When it comes to Kiss memorabilia, John 5 is like the proverbial kid in the candy store.

Hell, even at 54 he is a kid, especially compared to Kiss patriarchs Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and even to his current bandmates in Mötley Crüe.

John 5's Kiss fandom — stoked while growing up in the near suburbs of Detroit Rock City, in fact — has led him to accumulate a supersized collection of more than 2,500 items from 1973 to ’83, which he's dubbed the Knights in Satan's Service Museum of Kiss Memorabilia. He'll be putting it on public display for the first time ever this month at a space in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, guiding fans through the experience himself.

But there's a coveted latter-day item that won't be part of the exhibition that is nevertheless near and dear to John’s heart — what is, by all accounts, the last photo of Simmons in full makeup and costume, taken backstage at New York's Madison Square Garden following the group's farewell concert on December 2, 2023.

It was a moment John — who's co-written and played on songs for Stanley and original Kiss guitar player Ace Frehley — wasn't sure he'd have, either. The timing of the show came near the end of Crüe’s World Tour, just as John 5, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil were arriving stateside.

"We'd just gotten back from Japan and Australia with Mötley,” he says. “That flight is, like, two months long or something.’

“Tommy and I were going to fly to the Kiss show, and he goes, 'Are we going? I'm just so jet-lagged. I'm so tired.' And I go, 'Yeah, man, I'm really tired, too.'

“So we weren't going.

"And I get home and my wife, being so kind, surprised me and said, 'Get dressed. There's a car coming for you in 20 minutes.' She got me a plane ticket.

"So I jumped on a plane to New York, took the red-eye and got there at six in the morning, slept and went to the show. And it was wonderful because it was the last time they're gonna do 'Love Gun' and 'Detroit Rock City,' and this and that, with their makeup on.

"Afterward, I was gonna leave through the backstage, and I was waiting for the crowd to go out. I was there for about 20 minutes. When I got backstage, I figured I wasn't gonna see any of the guys, 'cause I was so tired and they had just finished.

“I walked through the hallway and saw Gene, and he called out ‘John!’ We said hi to each other, and I thanked him for the music and the memories and, y'know, everything.

“Then he goes, 'I'm gonna get undressed.’ And right before we said goodbye we took a picture, and then he went to his dressing room.

"I was talking to a couple of tour people, saying goodbye to them, and I could see people going in and out of his dressing room while he's taking his makeup off. And I was like, Is that the last picture of Gene Simmons in makeup? We took it together, and it was pretty special."

As he gives us a virtual Zoom tour through the Museum, it's clear that John 5 will have no shortage of special artifacts to show fans during the public showings. Remaining dates include May 19–23 and 27–30, and tickets can be purchased at John5Store.com.

The collection offers a dizzying array of T-shirts, costumes, buttons, posters, backstage passes, guitar picks, toys, action figures, specially designed mirrors, record store displays, tour books, keychains, press kits, photos, promotional pillows and underwear. Pick a spot and you'll find a holy grail–type item there, so many that John should really hand out slobber towels for fans when they enter the site.

It also includes ticket stubs from, he estimates, more than 60 percent of the concerts Kiss performed between 1973 and ’83, which was the end of the band's first makeup era.

"It's quite an extensive collection," John says, playing the master of understatement. "It's taken a lifetime to build, and it really is never-ending. It's so strange a band had this much merchandise in just nine years. It's just endless, endless, endless things to go through. And this stuff is unbelievably hard to get — almost impossible to get, and worth thousands and thousands of dollars."

John 5 started collecting early, in June 1977, when he saw a display for the Love Gun album in a local Sears store and convinced his mother to buy it for him.

"I loved monsters and I loved music, and I was like, 'Please, please get this for me!'" he recalls. "I loved it, and I was so happy. Ever since then I've been collecting. Having all this stuff under one roof, I think it's really important."

Some of collection's items came to John directly from members of Kiss, but the bulk of the collection came through searching and connections with networks of collectors.

"That's what's so interesting — the thrill of the hunt," he says, although he says "I've only really 'scored,' like, maybe three or five times. A lot of this stuff I just had to pay up for."

One of his best acquisition stories was finding a Kiss toy microphone-and-speaker set buried and covered in dust in an antique store. He also has Peter Criss’s bass drum head and other artifacts from the Kiss Alive! photo shoot at the Michigan Palace, which were given to his brother-in-law when the long-closed theater was being cleared out.

Another cherished item is a promotional Frisbee from a July 31 (John 5's birthday) concert in 1976 at the Toledo Sports Arena. There’s also the original Kiss Army flag that was waved outside WTVS-FM in Terre Haute, Indiana, by fans urging the station to play Kiss’s music; the key to the city of Cadillac, Michigan, from the band's famed 1975 visit to the local high school; and a politically correct German pinball machines that swapped the group's usual SS font to something more straightforward.

Speaking of that, John 5's use of the Knights in Satan's Service moniker is a bit of an eyebrow raiser — although the museum also includes a 1976 handbill from a parent's group protesting Kiss as devil worshippers trying to convert their children.

"I didn't want to call [the exhibit] Kiss," John explains. "I never want to make the band upset, 'cause they're all friends. I know what to do and what not to do."

One thing you won't find in John's collection is instruments, for a simple reason. "Obviously I'm a guitar player, and I like things completely original," says John, whose own collection of rare and vintage guitars includes numerous custom examples. "With guitars, they can be refinished or the pickups changed or the tuning pegs changed or anything like that.

"So I don't get into a lot of instruments because you don't know what is original and what is not."

You also won't see the museum displayed anywhere outside of Los Angeles, he adds.

"Everything is so fragile — I don't even want to look at it for too long," he says. "The guitar picks, they can just crack and snap, 'cause they're 50 years old. The lights, the temperature, everything has to be done perfectly."

While the museum is occupying his May, John 5 has plenty of plans for the rest of the year. He's working on his next solo album — which he gave a hint of in a YouTube post last March — that he hopes to have out during the fall, with an accompanying tour. That roadshow will likely prevent him from attending the Kiss Army 50th anniversary event during mid November in Las Vegas, where the band will be performing sans makeup.

Mötley Crüe, meanwhile, has its delayed residence in Las Vegas coming up in September, and John 5 says he's ready to keep working new music for the band to follow up last October's Cancelled EP.

"I always have my guitar around," he says. "Nikki is such an incredible lyricist and writer; he'll call, like, when he's driving, 'Check out this lyric,' and, wow, it's really incredible. And Tommy's an incredible writer as well. I've worked with a lot of songwriters, and those two guys are really something special."

When David Lee Roth left Van Halen in 1985, he did so believing he could go bigger and better than the band he was leaving behind. Though his solo career never hit the dizzying heights that Eddie Van Halen and company enjoyed, his penchant for picking guitarists for his band can never be questioned.

Steve Vai, Jason Becker, Steve Hunter and John 5 are all hugely inspiring and individualistic players, and they helped spin gold from Roth’s core ideas. But they often had to do so under strict circumstances. On the surface, Roth was a party animal – and he did plenty of that – but behind the scenes, as John 5 explains, he could be unforgiving.

Save for his one-off industrial metal album with Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford as 2wo, John 5 was an unknown when he cold-called the singer's management, hunting for his next gig.

“I got the number from the back of [Roth's autobiography "Crazy from the Heat"],” he recounts to Spin's Lipps Service. “I called his management company. I was like, 'Hey, you guys looking for songs by chance?' They're like, 'Yeah, you could send them.'”

With no money in his pocket, he called in favors for studio time, and tracked a handful of Van Halen-channeling demos. Impressed by what they heard, Roth's camp invited him to meet with the singer at Los Angeles's famous Ocean Way studios. But he quickly learned it wasn't going to be an easy gig.

“It was crazy. This is where [Van Halen] did every song and rehearsed,” he says of his time at Ocean Way.

But when the singer discovered that John 5 – then known simply as John Lowery – was rehearsing ahead of a tour with 2wo, he moved to ensure he got the guitarist at his freshest, before he rehearsed with 2wo. David Lee Roth wasn’t one for sloppy seconds.

“At 6 am we started recording [what would become 1998’s “DLR Band”]. We did it live, and it was incredible. And he goes, 'If you can't do it in two takes, you can't do it.' And I was like, 'Whoa. This is insane!'”

Stevce Vai, Roth's first hotshot shredder, faced similar pressure cooker scenarios. “My ideas were being depended on, because I was the guitar player and it was very cool,” he told VPR Rocks. “When Dave came along, it was an opportunity to stretch that muscle and it resonated well because he has a bizarre sense of humor, and so do I.

“The energy that the whole band created was indestructible,” he says. “He depended on us to write the music, to write lyrics and melodies too. Not only did I have the freedom to write what I wanted, I had to push myself to go beyond my own vision.”

When Vai parted ways with the group, Roth turned to another white hot talent, Jason Becker, whose stock could hardly have been higher in 1990, after name-making albums with Cacophony, Marty Friedman, and as a solo artist. Despite the hype around him, Roth wanted to sculpt the guitarist's sound to ensure he matched his vision of a group entering a new era.

As Steve Hunter explained to Guitar World in 2023, his demands of Becker left the young guitarist needing his assistance.

“Jason came over for a few guitar lessons because David Lee Roth wanted him to ‘add a little more blues in,’” he reveals. At first, Hunter felt Becker's youthfulness and shredding style would be a barrier, but when he told the seasoned session player that his favorite player was Stevie Ray Vaughan, “we hit it off”.

“I said, 'OK, alright, that's good. How would you like to hear where Stevie Ray got his stuff?' And I put on an old Albert King album called ‘Years Gone By’, and Jason was floored by it.”

With a greater appreciation of the blues, Becker took to his task with aplomb, although his time in the band was cut short as his struggles with ALS brought a premature end to his playing career.

Brian Young, Roth's guitarist for four years from 2002, also saw his skills pushed to their limits during his DLR days.

