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

nme.com:

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.