Pepper Keenan Recalls '90s Audition to Play Guitar for Metallica

Corrosion of Conformity's Pepper Keenan revealed that he first auditioned for Metallica in the '90s after James Hetfield's infamous pyro accident.

Keenan has previously spoken about his 2000s Metallica audition, where he tried out to replace Jason Newsted on bass. But during a new appearance on the Garza Podcast, the frontman shared that the first time he was considered to play in Metallica was during the early '90s.

While Metallica were on tour with Guns N' Roses in 1992, Hetfield sustained second-degree burns onstage during the song "Fade to Black" after he accidentally stepped over pyro that had been moved from its designated location. The band had to cancel and postpone a handful of dates while the rocker recovered in the hospital.

"We were on tour with the Rollins Band, CoC was," Keenan recalled. "My phone rang in my hotel at three in the morning and it was fucking Q Prime [Metallica's management]... 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'."

The rocker said Q Prime faxed Metallica's music to Keenan's hotel room so that he could practice. He had to tell his bandmates and Henry Rollins that he'd been invited to audition for the Metallica tour and then was flown out to Colorado the next day, where Hetfield was being treated for his burn injuries.

"My suggestion was that we split it in half with one of the Sepultura boys, split the set in half. 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, Colo., top secret bunker and they got the gear in there and shit," Keenan continued.

The rocker said that he, Sepultura's Andreas Kisser and a few other guitarists were the only ones who received phone calls to audition. Metallica ultimately had Kirk Hammett's guitar tech and former Metal Church guitarist John Marshall play Hetfield's guitar parts while he recovered and focused on vocals during their shows for the few weeks after the accident.

See the full conversation below.

Corrosion of Conformity's Pepper Keenan Reveals He Auditioned to Play Guitar in Metallica in the '90s

Keenan auditioned to play bass in the band around a decade later when Newsted left. There was a point during the try out that he realized he wasn't going to get the gig and it was when he was asked to play one of their new songs.

He told Guitar World, "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."

Regardless, Keenan has had a longstanding friendship with Hetfield and Metallica. Check out a clip from an interview Loudwire Nights host Chuck Armstrong did with Keenan where they discussed COC's partnership with Metallica below.