“To be in the David Lee Roth band, you've basically gotta go through this boot camp to toughen you up,” he said during a 2021 appearance on Rock N' Roll Icons With Bode James. “I wouldn't say he's difficult, but he expects a lot, and he's demanding. He's a perfectionist for everyone else, even for himself. So working with him wasn't easy.

“He's paying everybody. It's his name on the marquee, so there's no argument. When Dave says something, you just do it. And I do like that. Whatever he says, whether it's right or wrong, everybody agrees with it or not. You just do what Dave tells you, and everything's fine.”

“I’d probably have practiced a little more If I knew I was going to affect that many people’s lives,” Ace Frehley told us when we asked him about the five tracks most essential to his career.

And indeed, Ace has been an influence on countless players, thanks to his well-loved guitar licks and melodic solos, all of it performed on a Gibson Les Paul.

Be it the solo for “Shock Me,” which Frehley has said he did in “one take,” the flange-soaked-meets-wah-drenched solo in “Rocket Ride,” or the one in “She,” which Gene Simmons revealed was a note-for-note re-creation of Robby Krieger’s solo in the Doors’ track “Five to One,” there’s simply no denying that Ace Frehley’s unschooled, off-the-rails style was a harbinger for hair metal and thrash.

Proof of this can be found in numerous interviews with players like Dimebag Darrell, John 5, Slash, and many others, in which they've spoken Frehley's praise. Hell, even grunge icon Mike McCready and alt-hero Tom Morello have shown Ace loads of love over the years.

But what does Ace think of the adoration that generations of six-stringed heroes have thrown his way? Specifically, what does he think of his influence over Dime, John 5 — who has his own Kiss museum filled with personal artifacts and mementoes — and Slash?

GP wondered, and so we asked Ace — who recently told us what he thought of his Kiss replacements — to recount his thoughts and experiences with all three.

Dimebag Darrell

“I was good friends with Dimebag. I actually spent a weekend at his home, and he was a good guy! And he was a fun guy. He always said I was a big influence on him — but he played a lot faster than me. He was heavy metal. He played more speed metal than blues.

“But Dimebag was a great guy, and he had my face tattooed on his chest. [laughs] And man, we had a lot of fun one weekend at his house!”

John 5

“John 5 is a dear friend of mine. He actually called me up, and he said, ‘I’m a little nervous about playing with Mötley Crüe,’ so he invited me for the first show. He wanted a little moral support. [laughs]

“And then, me, him and Nikki [Sixx] were handing out backstage after the show. I think it was in Atlantic City, in New Jersey.

“But John is really technical. I mean… he can play anything. He can play stuff by Glen Campell, and he’s just a really great, technical guitar player. He definitely surpasses me, you know? I just have one style. I can’t play 10 different kinds of styles — but John can play country, metal, and he can even play country. You know… he’s just an amazing musician.

“But for the most part, he pretty much just stands up there, whereas I kind of, you know, developed certain types of physical moves. I remember that in the early days with Kiss, I used to bend back really far, and I had all these sorts of physical moves and choreography with Kiss. And a lot of that was actually created by Kiss’s first road manager, Sean Delaney, who had a big hand in getting us to do all those moves.”

Slash

“Slash is another good friend of mine. He says I influenced him, but I have to be honest — I don’t know how. [laughs]

“He never told me. He just said that he’s a fan of my guitar playing, and I never questioned it. So you’d have to interview Slash on that one. But we did do a song for my first Origins album [Vol. 1] together, which was ‘Emerald’ by Thin Lizzy. We did that together, live in the studio, and we traded off solos. He’s a great guitar player.”

John 5 posted a video of himself shredding a new song live in the studio today.

Playing his custom Fender Ghost Number Two electric guitar while sitting on a sofa — as his dog snoozes beside him — John treats viewers to more than two minutes of his signature shredding, as he plays in dead-on tight harmony with a previously recorded guitar track.

John told Guitar Player the new song is destined for his next solo album.

“This song is called ‘Fiend’ and I recorded it as a performance," he tells us.

"And a little side note: My producer Barry Pointer was working my effects, cause I wanted to play it completely al the way through and I didn’t want to mess up, ha ha ha.”

John's most recent solo album is Sinner, from 2021. Fans will agree that's long enough to wait for new material from the shred virtuoso.

The years since then have been particularly busy ones. Since releasing Sinner, John has been involved in numerous projects, including his documentary I Am John 5, which includes glowing testimonials from the likes of Joe Satriani, Rob Halford, the late Gary Rossington, Michael Anthony and Rudy Sarzo, among others.

He's also announced the opening of his Kiss museum, featuring his own personal mementoes and rare artifacts from the group's reign.

And, of course, John became a full-fledged member of Motley Crüe in 2023. And as he told Guitar Player in his July 2024 cover story, the group has been preparing new material, its first with John onboard.

“We went into the studio with [producer] Bob Rock and did some songs,” he told us. “It was really cool because it’s something I haven’t done before. We all got in the room together and played, and that’s how we tracked. It’s so unorthodox nowadays to just get in one room and play all at the same time and record at the same time. It was incredible.”

The Ghost Number Two electric guitar that John is playing was added to his arsenal when he joined the Crüe to allow him to perform guitar parts played by Mick Mars. Like John's favored models, it features a Telecaster body shape.

“My original Ghost doesn’t have a vibrato, and Mick Mars used a Floyd Rose or a tremolo on most of the Crüe’s songs, so Ghost Number Two was born.”

Like its companion, the guitar is used “on every Mötley Crüe song live and in the studio as well,” John says.

“It’s just as important as Ghost Number One, but I don’t use it as much outside of Mötley Crüe because I don’t like to rely on a tremolo; I prefer to do everything with just my hands.”

For more of John’s talents and insights, check out his five essential guitar tips for beginners and veterans guitarists alike.

By 1984, David Lee Roth had tired of having to share Van Halen’s limelight with its all-star super shredder, Eddie Van Halen. So he flew the nest with the intention of not only establishing himself as a solo artist but going one better than the band with whom he’d made his name.

According to Alex Van Halen, Eddie’s decision to record the solo for Michael Jackson’s "Beat It" solo in secret proved the final straw for the singer. David Lee Roth saw red and headed for the exit.

But if the attention-craved singer was to take Van Halen’s throne, he needed the personnel to take him to the next level. After releasing his debut EP, Crazy From the Heat in January 1985 — 40 years ago this month — he set about assembling a supergroup worthy of the cause. Over the next decade and a half, Roth would welcome three huge guitar playing talents into his world as he vied to cast the limelight-soaked Eddie Van Halen in shadow.

First, he secured the virtuosic services of Steve Vai, who had left Frank Zappa’s band two years prior. Alongside bass player Billy Sheehan and drummer Gregg Bissonette, Roth showed his first major hand and demonstrated an astute eye for talent.

Vai’s post-Zappa career saw him release his first solo album, Flex-Able in 1984 and join Alcatrazz. Then he found himself helping shape the solo career of Van Halen’s outspoken frontman.

“My ideas were being depended on, because I was the guitar player and it was very cool,” the guitarist remembers of his time in the band [via VRP Rocks]. “Throughout my teenage years, I was really into Led Zeppelin, Queen, Deep Purple. So I had the rock and roll thing in my soul.

“When Dave came along, it was an opportunity to stretch that muscle and it resonated well because he has a bizarre sense of humor, and so do I. It worked. Something like 'Yankee Rose' with the talking guitars? Sophisticated rock stars don't do stuff like that!

“The energy that the whole band created was indestructible,” Vai continues. “He depended on us to write the music, to write lyrics and melodies too. Not only did I have the freedom to write what I wanted, I had to push myself to go beyond my own vision.”

Roth's debut LP, Eat ‘Em and Smile was released in 1986. The landmark success of its lead single, "Yankee Rose" — talking guitars and all — was a strong showing, and it proved to any doubters that Roth meant business.

Many were quick to compare Vai to Eddie Van Halen ± just as Jake E. Lee was fielding comparisons between him and Randy Rhoads around the same time — but Vai didn’t see it like that.

“Having the shadow of Edward looming over me… to feel the pressure would mean I was competing with him,” he says. “You can't do that.”

Vai left the band for new pastures after 1988’s Skyscraper. Roth again showed his shrewd eye for guitarists by hiring Jason Becker, who had blazed a trail alongside Marty Friedman in Cacophony.

“It was very exciting,” Becker remembers about his entrance into DLR's world. “At that time, I was pretty confident about my guitar playing. Once I met Dave and all the guys in the band, I was totally comfortable. They all made me feel so appreciated and welcomed me and my youthful energy. At a fancy dinner at Dave's house, he made a toast to 'the new gunslinger in town.' ”

However, Roth’s best-laid plans, which revolved around his new hot-shit gunslinger, began to unravel. While working on Roth’s third solo album, A Little Ain't Enough, Becker was plagued by a nagging pain in his left leg.

A year later, having barely left his teenage years behind him, he was diagnosed with ALS, a.k.a. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was predicted he had less than five years to live and was losing his strength rapidly.

Becker was able to complete his parts but his playing style suffered. Unable to rely on speed, he looked to one of his earliest influences for help.

“I think Eric Clapton's playing was a great building block for me,” he told Guitar Player in 2012. “You definitely wouldn’t hear his influence on my style in my earlier recordings, like Perpetual Burn, unless you dig deep.

“On the Roth album and as my hands got weaker, you can hear a little more Clapton in my notes.”

Ozzy Osbourne touring guitarist Joe Holmes was drafted in for the live shows, but with the rise of grunge, Roth's brand of brazen glam metal was falling out of favor.

Steve Hunter featured on Roth's Nile Rodgers–produced fourth LP, Your Filthy Little Mouth, in 1994, before the singer found another legend-in-making: John Lowery, who would eventually become popular as John 5,

Guesting on Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn’s No F’n Regrets podcast in 2021, John 5 revealed he got the gig in the strangest of circumstances.

