Corrosion of Conformity guitarist Pepper Keenan has let slip that he auditioned to dep James Hetfield for Metallica back in the early 1990s.
We know that he was one of the many names that were tried out when the group were searching for a replacement for bassist Jason Newsted in the early Noughties. But it seems that ten years earlier, Keenan was in the frame to handle six-string duties. This was when Hetfield had second-degree burns after an incident when he stepped on a pyro whilst they were on tour with Guns N’ Roses.
Keenan spoke about this episode on the Garza podcast. “We were on tour with the Rollins Band, CoC was,” he recalled. “My phone rang in my hotel at three in the morning and it was fucking Q Prime [Metallica’s management]
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“They were putting the feelers out and trying to find guitar players who could come in and play guitar.”
“I was like, ‘Bro. For one thing, it’s a fucking stadium tour. Metallica’s never been tighter in their entire fucking lives and you want some yahoos to come jump in and try and be Hetfield? Is that what you’re saying?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah’.”
And so Keenan broke off from Corrosion’s tour with Rollins and flew to Denver, Colorado, to audition for the thrash metal superstars, who were facing a significant financial loss if they cancelled or postponed the rest of the tour.
“My suggestion was that we split it in half with one of the Sepultura boys, split the set in half,” he remembers. “This was crazy talking – they’re losing a million bucks a fucking day each day they ain’t playing. This was real shit, and I’m a fucking 20-year-old dude, sitting in the place in Denver, top secret bunker and they got the gear in there and shit.”
Sepultura’s Andreas Kisser also auditioned for the role, as did a few other guitarists. But in the end, it was decided to reschedule just six of the shows. Hetfield returned though he had to wear a thick bandage on his arm and his guitar parts were played by Kirk Hammett’s guitar tech John Marshall.
A decade later, Keenan auditioned for bass, though as he told Guitar World earlier this year, that didn’t quite work out either: “There was one part in the movie where they made me play bass on a new song,” he revealed. “I guess they were trying to stump me with something I’d never heard before… St Anger or some shit like that. It was a drop-tuned song and I hit the blower knob on my bass and just blasted through.”
“They were like ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ It sounded as heavy as lead to me, totally ripping from all the overdrive on my short-scale SG bass set to the front pickup. I can still see them shaking their heads. I knew I’d lost the gig right there.”
