Hopefully Sweeney Todd will be a top seller when it hits the DVD market.

All pictures thanks to RollingStone.com