“I remember sitting on the couch — and I loved Van Halen, loved David Lee Roth — and I’m going, ‘I wonder what Dave’s doing…’” he recalls.

John 5 managed to get three songs before his idol after calling a phone number he found in a promo book for Crazy From the Heat. Among his demos was "Slam Dunk!," a song he describes as “my best Van Halen song impression.”

Before he knew it, he was a part of the band, tracking and mixing an album across a warp-speed 11 days. "He goes, ‘We’re going to make a record, just like the old Van Halen days, we’re going to do everything live,’" John 5 recalled.

“He would have palm trees in the studio; he would have sand in a studio; he’d have drinks set up, and it was just the greatest. He knows everything — he knows every beat, he knows every chord. He’s very, very tuned in.”

John 5 was on double duty handling electric guitars and bass for 1998's DLR Band, the group's first self-titled album. The lineup also included an unknown drummer called Ray Luzier who would later join Korn, one of the grunge bands that nearly killed Roth's solo career.

John 5 didn’t stick around for another record, ultimately joining Marilyn Manson, and then Rob Zombie. However, his trajectory, like Vai's, has continued to rise since their DLR days.

While Roth's solo career never got close to reaching Van Halen’s dizzying heights, he at least showed a knack for promoting young talents and it could be argued neither Vai nor John 5 would have enjoyed the level of success they’ve without their brief moments beside the singer.

John 5 says hearing Eddie Van Halen’s music for the first time as a teen made a huge impact on him .

While making a guest appearance on the Vinyl Obsession Podcast, the Mötley Crüe’s recruit also revealed that he bought the band's self-titled debut record simply because it gave a word of thanks to one of his heroes.

“I bought this from the cover alone because it said ‘Gene Simmons’," John 5 says, referring to the note of thanks to the Kiss bassist included on its cover. Simmons had believed in Van Halen's talent and recorded demoes of the group before they were signed. Says John 5, “I remember putting this on, and I think maybe this record was the one that gave me the biggest shock, because of the sound.”

John 5 would go on to play a role in the band’s musical canon when he made his commercial breakthrough in David Lee Roth’s solo band. Doing so was a "full circle" moment for him, considering that Eddie’s guitar work had unveiled a whole new world to him.

“Now, I was already playing guitar,” John 5 continues, but he says Eddie showed him a new world of possibilities in virtuosity, speed and showmanship. “It was like seeing a car, and then seeing a race car," he says. "I mean, Eddie’s playing really freaked me out.”

Eddie’s virtuosity was just one point of focus for a band that had plenty of fireworks up their collective sleeves — that includes Roth, bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Alex Van Halen. This, John 5 believes, helped Eddie shine even brighter.

“Without these four guys, it wouldn’t be the same — with Mikey’s vocals and his playing and Alex’s playing.”

Because of his connections with the band, John 5 was granted the honor of playing through Eddie’s live rig during the band’s A Different Kind of Truth era. That experience taught him something very important about guitar tone.

“It’s all in the hands,” he says. “It’s in his attack. It’s in his playing. That’s why he sounds like Eddie...because there was an attack and there was a certain way he really hit the strings. Same thing with Yngwie Malmsteen or people like that. They have a certain swing to them or a certain attack. And that’s how it was with Van Halen.”

John 5 — whose Telecaster obsession is well known — told Guitar Player that guitars were his “savior” as he battled with personal tragedy and mental health struggles in his life.

He talked the magazine through his 10 most prized Telecasters in the July 2024 issue, noting that he owns one from each year they’ve been produced. In the same interview, he revealed he played his “Goldie” Telecaster so much that doctors were concerned for his health.

Despite his deep association with glam rock and EVH flair, John 5 is a far more versatile guitarist than many would perceive at first glance For example, his chicken picking and banjo roll techniques, which form a huge part of his repertoire, are plucked from country music.

The guitarist’s long-awaited signature Telecaster, the Ghost, was released in 2023. Earlier this year, he called Fender’s new American Ultra II Series Tele “the perfect Telecaster in my eyes,” when putting it through its paces.

Meanwhile, the guitar world was treated to a brand-new Eddie Van Halen song in 2024. His brother, Alex, released "Unfinished," the final track they worked on together to promote his new memoir.

Growing up on a midwestern lake, under the wings of a loving family that would watch episodes of Hee Haw, a young John Lowery found the guitar at a tender age. With equal parts innate talent and boundless curiosity, combined with a traditional pioneer’s work ethic, the inspired adolescent set a goal to play the guitar and play it well, whether it be rock, metal, blues, or country. John was on a mission.

While he was still a teenager, John’s ethos, coupled with his laser-focused vision, led him to leave his beloved childhood home in Michigan for Los Angeles. It was in the City of Angels that he would eventually become the world-renowned guitar slinger known as John 5.

The path to that moniker, not to mention J5’s entire career, was born on a boast to budget-conscious record producers that he could “do their session in half the time and for half the price” required by other guitarists. Of the many attributes required to pull off such a feat in L.A.’s infamously competitive environment, versatility was paramount. Fortunately, John had it in spades.

Even so, competence and consistency are the golden tickets to entering and thriving in that world. After a few impressive and successful freelance recording sessions, word of John’s musical and technical competence spread quickly, and so did his connections with artists as far and wide as Lita Ford, k.d. lang, and Meat Loaf. Before long, John landed gigs with Rob Halford, David Lee Roth, Marilyn Manson, and Rob Zombie.

Today, as a full-time member of the venerable glam-metal outfit Mötley Crüe, John 5 has ascended through the ranks of top-gun electric guitar slingers thanks to his own almost freakish consistency, which is a direct result of his relentless commitment to playing guitar, in his words, “all the time.”

John 5’s distinguished playing and stage presence have made him one of today’s most identifiable guitarists, one who earned his place on the Mount Olympus of journeymen band-member gigs, while developing a high profile as a prolific solo artist.

In this lesson, the man of many hats, face paints, and Teles guides us through a gaggle of curated techniques culled from his catalog of solo albums. Armed with his own signature Fender Ghost Telecaster plugged straight into a chain of his requested “stock gear that is nothing special,” John 5 aims to help you develop your own consistency by giving you some fun stuff to play just as he does: all the time.

Typically, guitarists who wield a Tele exclusively embrace the country-oriented stylistic expectations that come with the axe. In this regard, John put in the time where it counts and packed his eclectic playing style and vocabulary with lots of fun and exciting country guitar techniques, such as chicken pickin’, behind-the-nut bends, moving bass lines, and rapid-fire banjo rolls, all while delivering the snap and feisty attack you’d expect.

Bolstering the fun factor in John’s playing is the fact that these idiomatic elements are thrown down at the drop of a hat by a leather-clad Kiss fanatic with gothic bug-eye sunglasses who happens to be in the world’s most celebrated glam-metal band.

Ex. 1 puts John’s approach to chicken pickin’ and bending behind the nut front and center. He performs this phrase fingerstyle and navigates the nearly exclusive adjacent-string action with his pick-hand’s thumb (p) and first finger (i), assigned to the lower and higher strings in each pairing, while adding the requisite accent and note length articulations.

The cruxes of the lick, however, are the whole-step bends applied to the open B and G strings, for which he pushes down on them behind the nut at each juncture with his fret hand’s 2nd and 3rd fingers. Behind-the-nut bends are ideally suited to a Tele, given the extended space between the strings and tuners.

Taking a close look at John’s signature Tele reveals a string tree for the highest two strings, placed unconventionally far away from the nut. While this helps facilitate the technique, John removes the tree on his personal guitar altogether for even easier execution of this technique.

Continuing to make exclusive use of his pick-hand thumb and first finger, John shows off his moving bass-line skills with Ex. 2, his homage to country guitar legend Jerry Reed’s classic guitar instrumental Jiffy Jam, a tune John recorded for his 2014 release, Careful With That Axe.

He assigns his thumb to the down-stemmed bass notes while his first finger takes care of the rest, including a slick upward swipe of the Esus2/F# at the end of the phrase. As a result of John’s attentive fret-hand finger arching, the open strings clearly ring here while the fretted notes attacked with his pick-hand first finger are both slightly chopped in duration and accented alongside the more legato-sounding bass movement, resulting in a multifaceted performance.

Adding his 2nd finger to the fingerpicking mix, John cracks the whip with Ex. 3, a burning four-bar run from his tune Howdy (from 2019’s Invasion). Assigning his thumb to the G string and his first and second fingers to the B and high E strings, respectively, the guitarist blazes through a consistent disjunct banjo-roll pattern that traverses major tonalities in E, A, D, and G, in 1st, 5th, 10th, and 3rd positions, respectively.

At this point in the lesson, John unleashes the power of his Ghost Tele’s DiMarzio D Activator pickups by switching to the hi-gain channel of the Marshall JVM half-stack that he’s plugged into, additionally slamming the front end of the amp with a Boss SD-1 Super overdrive pedal.

He proceeds to dive into his vat of shred techniques with a bevy of legato licks that retain the presence of open strings, starting with a lick from Creepshow, from 2021’s Sinner, as shown in Ex. 4.

Using only his high E string in bars 1 and 2, and no pick attacks, he hammers on and pulls off a sequence of notes from the E Aeolian mode (E, F#, G, A, B, C, D), separated by the open string, which serves as a pedal tone. He follows this in bar 3 with a descending legato run that moves across all six strings in a visually symmetrical and musically insurgent half-step/whole-step fretboard pattern that’s not beholden to any one scale, an approach popularized by Eddie Van Halen.

Offering us another selection from Sinner, John remains on his high E string for Ex. 5, a playfully angular lick from Euphoria. Notice how the line ricochets back and forth from the open string to notes tapped at the 12th and 19th frets and a 7th-fret B, fingered with the fret hand.

Not leaving his affinity for slick country playing behind when things get gainy, the crafty guitarist again reaches behind the nut and proceeds to bend each tapped 12th-fret E note up a whole step, to F#. No wonder he claims that this is “one of the most challenging things I do.” That may be hard to believe when you see what’s next.

