John 5 was the ideal candidate to assume Mick Mars’ role in Mötley Crüe. He is one of the few rock guitar players whom you can hand an electric guitar and all bets are off – he can play anything.
By the time he joined Mötley Crüe, John 5 had plenty of experience, playing with Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and more. He was no novice. But in a recent video interview with Guitar World, he admits that his first how with the LA rock legends caught him off-guard.
It was an East Coast date, Crüe were playing Atlantic City – Hard Rock Live at the Etess Arena. February 10, 2023. He’ll never forget it. He had some special guests in the audience.
“The first show, this is kind of weird,” he says. “I never talked about this. It was in Atlantic City. My first and favorite band is Kiss, and I’ve, you know, been very close with those guys for probably 30-something years. And Ace [Frehley] and Peter [Criss] came to the first Mötley show.”
Frehley and Criss were both New Jersey residents, but nonetheless, they had to travel considerable distances to get there.
“I invited them, and they drove – they drove, you know, two hours each!” says John 5. “And I remember they were right over there watching the first show, and I was playing the show, and it’s exciting, ‘cos everybody was watching.”
Maybe he was so concentrated on playing everything to a Tee that he hadn’t given a thought to what all this meant to him, but when the house lights went up and he got backstage the emotion of it all overwhelmed him.
“I got off the stage and everyone was like, ‘That was awesome,’ and I burst out into tears for some reason,” he says. “Like, uncontrollably. I was like, ‘What’s going on!?’ It was just so much emotion. It was so weird. I had my heroes there, and I’m playing with Mötley Crüe, and all my friends there. It was very odd. It was so… weird.”
But that hasn’t been the highlight of his Mötley Crüe career so far. There have been enormodome shows, hard rock bacchanals in the wide-open spaces of the world’s biggest sports stadiums, all of which was pretty exciting stuff. For a die-hard Crüe fan who was now in the band, going back to where the band cut their teeth in West Hollywood clubs has been John 5’s pinch-me highlight so far.
“The club shows,” he says. “We did the Whiskey [a Go Go], the Roxy, and the Troubadour. Playing the Whisky, ‘cos that’s where they started. We pulled up in the Dr. Feelgood ambulance, like they do in the video. I think that was probably one of the highlights.”
You can check out our interview with John 5 above – and don’t forget to subscribe to the Guitar World YouTube channel.
