John 5 has two main obsessions in life: Telecasters and monsters.
Featuring one of the former (“My main gold Tele,” says 5) and several of the latter (including Dracula, Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon), John 5 and the Creatures’ latest video, “Making Monsters,” premieres today.
“This video took six months or more to make, because there’s so much going on in it,” says 5, who also plays lead guitar for Rob Zombie.
“In fact, there was so much to do, it required two directors. Matt Zane directed all the live-action stuff, and [Coffin Cases founder] Jonny Coffin directed the stop-motion sequences, in which models of monsters—as well as a model of me playing guitar—come to life.”
The main inspiration for the video, says 5, is Merion C. Cooper, who directed the original King Kong film. “That movie came out in 1933, and it pioneered some great stop-motion approaches, so I wanted to pay homage to Cooper for that,” 5 says.
“But the other big reason this is dedicated to Cooper is that he was such an inspiring guy in so many other ways,” 5 adds. “He was a war hero from World War I. He’d walk up to tigers in the wild and film them, with no fear. In King Kong’s famous finale, Cooper was actually in one of planes filmed buzzing around the Empire State Building. He was a movie director. He was an adventurer who could do just about anything.
“In other words,” 5 says, “Merion Cooper was the real Indiana Jones.”
John 5 and the Creatures’ American tour starts March 4, hitting the East Coast and Midwest, as well as a few southern states. Then, starting April 4, Mr. 5 hits the road with Rob Zombie.
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