Johnny Depp joined The Kids when he was a 17-year-old high school student in Miramar, Florida, and achieved some success with the group — opening for Iggy Pop, Talking Heads, the Pretenders and the Ramones — before putting his musical career on hold to become an actor.
Depp’s mother gave him a guitar when he was 12, and he began playing in various bands. He dropped out of Miramar High School at 16 in 1979 to become a rock musician. He attempted to go back to school two weeks later, but the principal told him to follow his dream of being a musician. In 1980, Depp began playing in a band called The Kids. After modest local success in Florida, the band moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of a record deal, changing its name to Six Gun Method.
Depp was a guitarist, and has later featured on songs by Oasis, Shane MacGowan, Iggy Pop, Vanessa Paradis, Aerosmith, Marilyn Manson, and The New Basement Tapes, among others. He played guitar on the soundtrack of his films Chocolat and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and has appeared in music videos for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Lemonheads, Avril Lavigne and Paul McCartney. In the 1990s, he was also a member of P, a musical group featuring Butthole Surfers singer Gibby Haynes, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.
In 2015, Johnny Depp formed the supergroup Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry; the band also includes Bruce Witkin, his friend from his 1980s band, The Kids. Hollywood Vampires released their self-titled debut studio album in September 2015. It featured eleven classic rock covers, as well as three original songs (all co-written by Depp).
Here is a small collection of rare photographs of a very young Johnny Depp with his band The Kids from the early 1980s:
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