An Interview With John 5 About His Career
Stephanie: He has worked his guitar magic for legends such as Marilyn
Manson, Rob Zombie and David Lee Rock. Hi! My name is
Stephanie and welcome to Watchmojo.com and today we’re
speaking to John 5. Could you please tell me about how you first
ventured into music?
John 5: I think music kind of chose me really because at such a young age
like seven, I was so intrigued with the guitar for some odd reason. I
never really put it down. I played so much that when I was
growing this part of my hand grew. It grew larger than the other
part of my hands so that hand is bigger than this hand because I
would stretch my hand so much. It’s very strange.
Stephanie: What kind of artists were you listening to at that age?
John 5: I watched a lot of TV like any seven-year-old kid would. I love
The Monkeys and I love the TC show Hee Haw and then I got in
The Kiss and then Van Halen and stuff like that.
Stephanie: Who would you say are some of your influences these days?
John 5: Being influenced and being inspired is so important to me. I look
everywhere for inspiration. I'm listening to like gypsy-styled music
and Spanish-style. It’s not very exciting and of course, I know but I
love knowledge and I love learning as much as possible. It keeps
me very occupied. It keeps my brain occupied because I don’t
really do anything else.
Stephanie: You’ve played with so many different artists for example Marilyn
Manson, Rob Halford but now Rob Zombie, could you give us
some of the highlights of your career?
John 5: Maybe my first real professional thing I was playing with KD
Lang and our first gig, we were doing something called the VH1
Fashion Music Awards and I’ll never forget this, the curtain
opened and there was Madonna, Prince, Peter Gabriel all in the
front row and they were all watching and I was like, “Wow, this is
really exciting.” Every month, every year there is something big
that happened and I don’t take anything for granted. I appreciate
everything that’s happened because when I was a kid I just wanted
to be a session musician and I never really honestly dreamt that
anything like this would happen.
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