Once more taking advantage of an open string, this time his B, John shifts into a more modern gear for Ex. 6, a passage from his recently recorded track The Ghost. Using a technique reminiscent of the playing of Tosin Abasi and Roopam Garg, John pedals an open B note, which he picks repeatedly with an upstroke and quickly alternates with double hammer-ons on the A and D strings, all while palm muting.

Notice that the first fretted note on each string is articulated with a fret-hand tap, or “hammer-on from nowhere,” indicated by an “H” in the tablature.

John extends his use of open strings and legato phrasing with Ex. 7, an acrobatic arpeggio-based string-skipping run he plays in Welcome to the Island (from Sinner), which outlines the arpeggios E (E, G#, B), Esus4 (E, A, B), and C#m7/E (E, B, C#). Note that he tunes his D string up a whole step here, to E, to attain three open E notes. He then proceeds to cleanly jump between the 6th, 4th, and 1st strings with double hammer-ons from each open string.

John switches techniques while continuing to burn up the Ghost’s white-painted fretboard with some more licks from Sinner, first with a return to Creepshow. He hits the clutch and shifts into a roller-coaster sweep-picking run (Ex. 8) that, again, will whip your head back and forth.

Making use of 2nd-inversion minor (5, 1, b3) and major (5, 1, 3) triad arpeggios on the top three strings, John flows through a progression in the key of E minor. He aptly demonstrates the need for intent and precision when sweep picking as he slices across the strings with the required uninterrupted downstroke, albeit with his professed “light touch.”

Ex. 9 grooves hard with a lick from Que Pasa. This canto pushes the envelope with full six-string sweeps of an Em arpeggio (E, G, B) bookended by minor 3rd hammer-ons from E to G.

The apex of the run is a tapped 17th fret high A note that kicks off an avalanche of descending legato double and single pull-offs and finger slides.

Pulling out yet another technique from his trick bag, John puts down his pick, rolls back the gain and proceeds to deconstruct the slap-guitar antics featured on his 2019 single, Zoinks!

Ex. 10 lays some groundwork as John’s thumb assumes a slapping motion (indicated by an S) on the 6th and 5th strings with intermittent double hammers-ons from – you guessed it – an open string, this time the low E. The solitary high E-string notes are attacked by his pick-hand first finger in what’s called a “pop.”

If the nod to Eddie Van Halen wasn’t apparent back in Ex. 4, it’s sure to come clear in Ex. 11, where John takes a walk down Mean Street with this additional four-bar phrase.

Expanding upon the techniques demonstrated earlier, he adds sliding octaves and the Edward-approved tapped perfect-4ths dyads on the D and G strings (tapped together, as a double-stop, with the pad, or “paw,” of his fret-hand index finger) before reminding us this is his show as he eerily scrapes his thumbnail down his low E string toward the bridge pickup. Considering the myriad jarring audio and visual images John has unleashed over his lauded career, this is par for the course.

Whether he’s performing on the world’s biggest stages or at home on a couch surrounded by his four-legged hairless companions and creating Instagram videos for nearly three-quarters of a million followers, John 5 is consistent. Put a guitar in his hands and be sure to have your finger on the record button, because he’s always at the ready… and, as many record producers will attest, he needs only one take!

When asked for advice on how to achieve this level of consistency and competence, John simply offers, “It’s all in your mind and how you look at things. You just do it, and do it all the time. That’s how I look at the guitar. I just play guitar all the time, like breathing or walking.”

“The guitar turned out to be my savior,” John 5 told us in a recent revealing and exhaustive interview about his career – and accordingly, he has built up quite a collection.

Here, he gives us the lowdown on his 10 favorite weapons of choice – from his Fender signature models to treasured gifts and his iconic LED Telecaster.

1. Fender Esquire

This 1966 Esquire sports Fender’s spaghetti logo, which by this year had been almost completely phased out in favor of the company’s thicker gold-and-black transition logo.

“This Esquire is very close to me because it was the first vintage guitar I owned and served as my introduction to vintage guitars,” John explains.

“I bought it from Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, California, and I used it on my first two instrumental records. It’s very precious to me, and even though I’ve used it a lot, I’ve taken good care of it.”

2. Sinner Telecaster

Featuring artwork by an artist John declines to identify, this custom Telecaster bears a design based on the cover of his 2021 album, Sinner.

“This guitar also lights up,” John explains. “I just keep this one for songwriting. I call it my ‘couch guitar.’  I just play and write with it.”

3. Goldie Telecaster

“Goldie has probably been on more songs and to more shows any other guitar I own,” John reveals. “This was my number one guitar, and I played it all day and all night. It’s been refretted already once.

“The metal pickguard has been replaced twice because I played it so much that I dug a groove in there, which indented the metal. Fender saw that and said, ‘This isn’t good for you. This could get in your skin.’ I mean, I just played it so, so much.” 

4. Ghost Number One 

“As I said, I used to play Goldie all the time, but it was really getting old and beat up. But now Ghost Number One has taken its place, and it’s all I play. It’s my number one guitar.”

In development since 2019, the Ghost has an electronics complement of two DiMarzio D Activator pickups, a master volume and a kill switch. John gave the prototype its debut on his 2022 summer and fall tours. It hasn’t left his side since. 

“I’m using it on the new Mötley Crüe music, and I’ve used it on all of my new songs. There’s just a magic behind that guitar.”

5. Custom Fender Telecaster

This custom job features the by-now familiar complement of DiMarzio pickups, a master volume and kill switch.

“This was designed for the Mötley Crüe shows, and I also use it in my shows as well,” John explains. As for the finish?

“Sea Foam Green is my absolute favorite color. I have this similar thing about Tobacco Burst Les Pauls. There’s just something about the look of that I love. I think this is just a beautiful, beautiful instrument.”

6. Fender Strat

“I got this guitar for Christmas when I was 12 years old, and it was my very first real guitar. I started playing guitar at around seven years old, but I didn’t really have a good guitar until I got this.

“I took care of it like it was a piece of gold – like it was a baby. I washed my hands before I played it. I put it back in its case after I played it. I just took very, very good care of it. And it shows.”

7. Ghost Number Two

“Ghost Number Two was created when I joined Mötley Crüe,” John explains. “My original Ghost doesn’t have a vibrato, and Mick Mars used a Floyd Rose or a tremolo on most of the Crüe’s songs, so Ghost Number Two was born.”

Like its companion, the guitar is used “on every Mötley Crüe song live and in the studio as well,” John says.

“It’s just as important as Ghost Number One, but I don’t use it as much outside of Mötley Crüe because I don’t like to rely on a tremolo; I prefer to do everything with just my hands.”

8. LED Tele

“A guy named Ken Meyer made this guitar for me. He came up to me at a NAMM show and said, ‘I’ll make you any guitar you want.’ I didn’t know him but he seemed to be a nice person.

“I said, ‘Okay. I want a guitar with LEDs on the front.’ And he said, ‘I can do it.’ And sure enough, he did. I’ve been using that guitar for close to 20 years. It plays incredibly. So hats off to Ken!”

9. 1971 Blonde Telecaster

“I had to get it because it reminded me of  Steve Cropper, and I’ve always loved him,” John says of this vintage beauty.

“A lot of my heroes played Telecasters, including those pickers on Hee Haw. I thought this was the only shape an electric guitar came in. Because it’s in mint condition and all original, I don’t take it out much at all.”

10. EVH Strat

“This is a guitar Eddie Van Halen gave to me when these guitars first came out, and I was just absolutely blown away that he did it,” John says, clearly still awestruck by the experience.

“My hero gave me one of his guitars, and he was so proud of it as well. That was a time I’ll never forget, and I cherish this guitar.”

One might not think that Dolly Parton, Rob Zombie, k.d. lang, and Nikki Sixx would share any kind of common ground, but there is something they all emphatically agree on: John 5 is one of the most creative and exciting guitar players they have ever encountered.

They’re just some of the music stars who sing the praises of the Telecaster-toting axe ace in the new documentary I Am John 5. The film also includes glowing testimonials from the likes of Joe Satriani, Rob Halford, the late Gary Rossington, Peter Criss, Michael Anthony, and Rudy Sarzo, among others.

All of which has the subject of the movie feeling vaguely verklempt. “It’s so strange and unbelievable to me,” John 5 says. “Everything that’s happened to me has exceeded all of my wildest dreams. When I was starting out, I was just hoping to make a living as a session player. I never thought I’d sign an autograph, let alone have Dolly Parton talking about me. I still have a hard time trying to fathom where life has taken me.”

As success stories go, John 5’s tale is pretty spectacular stuff. Arriving in Los Angeles in the late ’80s from his hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the 17-year-old guitarist (born John Lowery) quickly found work playing on movie and TV soundtracks, followed by album sessions for Rick Springfield and David Lee Roth. He played live dates with his friend Lita Ford, but owing to a long-standing fear of planes, he preferred studio dates and travel that didn’t involve flying, until he signed on with k.d. lang for a world trek from 1996 to ’97.

Enthralled by Marilyn Manson, he reached out to the shock rocker, who hired him and rechristened him John 5. Donning elaborate costumes and goth-horror makeup that suited his new moniker, John 5 became Manson’s onstage foil and right-hand man. A pair of studio albums (2000’s Holy Wood and 2003’s The Golden Age of Grotesque) and several world tours followed before they parted company in 2004.

John 5’s next longtime gig – with heavy-metal/horror star and sometime filmmaker Rob Zombie – took him even higher. In addition to his blitzing guitar chops, John 5 served as a significant writing partner on a series of Zombie’s albums and even wrote the score to the singer’s supernatural thriller, The Lords of Salem. Their mutually beneficial professional relationship seemed destined to continue, but in 2022, John 5 received the kind of offer he couldn’t – and didn’t – refuse: taking over for Mick Mars in Mötley Crüe.

