John 5: Roth album sounds like old Van Halen

John 5 says the album he has recorded with David Lee Roth sound like “old Van Halen.”

The pair recorded the as-yet-untitled album last year and, so far, there are no plans for it to be released. But Rob Zombie collaborator 5 insists it’s a “great” piece of work and says he hopes Roth puts the record out at some point.

John 5 tells Guitar Player: “I know one thing – Dave loves the record. But he’s doing Van Halen, which is doing great too. So we’ll see what happens in the future. It’s old Van Halen. It sounds like Could This Be Magic? It’s just that sound, that tone.

“The songs are so good, they’re really great.”

John 5 and Roth previously worked together on the DLR Band album, but the guitarist says this latest record ended up being terrifying thanks to some last-minute changes.

He adds: “We did it without a click track, because he wanted that natural feel. Then he wanted to get drums on and some percussion, and the engineer was, like, ‘Well, we’re really gonna need click.’

“I’m leaving for a tour with Zombie in 40 hours. So Dave called me and he said, ‘John, you’ve gotta come in and record the whole record again.’ We’re talking overdubs, harmonies, everything.

“He says, ‘You’ve gotta come in and redo these guitars on the whole record.’ Anybody else, I’d be, like, ‘You crazy,’ but it’s Diamond Dave, and so I was, like, ‘Okay.’”

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.