Johnny Depp, who won his defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard this week, is celebrating. The 58-year-old actor, who thanked the jury for giving him his “life back” in an overwrought typewritten statement posted to Instagram after the verdict, has been singing and playing guitar with Jeff Beck at various gigs across the U.K. Last night, as Beck and Depp were performing in Gateshead, Beck revealed that the two had even recorded an album together. Whoa, cool.
"I met this guy five years ago and we've never stopped laughing since," Beck said. "We actually made an album. I don't know how it happened. It will be out in July."
If I know anything about Depp, it’s that he’s a barrel of laughs, whether he’s texting his BFF Paul Bettany about burning Heard to death and then having sex with her corpse or throwing wine bottles at his ex-girlfriend Ellen Barkin.
Not only is Depp funny, he’s also a sick guitarist with enough decorative scarves and skull rings to fit right in with the aging British coke rock scene. Beck did not reveal what kinds of songs he and Depp had recorded for this album, but my guess is they will involve wailing about women who are “fat asses” and c-words.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Depp’s late-in-life music pivot already has lots of fans. In the wake of the verdict, he has two songs in the top ten on iTunes U.K. rock chart: “Isolation,” a single he previously released with Beck, and “Heroes,” a song he did with his “supergroup” Hollywood Vampires in 2019. I listened to twenty seconds of each, and I think I got the gist.
Depp’s celebrity pals have also been supportive: his ex-girlfriend Kate Moss, who testified for him during the trial, showed up at his show at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday. I’m sure Ashley Benson, Bella Hadid, and Ryan Adams wanted to be there, too. Rock on.