I Am John 5 traces the broad strokes of his career in a fast-paced and highly entertaining film directed by Chantal Savage, and produced by the guitarist Mike Savage, and Barry Pointer. But some of its most illuminating segments recount the earliest chapters of John 5’s life, particularly how, as a preternaturally gifted teenaged guitarist, already versed in country and bluegrass (thanks to the TV comedy show Hee Haw) as well as rock (thanks to Kiss), he struck a deal with his mother to play nightclubs – none of which he could legally patronize – as long as his schoolwork didn’t suffer.

“I was always very driven and was strict with myself about playing, but I followed other rules, too,” he says. “My mom said, ‘If you miss school, if you don’t get up in the morning even one time, you’re not going to play these clubs anymore.’ Truth is, I thought that was a very smart rule, even though I sometimes got home at two in the morning and had to get up by seven. But I never missed a day of school. I was always respectful of things like that. Plus, my mom knew that I wasn’t drinking or smoking or doing anything.” (Apparently, “or doing anything” didn’t include occasionally going home with much older waitresses that he met in the clubs.)

I Am John 5 isn’t mere rock-star idolatry, however. When he agreed to participate in the project, John 5 made it clear to the producers that he wasn’t interested in a standard-issue puff piece, and in several particularly powerful segments he reveals his struggles with mental illness that he says began back in 2003, after he received word that his sister Lynne had died.

“I was on tour with Manson, and I knew that my father was sick with cancer,” he explains. “Lynne and my father weren’t talking because she was involved with drugs. But he was really sick, so she went home to make peace with him. She was on methadone, and she died.” The new film features footage of a dramatic onstage moment from 2003 when John 5, still reeling from his sister’s passing, threw down his guitar and confronted Manson in a fit of rage and anguish.

The guitarist hadn’t yet processed her death when his sister Denise succumbed to cancer, followed by the cancer deaths of his mother and father. More tragedies followed: His best friend and guitar tech, Ruben Valesco, died, and soon after, his brother-in-law Dennis passed on.

“It made me crazy,” John 5 says. “It started when I was with Manson, and it went on while I was with Zombie. As anyone knows, it’s traumatic to lose a family member, but I had all of these deaths in a short period of time. I didn’t know what was going on. I was in a tailspin.”

He started to experience panic attacks, which manifested themselves in breathing issues and digestive problems. At times, he was so mentally and physically overwhelmed that he couldn’t get out of bed. Resisting self-medication – “My parents smoked and drank, and Lynne did drugs,” John says. “The thought didn’t cross my mind” – he finally turned to therapy.

“I was trying to block things out, and my therapist said I needed to try to occupy my brain in some other way,” he says. “The guitar turned out to be my savior.”

Playing the guitar obsessively came naturally to John 5 (he claims that he’s never gone a day without the instrument in his hands), but in an effort to alleviate his grief, he played even more than usual. He began to record solo albums at a steady clip. Starting with 2004’s Vertigo and on through 2021’s Sinner, he’s released 10 albums that show off his astonishing, multigenre-blending guitar style (everything from hyperspeed chicken pickin’ to molten-metal shred).

Little by little, John has gained perspective on what at one time felt like an unending nightmare. He occasionally checks in with a therapist for tune-ups, but he says he feels healthier and happier than he has in years. He remains tight with his surviving sister, Mary Kay, who turns up at various points in I Am John 5. (In one fun scene, the two drive by the guitarist’s old high school football field. Reminiscing about how he was never accepted by the jocks, he laughs, “I’ll show you!”)

John and his wife, Rita, just celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary, and he’s still pinching himself over his membership in the Crüe. Between touring and recording with the band, he’s carved out some time to record a new solo song for I Am John 5 called Hollywood Story. A luminous instrumental rock ballad, brimming with wondrous melodies and jaw-dropping chops, it encapsulates his compositional and virtuoso skills in one sparkling four-minute package.

More than anything, John hopes the documentary can provide a kind of public service.

“Even though the film is about me, I’m not going, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’” he says. “What I really want to do is shine a light on my experiences and show people who want to get into this business, or even people who might be dealing with mental illness, that you can go after your dreams. You can get through things without drugs and alcohol. There is hope. It’s possible to pick up the pieces and keep going. That’s what I’m trying to do with the film – inspire people to turn negative energy into something positive.”

In the documentary, you say that one of the main reasons why you wanted to be a session guitar player was because you feared flying. How did you get over it?

“I’m still not over it. It started in the ’70s, when I had this horrible flight to Palm Springs. We went through this storm, and it went on forever. It felt like somebody was shaking me back and forth, and it wouldn’t end. I was so sick. Ever since then, I haven’t liked to travel.

“When I joined Mötley Crüe, I found out they took private planes everywhere. So I told them, ‘I’m not good on those things,’ and they were like, ‘Ah, it’ll be fine.’ The first tour we did in South America, we had this massive plane – 600 seats or something. We had our road crew and Def Leppard and their crew. There was a problem with the landing gear, and we had to dump the fuel. It was a nightmare. But you know, you just gotta do what you gotta do. I tell myself, ‘It’s fine, it’s safe.’ I have to remind myself and just do it.”

If k.d. lang hadn’t asked you to go out on tour, do you think you would have stuck to your initial plan and stayed a session guitar player?

“Well, I’d done some touring, but not a real tour where you have a tour manager and a real everything. I was doing sessions and Lita Ford asked if I’d do some live shows. I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ So if an opportunity was there, I would take it. But k.d. lang was my first real professional tour, and boy, did I get thrown into the deep end. She had guests coming to the show – Madonna, Peter Gabriel. It was a trip.”

In the film, you say that there hasn’t been a single day in which you haven’t played guitar. You also mention having OCD.

“Correct.”

Do you see any correlation there?

“Oh, sure! I mean, I play the guitar and I clean the house. That’s what I do – I play and I clean. I’m just being honest. I mop and sweep and clean the toilets. It’s very rewarding. I make the beds and do everything you can imagine.”

Does your OCD. ever get into a dangerous or unhealthy lane? You know what I mean…

“That’s a fine question. What I do is, I’ll play guitar for four hours, and then I’ll stop and I’ll clean the house for a couple hours. But it doesn’t get dangerous. I mean, I’m not on my hands and knees looking at a speck.”

Okay, so you’re not like Howard Hughes.

“I love Howard Hughes. To me, it’s rewarding when I can look at a room and be like, ‘Oh, I feel good about this.’ And I’m active. If I’m home playing guitar, I’m just sitting there, but I’m moving around when I’m cleaning. It’s kind of healthy. I get in my 10,000 steps every day.”

As a kid, you assiduously mimicked players you saw on Hee Haw – people like Buck Owens and Roy Clark. In hindsight, do you feel as if there was any sort of compulsive behavior behind that, or were you just having fun?

“I don’t know, but it’s a good question. I was so young. Thinking about it now, I just had to get my guitar lesson down, even if it meant staying up all night. If I couldn’t figure something out, I would keep at it. I would fake being sick, and I’d play guitar until I got it. That happened quite a bit, so that could be a tendency, I guess.”

How about the outrageous costumes and makeup you came to wear? Was it a way of overcoming shyness or social anxiety? Did it give you confidence?

“I believe so. I was very confident onstage with a guitar in my hand, but not confident at school because I put so much attention into music and guitar. When I was onstage, I had it down, so I was going to be confident. I’m confident talking to you, and you’re confident talking to me because you’ve been doing this for many years. But if we were going to talk about math, we would both be nervous about it.”

We would be, because I can’t do math at all. [John laughs] Let’s stay on the idea of music as emotional therapy. In a way, do you think this started earlier in your life, say, when you were a teenager?

“It’s funny – I’ve heard a lot of artists speak about having tough childhoods. I had an incredible childhood, like something out of Norman Rockwell. I just loved to play guitar. I loved anything that was done very well. If it was sports or someone riding a bike or music or anything, I was obsessed with anyone doing something to the pinnacle. And, of course, I was through the roof when it came to people who were unbelievable on the guitar.”

The footage of you losing it onstage, throwing down your guitar and going after Marilyn Manson is harrowing. The two of you had always play-acted off each other, but this time it was very real.

“I hadn’t slept for days and days. I was in a state of shock. I don’t even know how I was playing a show, but I wasn’t tired. That’s how strange it all was. I was probably up for five days. When that incident happened, it wasn’t out of spite or anger or anything Marilyn did. I just snapped. It was so strange. During the confrontation, he said, ‘Pick your guitar up! Don’t bring your family into this.’”

Did he apologize afterward for saying that?

“Oh, of course. Yeah, he was… It was just terrible, and I feel bad about it. It was captured on film, but what can you do?”

When you sought professional help, your therapist told you to try working through your grief by burying yourself in an activity, and, not surprisingly, you chose the guitar.

“Yeah. I never did an instrumental record before then. I became obsessed with instrumental records – that’s all I listened to – and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do an instrumental record.’ I started out not so crazy with Vertigo, and then it became gradually crazier and more intense. Look at the album titles: Vertigo is something my mom had when she was really sick. Songs for Sanity was the second one – there you go. The Devil Knows My Name: I always thought I had a curse on me because of all the things that were happening. Requiem, God Told Me To – it all ties in.”

Did it ever come up in therapy that obsessive guitar playing was a way of hiding from your feelings? Was there the understanding that you had to confront your feelings in some other way?

“Of course. And, of course, I dealt with it that way, as well. It still affects me today – completely. I’ll feel it creeping in. But I’ll say to myself, ‘I know who you are. I know what you are, and I’m going to overcome this.’”

You occasionally go back for therapy?

“Yes, on and off. But you know, you can get through it by doing positive things, and by doing things that will inspire people and help them. If my music helps people just a little bit, then I feel like I did my job. I do my solo tours. There was a little girl who was really ill with cancer. She was very young and in rough shape. She came to the show, and I brought her up onstage and the place went nuts. Four years later, she came back and she’s doing great. I brought her up onstage and the crowd went crazy. It was great.”

