The one guitarist Ace Frehley said could “play anything” and “surpasses me”
When Ace Frehley signed on to join Kiss, he wasn’t looking to be the greatest guitarist in the world.
He certainly could play and was an avid disciple of everyone from Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, but it was a lot more about the attitude behind his playing that turned him into ‘The Spaceman’ when they got the ball rolling. But as the rock and roll community opened up a little bit, there were bound to be sounds coming out of the six-string that even he couldn’t figure out how to do.
Then again, the guitar was always going to look different in a post-Van Halen world. The whole point behind Eddie’s playing was opening up new doors for guitarists that wanted to make new sounds on the instrument, but Frehley was already on the cusp of making the kind of solos that weren’t normal by most people’s standards.
Across Kiss’s discography, a lot of his tunes were about getting strange techniques that felt like they were coming from another planet. He wasn’t going to shred the same way that Steve Vai or Joe Satriani did, but those massive bends that he would do to kick off his solos and occasionally throwing in a chicken-picking lick helped give the band a lot more character than the typical blues players like Peter Frampton or Eric Clapton.
And while a lot of shock rockers followed Kiss’s lead by going as over the top as possible, John 5 wasn’t out there to make random noises on his instrument. Anyone that was playing second fiddle to people like Marilyn Manson were obviously going to be tucked away in the background, but John made every single one of his notes count whenever he took a solo with anyone from Manson to David Lee Roth to Rob Zombie.
By most hard rock standards, John is the guitar player’s guitar player most of the time. There are many times where he could easily play a solo note-for-note the same way that another icon could, but when he’s left to his own devices, there are always going to be a handful of licks on his records that would make any fellow shredder put on a mean mug and wonder how the hell he got that sound.
Even with all that talent, taking on a gig with a band like Motley Crue was always going to be daunting, but Frehley knew that there was no musical idea that John wasn’t built for, saying, “John is really technical. I mean… he can play anything. He can play stuff by Glen Campell, and he’s just a really great, technical guitar player. He definitely surpasses me, you know? I just have one style. I can’t play 10 different kinds of styles — but John can play country, metal, and he can even play country.”
He may not look like the kind of guitarist that could play along to a Glen Campbell tune, but John had already cut his teeth listening to shows like Hee Haw back in the day, which made him as dangerous with a banjo picking style as he would be with a standard guitar pick in his hand. Oh yeah, and all the while he somehow manages to make the whole thing work with one of the most dangerous shock rockers in the world.
But looking at the artists that he’s worked with, every shock rocker would usually pray for someone like John 5 in their backline. He was a walking guitar encyclopedia half the time, and even if his look could put people on edge, he could have easily recreated everything that Frehley did if he had the right guitar tone.
