Johnny Depp was born John Christopher Depp II on June 9th, 1963, in Owensboro, Kentucky - the self-styled "barbecue capital of the world". His father, John Christopher senior, was a city engineer, and his mother, Elizabeth Sue Wells, a waitress. He was always very close to his mother, but perhaps even closer to his grandfather, who he knew as Pawpaw (Depp himself was known as Dipp or Deppity Dawg). He'd visit Pawpaw often, and happily recalls sunny days picking tobacco together. It was a terrible shock to the seven-year-old boy when Pawpaw died.Also traumatic was the family's move to Florida soon afterwards. John Senior did eventually find secure work as director of public works at Miramar, but the family spent a long time living in motels and were constantly shifting from place to place - well over a dozen in total. It was bad for the older kids - daughters Debbie and Christie (now Johnny's personal manager), and brother Danny (known as DP, now a screenwriter) - but Johnny took it especially hard. Though an inquisitive child - at 8 he was hugely interested in Evel Knievel and World War 2 - he did not take to school and went off the rails, once being suspended for mooning the gym teacher. By 12, he was smoking, very soon came drinking, and drugs. There was petty theft and vandalism, he lost his virginity at 13. Small wonder he got into rock and roll.
Johnny first discovered a love of music back in Owensboro, when attending the church of his uncle, a fundamentalist minister. His uncle would preach, the people would clutch his feet and be redeemed, but Johnny was more taken by the gospel music. In Florida, as this troubled adolescent became a surly teenager, he received a guitar from his mother, a $25 Decca electric with a little blue amp. Having stolen a chord book from a local music shop, he, like millions before him, retired to his room and taught himself to play - Smoke On The Water and Led Zeppelin being his first ports of call.
On emerging, he was a competent garage rocker. Getting together with a bunch of neighbourhood lads - one had a bass, another a PA system, they made their own lights - his band began to play backyard parties, playing songs by The Beatles, Cheap Trick and Chuck Berry. It's been a bizarre and bumpy road for Johnny Depp. He tried to be a rock star, only to see his band split. He moved into serious acting, only to have his credibility destroyed by accidentally becoming a teen pin-up. Then, defying his idol-status, he threw himself into the cinematic underground and slowly, slowly proved himself to be one of the most adventurous and genuinely bohemian actors of his generation, both a serial Oscar nominee and the headliner of some of the biggest moneyspinners in cinema history.