That is what it’s all about.

“Yeah. Like I said, experiences like that make me feel like I did my job.”

Speaking of jobs, let’s talk about Mötley Crüe. You and I talked recently, and you said you were starting to record new music with them.

“That’s right – new music! We went into the studio with [producer] Bob Rock and did some songs. It was really cool because it’s something I haven’t done before. We all got in the room together and played, and that’s how we tracked. It’s so unorthodox nowadays to just get in one room and play all at the same time and record at the same time. It was incredible.”

Are you “John 5-ing” the music in some way? You’re coming in with riffs and song ideas?

“Yeah. And it’s incredible because, I mean, Nikki Sixx – and I’m not just saying this – he’s such an incredible writer and lyricist. It’s natural for him. He’ll call me and say, ‘Dude, check this out,’ and it’s so good. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. How could my friend, somebody I go to the mall with, grab something out of thin air like this?’ And it’ll be really, really great. Being with him and the other guys, and working with these people that really know how to write great songs, is an incredible experience.”

Your new song Hollywood Story is great stuff. I like the shred flash in the riff – it’s a motif throughout the song, but it changes a little each time.

“That’s right. It’s interesting because it is shreddy, and the song is mid-tempo. If the song were up-tempo with the same guitar stuff, you’d be like, ‘Whoa, this is really intense.’ But when it’s a mid-tempo song with that nice groove, and it’s still shredding, it’s like you’re listening to a piece of classical music, where the violin is gorgeous, beautiful, and fluid. The violin is moving, but it’s not distracting because it’s so fluid. You don’t really notice that it’s really flying all over the place. That’s kind of what I tried to accomplish with this piece.”

Sonically, it’s very pleasing to the ear.

“It starts out with bass and a nice melody – it’s very primitive and elementary. It’s just acoustic guitar and a distorted electric guitar tone, but I didn’t make it harsh. I made it very warm and smooth. It’s got some crazy-cool stuff in it. There’s a diminished chord in it. There’s a flat five!”

What kinds of effects did you use on Hollywood Story?

“Just a Boss Super Overdrive and an EVH head.”

I understand you have a new Fender signature model coming out that’s based on the Ghost Telecaster.

“I do, but I’m not talking about it that much. I mean, I’ll talk to you about it. The Ghost has been very successful, and this new one is called the Phantom. It’s black and it’s gorgeous. I’m trying to get it in my hands soon. You know, all these titles mean something: Ghost, the Phantom, Hollywood Story, Sinner, my album Strung Out. They’re not just titles.”

Anything about the spec or design you can tell me about the Phantom?

“It’s going to be all black anodized, like a darker pickguard, but metal. We’re going to have a Floyd Rose on it, but there will be one that comes without a Floyd. Like the Ghost, it will have binding, of course. I just can’t wait to get my hands on it so I can road test it. That’s what I did with the Ghost – I road tested it for so long, because when I put something out, I want it to be the best, and I want people to be happy with it. If my name is associated with it, I want it to be incredible. And with Fender, it always is.”

Obviously, the guitar has a Floyd Rose because you’ve been using one with Mötley Crüe.

“Yeah, so I need it. At first, I was like, ‘What makes this thing work?’ I mean, my first guitar was a Stratocaster. I loved Hendrix, so I was ‘experienced.’ [laughs] I played with a whammy bar, but then I got away from it because I didn’t want it to be a crutch. I don’t want to offend anyone who uses one. I’m just being honest. This is the most honest interview I’ve ever done.”

John 5 owns many guitars. The Michigan-born guitarist is a self-confessed Telecaster addict – he owns over 100 – and through his stints with David Lee Roth, Rob Zombie, and now Mötley Crüe, he’s accumulated a war chest of six strings, but little hold as much significance as his EVH Strat. 

He features in the latest issue of Guitar Player, talking about some of the standouts from his dizzying collection. That includes his “Goldie” Tele, a guitar he played so much Fender said it posed a health risk.  

But away from his Tele obsession lies a guitar that holds immense personal value to him: A Charvel EVH Art Series in Black / White.  

“This is a guitar Eddie Van Halen gave to me when these guitars first came out, and I was just absolutely blown away that he did it,” he says. “My hero gave me one of his guitars, and he was so proud of it as well. That was a time I'll never forget. I cherish this guitar.” 

The series, released by Charvel in 2004 as part of its 25th-anniversary celebrations, saw each guitar hand-painted, played, and signed by the late guitar icon before hitting the market. 

It comprises a basswood, Strat-style body, bolt-on maple neck with a 22-fret maple fretboard, and a Floyd Rose tremolo complete with Eddie's innovative Drop-D Tuna system. 

Its specs are rounded out by a single humbucker, black pickguard, and a white top hat-style Tone knob, meaning there's a notable absence of a Volume control. 

Speaking to Guitar World last year, John 5 listed Van Halen as the most influential player in shaping his sound.  

“My number one is like a lot of other people's number one, and that's Eddie Van Halen,” he said. “He's a player who fits what [the category of] genius. 'Oh, that guy can play' isn’t genius to me. I think genius is something I can't see. 

“Eddie created something that changed the world forever – it's very hard to explain, but it's just so unbelievable. He did that with his songwriting, amazing guitar playing, inventions, and designs, too. I was just obsessed with his playing, like all the other guitar players in the world. Thank god we had Eddie Van Halen, that's for sure.” 

John 5 has previously given Guitar Player readers his top 5 tips for beginner, and veteran, guitarists, which included an anecdote on how he ended up playing for Van Halen frontman Roth. 

“When I was just getting going, I called David Lee Roth’s people out of the blue,” he recalled.

“I wanted to further my career, so I got a number and called because I thought, ‘Maybe they’re looking for some music.’ It worked out, and that turned into a 30-year friendship.”

In late 2020, two Art Series guitars played onstage by Van Halen sold for over $370,000 at auction, but when it comes to personal value, John 5's EVH Strat is surely priceless. 

To pick up the July issue of Guitar Player – which features John 5 discussing his most prized guitars, and the events that have shaped his life and music – head on over to Magazines Direct. 

It’s not uncommon for a guitarist to have a favorite instrument, the one they always intrinsically grab no matter the circumstances. What is uncommon, though, is to play a guitar so much that it poses a serious health risk. 

That’s the unlikely scenario John 5 found himself in when Fender inspected his beloved Goldie Telecaster; an instrument that has essentially succumbed to a long list of time-worn injuries.  

Speaking in the latest issue of Guitar Player, the Rob Zombie turned Mötley Crüe riffsmith revealed the extent of the damage wear and tear has caused to his beloved electric guitar over the years. When Fender saw what his relentless playing had done to his pickguard in particular, the luthiers expressed real concern.  

“Goldie has probably been on more songs and to more shows than any other guitar I own,” he says. “This was my number one guitar, and I played it all day and all night. 

“It's been refretted already once. The metal pickguard has been replaced twice because I played it so much that I dug a groove in there, which indented the metal. Fender saw that and said, ‘This isn't good for you. This could get in your skin.’ I mean, I just played it so much.” 

Goldie's place at the pinnacle of John 5's collection is no mean feat. The Telecaster addict owns over 100 of these iconic electric guitars, including a model for each year of the instrument's illustrious history between 1950-83. 

“I just love history, and I love Telecasters, so I have the best of both worlds,” he previously told Guitar Player. “I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, but they’re great investments. Some folks know about stocks. I know about Telecasters.”

His latest sit down with the magazine sees him detailing a number of his top picks, including a 1966, spaghetti logo sporting Esquire – the guitarist's first vintage purchase – and Ghost Number One, which was brought in to give Goldie a well-deserved break. 

In development since 2019, it boasts DiMarzio D Activator pickups and a kill switch. It got its live debut in summer 2022 and it's been used on all his new songs, including his work with Mötley Crüe. “There's a magic behind that guitar,” he says. 

But it isn't just collecting guitars that John 5 obsesses over. As per another Guitar Player chat, adding to his mastery of the instrument is an exhaustive, ever-evolving process. 

“If I hear a bluegrass player killin’ it, I’m like, ‘I have to play that!’” he says. “And if I hear a metal player rippin’ it, my brain just fries. So I have to learn what they’re doing and execute it perfectly. I obsess over it, and I love it dearly.”

Despite his insatiable appetite, he's also spoken of his need to play cleanly, regardless of style.

“You can still play with fire and be accurate,” he believes. “I made it my mission to get rid of the slop. I’ve always been an OCD clean freak, and that extends into all areas of my life. I want to keep my guitars clean, and I want my playing to be clean, too. I’ll play something a million times until I know it’s perfect. But I don’t want it to sound sterile. A guitar line should flow like water.” 

To pick up the July issue of Guitar Player – which features an in-depth discussion with John 5 about his extensive Strat and Tele collection – head on over to Magazines Direct. 

Any guitarist who can combine country-style chicken pickin’ and hypersonic metal shred is no one-trick pony. Over the course of his career, John 5 has made diversity his calling card, and his six-string services have been called upon by a wide range of artists, including k.d. lang, Marilyn Manson, Wilson Phillips, Lynyrd Skynyrd, David Lee Roth, Rick Springfield, and Salt-N-Pepa, among others. 

Until recently, he held down the spot as Rob Zombie’s ace guitar wizard (during which time he also issued a series of popular solo albums), but in late 2022 John 5 joined Mötley Crüe after founding member Mick Mars announced his decision to quit touring.

“From the time I picked up the guitar, I wanted to learn as many different styles as I could,” John 5 says. “I had my heart set on being a being a session guitarist, so I wanted to be able to play anything that anyone asked. I’ve always been intrigued by people who could do something really well, whether it was in sports or painting or filmmaking or music. There was a certain level of proficiency I set for myself, and I made it a point to study as much as possible.”

But while mastering multiple styles of music has worked for him, John 5 recognizes that such an approach might not be right for everyone. “You’ve got to do what you love,” he says. “Maybe you’re so into the blues that it’s all you want to play, and you don’t care about anything else. That’s great – follow your passion. Be the best blues guitarist you can be. You know what’s in your heart, so go for it.”

Whether you’re looking to be an “anything goes” guitarist or a specialist in one area, check out these choice pieces of wisdom from the Tele-totin’ virtuoso.

1. Practice, but make it fun

“It’s so important to make practice an enjoyable pursuit, especially when you’re just starting out. Inspiration is key to having fun when learning an instrument. If you’re a guitar teacher, instead of giving students some scales or ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ right off the bat, try to find out what they like. Maybe there’s a student who’s wearing an AC/DC shirt. Perfect! Teach them Highway to Hell and watch their eyes light up. They’ll be so excited that they'll never want to put the instrument down again.

“I’m kind of different from a lot of players, because I was just so obsessed with the guitar when I was starting out – and still am. I wanted to learn my lessons completely. Whatever was put in front of me, I wanted to have it down 100 percent. I sort of treated going to each lesson like I was going to play a concert. That’s how I felt about it, and it was so much fun for me.

“Whatever helps you stay engaged and able to enjoy practicing, go for it. Nowadays there’s so much content available – on Instagram and YouTube – so you can just scroll around and find stuff to inspire you.”

2. Play the guitar that feels comfortable to you 

“As soon as you can, find a guitar that suits your hands and feels right next to your body. You might absolutely love the look of a Les Paul, but find you’re more comfortable playing a Stratocaster. The guitar that feels right to you will be the one you connect with.

“This isn’t very complicated. To me, it’s no different than buying shoes. When you try on shoes, you know pretty quickly which pair feels right. You walk around the store and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m going to wear these until they have holes in them!’ Picking the correct guitar is exactly the same.

“I play a Telecaster. I first saw people playing Teles on Hee Haw – everybody was playing Teles. What’s funny is, one Christmas I got a Stratocaster. I loved it, because Strats are great guitars, but I could tell right away there were things about it that didn’t feel right. It just wasn’t the guitar for me. 

“As soon as I started playing a Telecaster, I formed an instant connection with it. Everything about that model felt like it was perfect for me. It’s like when you find the right person to marry. You just know.”

3. Do something every day to further your dream

“Time goes by so quickly. In the blink of an eye, days, weeks, and months can disappear behind you. I know it sounds trite, but try to make every day count. If you want to get your music career going, you have to put in the work. Of course, you have to practice, but there’s a lot more to it than that. 

“At the same time, don’t try to overwhelm yourself. You don’t have to conquer the world in a day, but if you can do one thing out of the ordinary each day to further your dream, things will start happening, probably faster than you might think.

“Call other musicians and set up a jam. Call a venue and see if you can get a booking. Maybe contact a producer or a manager. Get yourself out there somehow. If you do that one thing each day, at the end of the week you might be further along than when you started. A week will turn into two weeks, and pretty soon you’ll have accomplished a lot.

“When I was just getting going, I called David Lee Roth’s people out of the blue.
I wanted to further my career, so I got a number and called because I thought, Maybe they’re looking for some music. It worked out, and that turned into a 30-year friendship.

“In some ways, things are a little easier now because you can put videos on the internet and get yourself seen and heard. But you still need to hustle. Again, take things step by step. Each day do something that you didn’t do yesterday. You might not see the results immediately, but doing nothing will ensure that nothing happens.”

4. Stay healthy

“This is something everybody should be mindful of, but it’s especially important if you’re a musician on the road, traveling from state to state, playing different countries and dealing with time changes, different foods, different water – different everything. Your body has to be in incredible shape, because getting sick on the road is no fun at all.

“There are some easy things you can do: Wash your hands, get sleep and watch what you eat. I learned this the hard way. One time, my stomach wasn’t feeling so great, and Rob Zombie told me, ‘You should try not eating meat.’ So I stopped eating chicken. Pretty soon, I thought, ‘Whoa, this is working,’ so next I took away turkey. Then I took away red meat, and honest to God, once I did away with all of that, I started feeling great. 

“Good health improves everything in your life. It’s good for your mind, your brain, your senses, your reflexes – you name it. And all of that is good for playing the guitar.”

5. Learn how to read a room 

“Imagine you’re at the stage where you’re going into an audition or a recording session. Ask yourself, ‘Why am I here?’ The answer is, you’re there to make an artist sound good, feel comfortable, and not worry about anything. That means you’re not there to play crazy solos over the songs. You’re not there to upstage anybody and be all ‘Look at me!’

“You need to learn how to read a room. Do your research on the artist you’re playing for. Get to know the people you’re going to be involved with. Take note of their mannerisms and personalities, and what kind of sense of humor they have. Are they in a good mood or a bad mood? Be observant.

“A certain amount of humility and maturity is necessary when you’re playing with other people, especially if it’s a recording session. Remember, you’re there to do a job. Don’t play too loud. Don’t step on lyrics with solos or licks that get in the way. Be aware of people when they’re talking. Don’t interrupt. Listen. You don’t need to always speak up. If somebody wants your opinion, they’ll ask you what you think.

“You’re probably wondering, ‘Yeah, but when will it come time for me to shine and blow people away?’ The answer is simple: They’ll tell you. Trust me on that.” 

• John 5 is set to hit the road with Mötley Crüe this summer. For a full list of the band's dates, visit their website
• Our pick of the best beginner electric guitars

From his solo work to his stints with Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie and Mötley Crüe, John 5 has been hailed as a modern-day guitar hero. Through the years, he’s also had the opportunity to work with the original members of Kiss. 

John appears on Paul Stanley’s Live to Win album, performing on songs that include “Where Angels Dare,” which he co-wrote with Stanley and Desmond Child. He also shows up on Ace Frehley’s Origins Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 releases, and he enlisted Peter Criss to play drums on “Georgia on My Mind,” from John 5 and the Creatures’ 2021 album, Sinner. It all results from a fascination with the group that began in his youth. 

“It was spring of 1977 and I was walking through Sears when I saw the Love Gun display,” John recalls of an early encounter with the group’s music. “I loved monsters, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to have this record!’ I went home and I put it on, and it changed my life forever. It was such an epiphany. It’s the same thing that happened for people watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Kiss made millions of people want to pick up an instrument and play guitar, play drums, sing and write songs, and that’s why we have certain guitar players and musicians today. Kiss definitely did that for me.”

One of this generation’s most groundbreaking guitar players, we asked him to lend his expert opinion on six of his favorite Paul Stanley solos.

“Hold Me, Touch Me”

Paul Stanley — Paul Stanley (1978)

“The ‘Hold Me, Touch Me’ solo is one of my favorites because of the emotion and the slow hand vibrato, and that’s hard to do. Sometimes playing fast is easier to do than playing something with beautiful emotion and a slow hand vibrato that’ll just tear your heart out. It might be my favorite part of the song.” 

“Sure Know Something”

Kiss — Dynasty (1979)

“Listening to these solos, you can really tell when it’s Ace and when it’s Paul, and
I think that’s so cool. With ‘Sure Know Something,’ you can tell that this is planned out and this solo was written around these certain chord structures. It’s not just someone improvising, and that’s what I really like about it.” 

“Easy As It Seems”

Kiss — Unmasked (1980)

“This is one of my favorite songs from Unmasked. For this song, Paul took the approach of a rock and roll solo over this rock-pop disco beat, and I really think it’s an amazing juxtaposition.”

“You’re All That I Want”

Kiss — Unmasked (1980)

“We’re so used to hearing Ace that when these solos come in  you think, This must be a session player, because it sounds so different. This solo is mature and sounds like Steve Lukather or something from a Steely Dan record. We know Paul loves Zeppelin and bands with cool guitar players, but it doesn’t sound like that.”

“A World Without Heroes”

Kiss — Music From “The Elder” (1981)

“It’s a beautiful melodic solo, with the perfect choice of notes. It’s not like, ‘Let’s see what I can improvise over this.’ This solo is sophisticated, and the note choices couldn’t be more perfect.”

"Just a Boy”

Kiss — Music From "The Elder” (1981)

“Listening to these solos, we can start to see Paul’s formula. And it works perfectly, because he’s playing to the song. You can tell he’s a songwriter and a guitar player that knows what to do and what not to do for the song. I would have played something totally different that probably wouldn’t have fit as well. But Paul shows you don’t have to be a shredder to be an incredible guitar player. This is sophisticated songwriting and playing.”

Following his previous Squier, Fender and Fender Custom Shop signature models, Mötley Crüe guitarist John 5 has, again, been honored with the new John 5 Ghost Telecaster.

It’s been years in the making but this limited edition model has finally materialized. Priced $2,999.99, the new Ghost Tele features an alder body with a bound top and a single-piece maple neck – both sporting a cool Arctic White gloss urethane finish.

Loaded with a pair of DiMarzio D Activator humbuckers, Fender says the new John 5 model delivers “harmonically rich modern crunch.” Meanwhile, the DiMarzio website says these ‘buckers were deigned to “eliminate the sterile edginess commonly associated with active pickups.”

Custom-configured controls include a three-way pickup selector switch, a master volume knob and an arcade-style kill-switch for creating stuttering effects and rhythmic patterns.

Kitted out with a set of Deluxe locking tuners and a string-through-body bridge housing six individual block steel saddles, this HH Tele offers superior stability and precise intonation.

Matching red-colored appointments include a synthetic bone nut, volume knob, switch tip, pickups, body binding, tuner washers and headstock decals. Along with a mirrored pickguard, this gives the new Fender John 5 Ghost Telecaster a look that is as memorable as it is individual.

Telecaster aficionado John 5 draws inspiration from a wide variety of genres including country, bluegrass, metal, rock and jazz, and so when it came to designing the Ghost model his aim was to create something versatile enough “to accommodate any playing style,” according to Fender.

