During an interview with Lipps Service, Motley Crue guitarist John 5 discussed his onstage fight with Marilyn Manson in 2003 at the Rock Am Ring Festival and confirmed once and for all that it was not staged or an act.
“My dad was dying,” John 5 recalled. “He was very ill, and I was working. And I went down to the bottom of the stairs after I got off stage, and Tony, the manager, said, ‘You should call your sister.’ My sister, Mary. And I said, ‘My dad died, right?’ He was like, ‘Just call Mary.’ I go, ‘My dad died, right?’ Just kind of preparing myself. He goes, ‘Just call home.'”
“So I call, and she’s crying hysterically. I’m like, ‘Dad died?’ She goes, ‘Lynn died,’ and that was my other sister. And I was like, ‘What?!’ I was, like, literally in a state of shock. I have no idea what was going on.”
The shocking news deeply affected the guitarist and immediately spilled over into his personal and professional life.
“So I didn’t sleep for… Now, it sounds hard to believe, but I didn’t sleep for, like, six, seven days. And I did everything in my power to sleep. I would take sleeping pills, everything. Nothing affected me.”
“And then Manson bumps into me or hits me. But that happened every night. And dude, I’m telling you, I snapped. I don’t even remember it, and it was so unprofessional on my part, and I felt so bad about it.”
“I can’t watch it. And Manson, who you can’t hear what he’s saying, but you know what he’s saying. And the guy’s so smart, he goes, ‘Pick up your guitar. Pick up your guitar. Just pick up your guitar. Don’t bring your family into this.’ I was shocked, but I felt so horrible. It was so unprofessional on my part.”
“Then that night, [I] passed out, went to sleep.”
