Anthrax’s Frank Bello Woke Up In Someone Else’s Blood in a Hotel

What would you do if you woke up in someone else's blood in your own hotel room? The answer is likely close to Anthrax bassist Frank Bello's response when it happened to him during the thrash group's early touring days through cheap hotels.

Anyone who has stayed at a sketchy hotel or motel before doesn't have to stretch their imagination too far to envision what unforetold horrors await and this recollection from Bello sounds like a scene ripped from horror movie.

As a guest on the "Side Jams" podcast with host Bryan Reesman, the 57-year-old Bello was asked if he had any memorable hotel stories for the wrong reasons.

Before sharing his story, the bassist issued a warning, asking how graphic he's allowed to be, foreshadowing an unsettling scene.

"This happened, God's honest truth. I've been doing it for 40 years... so [on tour] you go from disgusting [hotel] rooms, like the cheap, cheap ones, to the higher-end ones. So in the early days, you're lucky you can get a bed, right? There's no money, all that stuff. So, you get into the bed of that night after your club gig and you're hoping that it's clean. There are times in this life where you're so exhausted you just go right into bed. You just want to conk out. These nights are the nights you have to be careful," he begins.

As a reference point, Bello shouts out the infamous "horse head scene" in the movie The Godfather to illustrate the gruesome nature of his own experience.

"There's no horse, but there was blood," he says, "And it was underneath, so if I just pulled the sheets and went underneath when I was tired, I didn't see anything. But that freaked me the hell out because — and I'll be honest with you, man — it wasn't old. Somebody must have checked out, whatever they did they did. Maybe they set the bed up so the maid thinks, 'I don't have to change it today, they didn't touch the bed.' But let me tell you, that bed was not made up."

He notes it's a less than ideal way to wake up, "screaming at the top of my lungs. 'What the fuuuuck!'" Panicked, he first wondered if it was his own blood, and, if so, where he was bleeding out from. Collecting himself, he made a trip to the front desk only to realize there isn't one — "there's a partition with a person behind the desk that doesn't want to be bothered with anybody. So I say, 'Look, there's blood in my bed! I'm letting you know, we're not paying for this room. I slept in blood last night!'"

Still unsure of what had transpired that left blood pooled on the bed, Bello wonders if it was a "sexual thing" and then reiterated that whatever the reason, it was "disgusting."

Bello continues, "The blood thing freaked me out because it was on my leg. 'Who is this? Am I sick now?' All this stuff goes through your head. 'Oh my God, am I going to get some kind of disease from this blood?' Who needs that?"

Nobody needs that, Frank. Nobody.

It actually makes the bassist's recent flight troubles — where his plane skidded off a runway and into a ditch the night before a tour started — a bit less stressful by comparison.