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Johnny Depp and Iggy Pop on GIRLS AND GUITARS

JD --Who was the first girl you ever saw naked?

IP --There was a girl in the trailer camp named Diane Bishop. She would walk around in tiny swimsuits and drive me crazy! She would go in a tool shed with some of the little boys and show them her thing. I don't remember seeing any girl fully naked until I was 16. Pretty soon I wanted to see everybody naked.

JD --What is your earliest memory of your penis, not just as a functional tool but a friend?

IP --In junior high school, all the boys had to take showers together after athletics, and the other guys started laughing and calling me 'HD'. When I asked what it meant, they said 'horse dick'. It dawned on me that I had something kind of special.

JD --Who were the guys that inspired you?

IP --'Greaser' bands of 50s USA, with pompadour tight-suited animal magnetism, playing guitars in formation and getting beehived sexual beings with tight pointed car-fin tits and wonderful backends to love and worship them.

JD --You are considered the godfather of punk rock. How do you feel about that?

IP --When bands started following my style 20 years ago, I felt a little sad and angry that people hadn't been ready for it originally. But I've started feeling better about it.

JD --Is there a period of transformation before you go on stage and a time of decompression after?

IP --The adrenaline starts flowing really up to three hours before. After, I feel so good, it's the best feeling I know. I have no energy for sex but I really want to be touched. Later, I get really hungry.

JD --Is there any song in history that you consider perfect?

IP --Yes. The song that you carry inside you of everything you know. Everybody has one of those, and they're perfect. I've got one, and I like to listen for other people's.

JD --Is it possible for anyone to be original any more?

IP --No, but we can be kind, which is probably more helpful at this stage.

JD --Why do you think there have been so many hairstyles in the past 30 years?

IP --It's one part of our body which we can change fairly easily. I do it to try to look the way I want to feel. It's like an ancient flag to us, and the more confused society becomes, the more 'hairstyle turnover' you'll see.

JD --For all the boys and girls out there who are obsessed with your chest and stomach, how did you get them? And how come you still look like that?

IP --I just don't know. I've always done some kind of exercise, but I'm not a jock. I just need to relax.

JD --On your new album 'knucklehead' you have a song called 'pussywalk' which shows man's obsession with the female nether regions. Can you explain man's obsession with pussy?

IP --Pussy is the best and everyone knows that. Women are deadly and ruthless by nature. Men have to learn.

IP --Where did you live when you were little?

JD --My family moved around constantly, we were like gypsies. We live in Kentucky and then moved to South Florida when I was about seven or eight, so my earliest memories are pretty transient. But I have great memories of Kentucky - catching lightning bugs with my sister, eating Hostess HoHos. I was going to be the first white Harlem Globetrotter.

IP --How did music fit into your life in your teens?

JD --I was 11 years old when I held an electric guitar for the first time. My mom bought me a really beat-up old Kent electric for $25. My guitar got me through puberty, girls, life, family weirdness, growing up, everything. I was in a bunch of garage bands and we played keg parties and skating rinks and stuff. Then at 15, I started playing nightclubs with one primary motivation...GIRLS! My education began when I left school. I joined a local band and then we moved to Hollywood. Eventually the band broke up. I got a job doing a movie (Nightmare on Elm Street) and everybody started going in separate direction. I had every intention of coming back to music after the movie finished. I was only doing it for the money.

IP --You were a big TV actor. Most of them can't switch to movies but you did. You must have got some offers for commercial movies but the first widely known film you did was John Waters' Cry-Baby. John's previous films included poop-eating and penis amputation. Was it scary to go in that direction?

JD --One day, I got phone call that said, "You're getting on a plane this evening for Vancouver", and I ended up on a TV series for three years. My life changed from that moment on. I was doing stuff that I didn't want to be doing and I was desperate to get out. Film scripts came and most of them were pretty cliched - no one understands guy...guy wants girl who just happens to be the other guy's...other guy's girl wants guy.... Then I got a call from John Waters. Cry-Baby was exactly that formula but with great humour. It made fun of all that stuff, and made fun of the image I had acquired by that time. That film was the key that unlocked my jail cell, my chance to pee on the product I was being turned into.

IP --You've never played an action man. Will you?

JD --I hate giant muscles and I think I'd look goofy as an action man. Unless I could wear a shirt that had "Action Man" printed on it. Then I would do it.

IP --You've got a club, The Viper Room. How does it figure in you life, in your feelings? Do you hang out there?

JD --The club is a great place. Even my mom loves it! It has taken a lot of unnecessary shit in the past, from the tabloid press, as if it were some satanic hole. I grew up in night clubs so it's one stable place in a fairly transient existence. My best friend, Sal Jenco, has turned it one of the best clubs I've ever been to. The people working there are amazing, they have become like family to me.

IP --And you've got a band again, P. Is it important to you?

JD --It's an accident that turned out to be a lot of fun. I was in Austin, Texas, doing 'What 's Eating Gilbert Grape? when I met Gibby Haynes[Butthole Sufers] and Bill Carter. One night we decided to go and play at the rehearsal studio and then do a show as a joke. The band is a great escape for me, a chance to play guitar and not have to talk, or be me. P is a bunch of guys that enjoy making music together. P is humour. Yes...I love P.

IP --You're about to direct a feature-length movie for the first time.

JD --I'm going to direct a film called 'The Brave'. It's a strange story about a Native American and his family, living in a desert shanty town in abject poverty. One day the young Indian is presented with an opportunity to make enough money to save hes family. He is offered a part in a 'snuff' film in which he would sacrifice his life. Will he, or won't he? It's an interesting situation and there are a lot of parallels to the atrocities that were committed against Native Americans a century ago.

IP --You mentioned to me that you've been reading 'Hamlet' and you're feeling compelled to play that part. For the public at large, this amounts to a kind of actor's disease, like : Oh no, he's going to play Hamlet (collective groan). Why are you thinking about it?

JD --When I was doing 'Don Juan de Marco' with Marlon Brando, he spoke so passionately about Hamlet. He planted the seed that made me pick it up again and really read it. It probably is a kind of actor's disease but you can only play Hamlet before a certain age and I could very well be approaching to do things that initially inspire collective groans.

IP --You've displayed a bit of a temper by gobbing on a couple of security guys and apparently kind of wrecking a hotel room. Do you just see red or something?

JD --Red is the colour I see. I don't know anything else about it.

IP --You've teamed up with people like Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, Tim Burton, Marlon Brando, Martin Landau and Chris Walken. You're gonna do a film with Al Pacino. It must be amazing being with some of those guys. Do you take notes?

JD --I have been incredibly lucky to have worked with all these people. Marlon has been beyond generous as has Martin. Faye Donaway is a kind of angel. I would be a complete fool not to be a sponge in the presence of these people. I have watched then like a hawk and picked their brains like a vulture. I could not have been luckier. I can't explain the luck, I never could.

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