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."
