The Depp Zone: P is not a fruit/102plogo.jpg

While music was the obvious connection (both Depp and Jenco had played in bands previously), a love of cooking shared by Depp, Jenco, and Carter's wife/songwriting partner Ruth Ellsworth kept bringing them together for gourmet meals and impromptu cook-offs. Spending his off-camera time with Jenco and Haynes and watching Carter play at places like the Continental Club, Depp and the three naturally gravitated toward the common ground of music.

Despite a stellar line-up - Gibby Haynes, Johnny Depp, and Sal Jenco - P had a credibility problem from the outset. Ironically, the low-key Bill Carter was responsible for P getting their first gig, a four-song slot at the 1993 Austin Music Awards, the annual kickoff event to South By Southwest Music & Media Conference in Texas. Organizers had tried to book the Butthole Surfers, but Gibby demurred. "Book my other band, P," he said. Despite the obvious drawing power of Depp's name, promoters balked, unaware that the actor had moved to L.A. from Florida with his band Lost City Angels before a tip from friend Nicholas Cage sent him off in the thespian direction. To organizers, P sounded intriguing, but half-baked: the names were a P.R. dream but how was the music? When Gibby mentioned that Bill Carter, a blues-rock veteran who had written several songs for Stevie Ray Vaughan, was also in the band, that clinched the booking. P was indeed a real band.

After their high profile debut, the four returned to their individual careers, using P as a kind of revolving house band at Depp's Hollywood nightclub, the Viper Room (and achieving unfortunate notoriety by playing onstage the night River Phoenix died outside the venue). And the bond P forged playing as a band held fast. Gibby Haynes went back producing bands like Reverend Horton Heat as well as recording with the Butthole Surfers (he is also currently an on-air personality for Austin's KROX); Johnny Depp and Sal Jenco returned to acting; and Bill Carter went back to working on a solo record.

Nevertheless, Haynes believed in the band, and convinced his label of P's potential with little trouble. By early 1995, recording began in earnest, and with such side musicians as the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones, Ruth Ellsworth, and the estimable Chuck E. Weiss, P was finished at summer's end. It's a flamboyant line-up, drawn out by the production talents of Ween's Andrew Weiss, but the aural results are to be savored as well.

So just what kind of music have these four cooked up? With titles such as "Michael Stipe," "White Man Sings The Blues," and Daniel Johnston's "I Save Cigarette Butts," the record barrels down P's rock & roll highway and the four lanes sound irreverent, brash, raw, and tough. Between the tongue in-cheek cover of Abba's "Dancing Queen" and the defiant "Oklahoma," Carter's musical proficiency and Haynes' screwball vision blend with Depp's liquid guitar and Jenco's kinetic drumming in a volatile brew. However, since food is the real music of love for P, the four are more likely to be found sharing dinner with friends and family than planning tours.

P's eponymous debut brazenly realizes its deviant promise but, then, none of these guys are quitting their other jobs, either.