John 5 @ Guitar Center SF, 6/9/08

Today I suffered from a metal conundrum.

6pm: John 5 Guitar Center Session

7:30pm: Rescheduled Dethklok show from last Thursday’s brutal Fillmore fire.

I had to do both.

I highly recommend these Guitar Center sessions, especially if you are a musician and want to learn how to use your new joyo guitar pedals to enjoy superior metal tones. Super informative, intimate setting- you’ll learn a lot if you’re an axe man, but it doesn’t get too technical for us non-musician music lovers.

The sessions work like this: song, couple of questions, song, questions, etc. I’ve been infatuated with John 5 for many years, but still found out a lot of new stuff that I guess I hadn’t looked hard enough for.

-> “How do you do your makeup”. Very SF question, people. He says “I use MAC”, and that the half face thing came about when he didn’t have time to finish it before going onstage, and it stuck from there.

-> There’s a questions about working with Rob Halford in Two, which was released by Nothing Records. Trent Reznor is mentioned. I know I’m in the right place.

-> Someone asks him if he likes “the funk”, and he says yes, matter of fact, he played with Salt N Pepa. Apparently there is footage of him “going crazy on stage” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he’s the only “white kid” on stage. Youtube does not have this- anyone got the goods?

-> He brings the bluegrass, talking about Chet Atkins and jamming the blues with Les Paul. When metal and country collide, it warms my little Texas heart.

-> Someone asks him about how to ask for money as a session guitarist, which I find somewhat tacky. He keeps asking more questions…please stop. John did talk about how hip hop was the hardest to make money with because people fight over who will get paid for every ‘hood’ and ‘bitch’ that they say in a record.

-> Someone asks about his effects, to which he promptly goes into a spiel on how he didn’t like it when someone said that he was “all about effects”, and this went into how he plays with a small amp and minimal effects, and sometimes a cheap guitar.

-> Yes- someone asks about Manson. “You know when you’re in a relationship with someone and after a while you just can’t stand the way they drink out of a straw?”. He talked about how they both wanted to work with other people, had “nothing but nice things to say about him”, how Manson “couldn’t stand when he would constantly play guitar and talk”…but essentially there was a glimmer of hope that one day, we might see them together again. A girl can dream.

Highlights of the night were the 2 final songs, ‘Sin’ and ‘The Werewolf of Westeria’, but also the first 5 brilliant seconds of “Thunderkiss ’65’ and ‘The Fight Song’.

Unfortunately, I don’t get to hang around to get my pic taken with one of my guitar gods. Hopefully, I’ll get a second chance some day. Dethklok awaits.

my short vid:

classic John 5 vids: