EARLIER THIS YEAR , JOHN 5 WOKE UP from a dead sleep and had no idea where he was. He looked around, disoriented, blinking his bleary eyes. “Oh, my God. I’m on an airplane,” he said to himself. Still not fully awake, he scanned his surroundings some more — the massive aircraft was a chartered affair, plush and roomy. All of the other passengers were stretched out, sound asleep. Then he started to scrutinize their faces. “Who are these people?” he thought. After a few seconds, he recognized guitarist Vivian Campbell, and soon he realized that all of the members of Def Leppard were on board. Not only that, but so were Vince Neil, Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx of Mötley Crüe.
“I started freaking out,” John 5 says. “I got up and went to the back of the plane to wake myself up.” What at first seemed like an out-of-body experience soon became very real. The guitarist was winging his way from the U.S. to South America in spare-no-expense rock-star style as both bands, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard, were about to begin their 2023 co-headline world tour.
But the guitarist was no mere guest on the flight; a couple of nights earlier, he had made his official debut as Mick Mars’ replacement with a pair of warm-up shows in Atlantic City. Dispensing with the elaborate costumes and horror-goth makeup he famously donned during his years as Rob Zombie’s lead axeman, John 5 adopted a stripped-down, modern Mötley look; wearing a black leather jacket and with his medium-length blond hair neatly slicked back, he resembled a badass biker as he expertly peeled off familiar riffs and solos during the Crüe’s 15-song, hit-filled show. Grinning a wide, exuberant grin, he seemed to be having a high, heady time — as if he were living out one of his wildest teenage dreams.
Which, in a very real sense, he was.
“These things are so strange to me,” he says. “I’ll be on stage with them, and I’ll be like, ‘I still can’t believe this.’ I’ll start laughing when