“Over the span of his career, John 5 has shown that his guitar skills know no bounds in terms of genre or sound,” said Justin Norvell, EVP of Product at FMIC. “The Ghost Telecaster is a celebration of his iconic style, with a kill-switch that allows rapid-fire stutter effects and a chrome pickguard that completes the stunning look of this guitar.

“Beyond that, the signature capsule collection allows John 5 to give fans something that celebrates the whole visual experience of his artistry, not just his inventive guitar playing.”

This release coincides with the new John 5 leather strap, John 5 351 celluloid picks, and John 5 instrument cable.

Visit Fender for more information.

Some people collect stamps. John 5 collects Fender Telecasters. Lots of them. Over the years, he’s amassed an assemblage that includes more than 100 of these iconic electric guitars, with a model representing each year, starting at the introduction of the instrument (the 1950 Broadcaster) and stretching to 1983.

“I just love history, and I love Telecasters, so I have the best of both worlds,” he says. “I know a lot of people don’t want to hear this, but they’re great investments. Some folks know about stocks. I know about Telecasters.”

He admits that he’s regularly contacted by fans, musicians and vintage collectors looking to sell him Telecasters, but he cautions that he’s a tough customer. “Anybody can buy a bunch of guitars. It’s not that difficult,” he says. “The key is looking for the right guitar. How does it look? How does it feel and sound? Is it all original? All of those considerations go into the thrill of the hunt, and I don’t settle for second best.”

1950 Fender Broadcaster

“I did this little game in which you focus on something to make it come true,” John says. “That’s what happened with this guitar. You can get a Frankenstein Broadcaster if you look around, but I wanted the real deal – the genuine article. So I thought really hard about it, and that’s when I got a call from Norman at Norman’s Rare Guitars. He said, ‘I’ve got one for you.’

“This thing is so beautiful. It’s the Holy Grail. I’m a history buff, and I love that this is the very first production model of the solid-body guitar. This is like Lincoln’s hat. It’s so magical – its feel, its sound. And it’s light as a feather. I’ve never picked up a guitar so light. It’s completely original – the only thing that’s been changed is the strings. I never take it on the road with me, but I love to play it.

1952 Fender Esquire

“I love Esquires because of Keith Richards. The minute I saw him play one, I knew I had to have one, too. Plus, a lot of cowboy players in the ’50s played them. They were less expensive than Telecasters, though I’m not sure why. They’re incredible guitars – beautiful sound, great feel. This one came into my life in early 2000. I had been looking around for an Esquire, and boom, there it was. That’s the thing about the thrill of the hunt: You have to be willing to put the time in, but once you score, it’s so satisfying.

“This guitar is a little yellowed, so that means it was out of its coffin for a while. But that’s the only thing that’s changed about it. It’s original, right down to the case. I’ll play it around the house, and sometimes I’ll use it on a track when I record at home. It’s great for bluegrass or western swing. I don’t like to travel with it. God forbid I get into a car accident. I treat these guitars like they’re Fabergé eggs.”

1953 Fender Telecaster

“For a while there, it got to the point where I didn’t want to buy any guitars that weren’t from the West Coast, because the weather in other parts of the country can kill them. I don’t think this guitar ever saw daylight. Whoever owned it must have left it in its case for decades. It looks like it just came off the assembly line. It’s very bright in color; there’s no hint of a change in its appearance at all. With a lot of these Teles, their color starts to mellow and turns into something that looks like butterscotch. Nothing of the sort with this one.

“This is another dream guitar that I was lucky to acquire. Of all the blackguards, it’s probably the nicest. I got it from Norm. There was a period when he would get an awesome Tele in, and he knew who to call. I was probably his first call with the Teles. He knew how much I loved them and that I treated them like the treasures they are.”

While a sizable contingent of metal fans know John 5 from his long-time gig as Rob Zombie’s ghoulishly flamboyant shred master, guitar enthusiasts have a broader picture of him – that of a deeply eclectic and prodigiously proficient player schooled in country, bluegrass, western swing, jazz and flamenco. Whether he’s peeling off hyperspeed chicken-pickin’ lines, replicating cascading banjo rolls, or dispatching immaculate, sweep-picked solos, there seems to be no end to his knowledge or skill set.

“I appreciate anything that’s done well,” John states. “You could be throwing knives or juggling bowling pins, and I’ll be amazed.

“But with music, it goes a lot further. If I hear a bluegrass player killin’ it, I’m like, ‘I have to play that!’ And if I hear a metal player rippin’ it, my brain just fries. So I have to learn what they’re doing and execute it perfectly. I obsess over it, and I love it dearly.”

Being a musical omnivore comes naturally to John 5. Born John Lowery, he started playing the guitar as a kid from watching country pickers Roy Clark and Buck Owens on TV’s Hee Haw variety show. He eventually took a shine to rock after hearing bands like Kiss and Van Halen.

John admits that some of his fans might have more parochial tastes, but he takes delight in spinning their heads around. “They might come to my instrumental shows because they like what I do with Zombie,” he says. “But they’ll see me play some bluegrass licks, and they just go crazy. That makes me feel so good, because they’re seeing me for who I really am. I’m the guy who sits on my couch, watches TV and plays whatever I want.”

You started playing country music as a kid. How proficient were you before you discovered rock and metal?

Very. I was totally into it. I was way into Roy Clark and Buck Owens. And, of course, I loved Chet Atkins and other guys. That’s what was played in my house. My dad played it, and we loved it. That’s what I practiced as a kid. I would skip school, stay up late. It was practice, practice, practice. And I would keep at it until I had something down. Only after I had a piece perfect would I feel good about going to school.

Was it all by ear?

No. I would get tab and read music. I was really obsessive. I played so much as a kid that my left hand is bigger than my right. And I mean a lot bigger. It’s so strange. I think it was from stretching to get those chords and scales.

We know you for playing Telecasters, but what kinds of guitars were you playing as a teenager?

My first guitar was a black Magnum. That’s what I played to get going, but my first real guitar was a ’75 Strat. It was a good guitar, and I learned a lot on it. I actually met Stevie Ray Vaughan and had him sign it, but I sold the guitar to buy a Kramer. That was a bad decision, but you know, I was just a kid. I really wanted a Tele, though. I was seeing Buck Owens and all these guys playing beautiful Teles. I finally got one when I was about 15. I was so thrilled!

At what age did you start to figure out how to pair an electric guitar with the right amp?

Not till much later. I wasn’t really into amps. I just played. I knew Marshalls and Fenders were great, but I didn’t know why. If I could plug in and get some volume, that was good enough. I was just into practicing and learning.

The cleanliness and precision of your playing is redolent of Danny Gatton.

Oh, thank you! I love him.

There’s none of the reckless abandon – some would call it “sloppiness” – that even some of the finest rock players embrace.

Yeah, I’m not into that. You can still play with fire and be accurate. I made it my mission to get rid of the slop. I’ve always been an OCD clean freak, and that extends into all areas of my life. I want to keep my guitars clean, and I want my playing to be clean, too. If I play a line, I wanted it to sound like it’s all on one string. I want it that clean. I’ll play something a million times until I know it’s perfect. But I don’t want it to sound sterile. A guitar line should flow like water. Think of a classical violinist. That’s what I’m talking about.

Do you make allowances for how you play at different volumes?

You have to. I’ll practice something low when my wife and I are watching TV, but I notice that when I play the same solo for Zombie in a rehearsal room and I’ve got everything cranked, things sound different. Open-string runs don’t translate when they’re all distorted. And any time you play an arena, you know things are going to change because the acoustics are so echoey. A lot of times I have to change my solos around because the sound is going to bounce all over the place. I’m obsessed with things sounding perfect.

It’s a given that you play Telecasters. But what about amps?

I know Marshall doesn’t want to hear this, but I’ll play through anything and it will just sound like me. We were doing a show at a huge amphitheater, and all of my amps went down on the ride over. People were freaking out, saying, “We go on in two hours!” I just said, “Give me anybody’s amp. It doesn’t matter. I’ll play through anything.” I was the only calm one.

How about effects?

My pedalboard is so simple, even a child could use it. Everything is Boss: a Super Chorus, Noise Suppressor, the DD-3 Delay... That’s about it. Oh, and I used a Dunlop wah pedal and an MXR Talk Box. I guess they count as effects, right?

You seem to have one of those perfect front-man/guitarist relationships with Rob Zombie. What’s your secret to achieving that?

I don’t know if it is a secret. I have such respect for Rob, and he has the same respect for me. I love his music and what he does. I’ve always been a fan of his. Writing songs with him and performing with him onstage has been such a joy. Whatever I can do to help make him sound as great as possible is my pleasure. I’ve been doing it for 15 years now, and each year has been so rewarding. But I don’t think it would work if we didn’t have that mutual respect for each other. He’s a great guy.

John 5’s new album – Sinner – will be out on October 29 (just in time for Halloween.) As well as the digital version, you can purchase the physical album – signed – and in a variety of bundles from the official John 5 store.

Watch the video for the first track from the album – “Que Pasa” feat. Dave Mustaine – below...

A couple of years ago, Hard Rock teamed up with former Marilyn Manson and current Rob Zombie axeman John 5 for a fascinating, deep dive into guitar history.

With the help of Hard Rock historian Jeff Nolan, John 5 got to play Jimi Hendrix’s SG Custom, Paul Stanley's Ibanez Iceman, Brian Jones’s iconic Vox Mk. III “Teardrop," Paul Kossoff’s ’57 Les Paul Jr., the ’58 Les Paul from the cover of the Rolling Stones’ live classic Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!, Jason Becker's Peavey "Numbers" guitar and Duane Allman’s Telecaster guitars.

Luckily for us, the Hard Rock crew was on hand to film the whole thing. You can watch the clearly awestruck John 5 play them all above.

For the record, John 5 is also using a Valvetrain 416 head and 1x12 cabinet, an Analogman Beano Boost and an Origin Effects Cali76 compressor in the video.