John 5 & the Creatures at the Highline Ballroom

John 5

Born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, John Lowery started playing guitar at age seven after watching Buck Owens and Roy Clark's television show Hee Haw with his dad. Lowery was a student when his first band, Dirty Tricks, won a battle of the bands contest, and started experimenting with corpse makeup as a teenager while in another band, Vampirella. At age 17, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he began a career as a session guitarist and played in the short-lived bands Alligator Soup, Sun King, Bone Angels, Red Square Black and 2wo. He also played guitar for Lita Ford, k.d. lang and others. In 1997, Lowery approached David Lee Roth and was hired to play is Roth's DLR Band. In 1998, Lowery joined Marilyn Manson, who renamed him John 5, the moniker he still uses; 5 played in Manson's band until 2004. In 2005, Lowery formed the radio-rock band Loser, but soon also began playing in Rob Zombie's band, which led to the demise of Loser. After eight solo studio albums, John 5 released a live album, It's Alive, on January 25, 2018.

John 5 & the Creatures (bassist Ian Ross and drummer Logan Miles Nix) brought an extravagant stage show considering the size of the rather intimate Highline Ballroom. The stage featured three video screens showing clips of monster, horror and gore films, several larger than life inflated monsters, and lots of other trimmings. 5 himself came on stage wearing corpse-like face make-up and tattered corpse-like clothing. Once he started playing guitar, however, the audience saw that the show was not all about gimmicks. 5 ripped on a series of instrumentals backed only by a rhythm section, and the captivating wizardry he exhibited on his many guitars was jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring. Most of his set was a showcase of his heavy metal shredding specializing in his trademark Drop-D tuning, but he also borrowed elements of jazz fusion and country, even playing banjo instead of guitar for one song. With no one else playing lead and no one singing, 5 made every one of his speedy notes count. As he remarked, "that is a lot of notes." Never mind all the visual stimuli, the spectacle of the evening was 5's 10 fingers.

Visit John 5 at www.john-5.com.