Johnny Depp rages against fickle Hollywood (and Amber Heard) in his dark new album with Jeff Beck

With his reputation at least partially restored (pending appeal) following embarrassing lawsuits with ex-wife Amber Heard, Johnny Depp is back doing what he loves best. Not acting, as it transpires, but singing and playing guitar.

Secretly recorded with virtuoso guitar superstar Jeff Beck over the past three turbulent years, 18 is an album of gutsy, elevated pub-rock and soul, packed with songs about fame, love, sex, betrayal, paranoia and survival. “Stars, they come and go … and all you see is glory,” Depp thoughtfully croons on a tender, atmospheric version of Janis Ian’s 1974 ballad Stars. It turns out Ian’s philosophical lyric about the lure and price of fame packs a heavy emotional weight when delivered by someone who has really felt the heat of the spotlight.

“Some make it when they’re young / Before the world has done its dirty job,” sings the 59-year-old actor who became a US TV idol in the 1980s with 21 Jump Street. “And later on, someone will say / ‘You’ve had your day / Now you must make way’ / But they’ll never know the pain / Of living with a name you never owned …” In the background, Beck’s silvery, pliant guitar ripples with ethereal melancholy. Stick that in A Star is Born and it would be Oscars all round.

The album is titled 18 because, according to 78-year-old Beck, playing together “ignited our youthful spirit” and made them feel like teenagers again. Beck has worked with better singers, such as Joss Stone and Imelda May on 2010’s Emotion & Commotion, not to mention Rod Stewart in the original Jeff Beck Group. But something about his pally working relationship with Depp has brought the project greater focus than anything Beck has released in decades. Instead of wandering off for complex but emotionless jazz fusion workouts and quasi-Hank Marvin showy instrumental, he has lent his melodic and versatile playing to actual songs.

The blend of Beck’s super-compressed lyrical soloing with Depp’s husky tones and slouchy vocal mannerisms verges on the corny, yet is effective nonetheless. It may seem an act of hubris for a thespian with a sturdy but limited vocal range to cover songs by such galactic musical talents as Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys’ Don’t Talk), the Everly Brothers (Let it Be Me), Smokey Robinson (The Miracles’ Ooo Baby Baby) and Marvin Gaye (tackling What’s Going On was definitely a mistake) but Depp generally finds interesting ways into the lyrics.

A rocked-up version of John Lennon’s Isolation is a highlight. It was a song much covered during the pandemic for overly prosaic reasons, but Depp hones in on the self-pitying rage lurking at its core, roaring “I don’t expect you to understand / After you’ve caused so much pain” as the band put the pedal to the metal. Beck’s wracked, overloaded solo is utterly spectacular, a hair-raising reminder that this sometimes rather orthodox band is led by one of the greatest players of all time.

The mood veers between swaggeringly laddish heavy rock and moodily intimate balladry, but the sound is big and crunchy, the performances committed. Put it this way, if you walked into a bar and they were playing, you’d surely stop and order a drink. And if, after a while, you noticed that the piratical guitar-slinging frontman bore a distinct resemblance to a Hollywood movie superstar, you would probably find yourself drawn into the lyrical psychodrama presented in his selection of material.

Whose post-apocalyptic comeback is Depp conjuring on the brutal attack of Killing Jokes’ Death & Resurrection Show? Who does he imagine to be on the receiving end of Velvet Underground S&M rocker Venus in Furs? And who is the subject of crassly amusing, funk-rock blast Sad Motherf—ing Parade, which includes the lyric, “If I had a dime, it wouldn’t reach your hand / You’re sitting there like a dog with the seven year itch”?

The latter is one of two Depp originals on an uneven yet entertaining album. The other is the vastly superior This is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr, an epic Bowie-inflected paean to a brilliant actress and inventor who struggled with the movie stereotypes of her era and eventually drifted into unemployed obscurity.

It is not hard to see why Depp might identify with a complex talent who Hollywood turned its back on. “Erased by the same world that made her a star … torn at the seams for daring to dream.”

Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp, 18, is out on Rhino on July 15