If it hadn’t been for Johnny Cash, I’d probably have been a Nashville songwriter because that’s what I had done for almost five years.
I’d spent so much of my youth and twenties dying my hair bright red to either look like Ziggy Stardust or Johnny Rotten.
I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera.
I had always been heavily influenced by stand-up. I was in a comedy team called Red Johnny And The Round Guy.
Johnny Depp was the most polite young actor I’ve ever worked with.
When I first went on the ‘Johnny Carson show’, the band did not want me, and Carson did not want me. If the audience had not received ‘Tiptoe’ so overwhelmingly, I do not believe Carson would have let me come over to be on the panel after the song.
I didn’t want to come up with some generic Johnny Bravo type name. I’m not that cool, so I might as well stick with my birth name.
Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight.
I had done about 60 television shows, from ‘Ed Sullivan’ to ‘The Hollywood Palace,’ before I ever went to ‘Johnny Carson.’ At the time, that was the showcase for comics. And I couldn’t believe it.
Johnny was great in the studio; he was there to make the music that he wanted to make. We lived right beside each other and had a rehearsal studio that was just ours, with nobody else using it, it was part of Johnny’s house, so we could rehearse every day.
I had a positive remark from Johnny Rotten, would you believe? He said I was a fantastic singer. Not a lot of people know stuff like that.
I have this coat that I got in a nefarious deal years ago. It’s a Johnny Carson coat, and I’ve had it remade three times. It’s mine all the time. Carson was a real man, and I thought, ‘Coats for real men by real men? I’m in.’
Something like ‘Knock Knock,’ I was trying to do a Joe Meek, ‘Johnny Remember Me’-type thing.
Johnny Nitro was an homage to Eric Bischoff, who, I was his apprentice at the time. I liked that name. Basically, Vince McMahon thought that ‘Nitro’ reminded him of WCW, and when I became the ECW Champion, like, he had a couple times mentioned to me, ‘If you’re going to be a real star, you need a real name.’
You know, Johnny Depp has always been a massive inspiration for me and he’s somebody who has produced an incredible amount of work, and every single piece that he does is amazing.
Johnny Blaze was my character at OVW. I had all these fancy fire catchphrases: ‘Call the fire department,’ ‘Get your fire extinguishers out, ladies.’ ‘By the time you hear the thunder, it’s going to be too late because the lightning will have already struck.’ That was all my thing.
Me and Johnny Rotten have been talking about doing a movie of his book, No Irish, No Dogs, No Blacks. We have a script, so hopefully that’s going to happen at some point in our careers.
I love singing some Johnny Cash, which is interesting because it’s in a guy’s key; I love singing Elvis Presley.
I am a big fan of Johnny Lever.
I started producing for Pump – I produced his first songs. ‘Lil Pump,’ ‘Elementary,’ ‘Johnny Dang’ – all that I produced.
There’s different ways of getting into character. There’s what’s called ‘the outside,’ in which is finding the physicality of the character first. To give an example, in ‘Gettin’ Square’ – Johnny Spitieri – that’s how I found that character. I knew those people that I’d seen up at Kings Cross. I knew how they sounded.
Johnny Depp is like a brother to me. We have matching tattoos on our backs – Charles Baudelaire, the flowers of evil, this giant skeleton thing. It’s kind of a secret. People say to us, ‘Why did you get that?’ And we say, ‘No reason.’
We sell a lot of jewelry, not just the grills. We got a whole line of watches, me and my boy Johnny Dane.
I cried when I heard Johnny Carson died.
Favorite country singer of all time… Hank Williams… Well, then there’s Willie Nelson. Can I have three? I can’t do one. Then if I have three, I’ll need five. Hank Williams for sure. Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.
When I started DJing years ago, I took great delight in annoying the audience. Playing Johnny Cash in the middle of a banging night.
There’s only one music video that had an emotional impact on me, and that’s ‘Hurt’ by Johnny Cash. That’s exceptional. There is no music video I can think of apart from that one that really reaches you inside.
I’m a big fan of character actors like Johnny Depp and Gary Oldman. My goal is to continue playing character roles in indie films and move into playing character leads.
Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.
