Examiner interviews John 5: ‘Rob Zombie is like a brother’

Guitarist John 5 is slowly but surely becoming a premier name in the heavy metal world. Between tenures in Marilyn Manson and with David Lee Roth, writing songs for A-listers like Lynyrd Skynyrd, and his 5th solo album coming out next month, one can almost forget that he’s also been Rob Zombie’s guitarist for half a decade as well.

With Rob Zombie and Megadeth coming to the PNC Arts Center on May 11th, John 5 took some time to talk to me about his name, his projects, and… his love of NWA?

Examiner: Hi John, thanks for talking to me today. How’ve you been?

John: Good! Very busy, but good.

Examiner : Well yeah, you’re a busy guy. You’re putting out another solo record, playing with Rob Zombie, scoring movies, and I just read that you’ll be doing a track with Steven Adler too. Do you ever feel overwhelmed?

John: Oh yeah. I think I’m overwhelmed now. It’s just a lot, you know? The tour coming up and everything else, it’s a lot.

Examiner: How did the Steven Adler track come about?

John: Oh he just called me up. Everybody calls me to do stuff lately, and I respect Steven and I’ve known him for a long time, I’ve known Slash and all those guys for a long time, and of course. They’ve gave me so much great music over the years, it’s the least I can do.

Examiner: Besides music, what do you do for fun?

John: It’s mostly music, but sometimes I’ll go to a movie just to shut off. But that’s about it. Fun would be, I go on a summer tour like the one coming up with Megadeth, that’s going to be fun. It’s like a vacation. You get to run around with your friends and play loud music and play concerts and hang out and that’s fun to me. Especially in the summertime man, there is nothing like that.

Examiner: What I really enjoyed about your last record was that it wasn’t just instrumental metal, it hit all styles of music. Do you consider yourself a metal player first and foremost?

John: I consider myself a musician. I like to play everything. I really truly love all styles of music. A lot of people say that, but the first station they turn to when they get in the car is a rock station. I don’t always do that. I really enjoy everything. But of course, I’m a rock shred guitar player first.

Examiner: The classical influences in your solo work are obvious. Would you say you’re a fan of country and hip hop as well?

John: Oh I do tons of country on all of my albums. Tons of country and bluegrass. I would say rock, and then country second. But I used to not like hip hop at all. I did not like hip hop. And I’ve never talked about this, okay? Because there’s not a lot of guitars, it’s just not my cup of tea. But just lately, I put on NWA and I was like listening to it and I was like “Oh my god, this is unbelievable.” And I had a total epiphany. And this was only like a week ago, maybe not even a week ago. So I really had an epiphany for NWA, it’s really wild.