I have never been sexually aroused by a man. But I have yet to kiss Johnny Depp, so you never know.
I’ve been friends with Jaco Pastorius’s son since 1996 – Johnny Pastorius, the eldest son. And I remember when I first met him, I said, ‘Some day, you’ve gotta make a film about your father,’ because his influence is so broad.
His belief in the power of music to convey ideas – not just entertain – has filtered down to musicians in every field, from alt-rock to hip-hop, from Bruce Springsteen and U2 to Arcade Fire and Kanye West. Popular music is different because of Johnny Cash.
Playing Willie Loomis was really fun for me because it was something nice and different to embody. It was neat playing this drunken servant who was hypnotized by Johnny Depp.
Johnny Nitro was like Johnny Hollywood, Johnny Danger, Johnny Blaze… it’s just an obvious stage, Hollywood name. But John Morrison is more like a real person.
Being an actor in L.A. is like being in prison: you go, you serve your time, you try to replicate Johnny Depp’s career – and then you move to Paris.
It’s sort of what the Johnny and Devi stories are about, the idea of always being a slave to something.
Johnny Colt is a character, and most people in Lynyrd Skynyrd are characters, so he fits in great with us. He’s got an attitude, man, and I love it, and that’s what we need.
‘Johnny’ was always a lone wolf when he got on stage. Him against the world, whereas suddenly, when I got into acting, people were relying on me.
I ended up being friends with all my heroes. Lefty Frizzell, George Jones, Johnny Cash – it was incredible.
I’m not the type of player that’s going to be Johnny Hustle and run down the line and slide to first base. That’s just not my personality. That’s not my cup of tea. That’s not who I am.
There’s no reason we shouldn’t have 15 or 20 Johnny Rockets in Dubai.
I don’t remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. I had been on the road with Johnny and working gigs and playing a lot of the organ clubs.
Oh yeah, that’s the Holy Grail, Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp, he’s the real deal, isn’t he? He doesn’t get the girl, and he doesn’t care.
I chose to be Mrs. Johnny Cash in my life. I decided I’d allow him to be Moses and I’d be Moses’ brother Aaron, picking his arms up and padding along behind him.
‘The Ways of a Woman in Love’ is one of my very favorite early Johnny Cash songs. I like the way the lyric talks about the character walking by the girl’s house and wishing he was the one in her arms.
I like Johnny Carson because he doesn’t hold anything back when he’s going for a laugh. Johnny will do anything, say anything, to get his laugh.
I am very proud of what ‘Johnny’ achieved in stand-up comedy because he believed entirely in giving an audience the best kick he could. But he was someone who was quite detrimental to my health, both emotionally and physically.
In college, I had an alias: I was Johnny.
Johnny Gargano, to me, he’s the best professional wrestler in the world today. No doubt about it. Inside the ring, bell-to-bell, there’s just nobody better. So having him as a teammate for years as part of DIY helped me tremendously.
Johnny Rotten. He’s a big fan of mine. I used to see him out in the audience in England and he’d stand up and holler. He’s funny. Smart too, and a nice guy. Don’t think he’s a jerk because he isn’t.
I still have a crush on Johnny Depp, and I literally only started dating my husband because he looked like Johnny Depp – and he knows that. We’ve been together for twelve years, and he still looks like Johnny Depp.
There was always that thing with ‘Johnny’ – I always saw myself as his writer and PR. But when he got out there, I had no control. His whole thing was going off on those flights of fancy. Going, ‘Let’s see what we can possibly do that hasn’t been done before up here.’ And when it works, it’s lovely; it’s a great night.
I’ve learned to treat celebrities as equals and just kind of meet them and admire their work, but I definitely could not breathe when I met Johnny Depp and James Franco.
We played all of the songs on the first Johnny Winter AND every day before we recorded them, so that when we got in the studio, it was totally easy, as we knew exactly what we wanted to do.
There are so many forms of soul: David Bowie was soulful as hell; Johnny Cash was soulful as hell; you also have a Prince, a Stevie Wonder. I want to bring my perception of that and not live inside the box of, ‘This is the type of tracks you get,’ ‘This is the type of drums you get.’
