Down and Corrosion of Conformity guitarist Pepper Keenan may now count James Hetfield and Tony Iommi as fans, but, as the metal lifer reveals in a recent interview, his humble rock ’n’ roll beginnings stem from a tragic accident.
“I started playing around 14. I had a friend named Pat The Rat,” he tells Kerrang! “He was a fucking complete red-haired hooligan. He got killed on a motorcycle trying to outrun the police on his shitty dirt bike. He went over this thing on the levee by the Mississippi River, and there was a cable going across it, and he didn't see the cable, and went straight through it.”
He continues, “Anyway, he played guitar, and after his funeral and all that kind of stuff, me and my buddy snuck into his house and took the guitar. I’m sure his mother wasn't going to do anything with it, and I'm sure Pat The Rat would have wanted us to have it.”
Fast-forward to the early aughts, and his rock-solid reputation in metal circles led to an audition with Metallica, documented in the movie Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.
“It was intense,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’d played with those guys before, I’d done backing vocals on their cover of Tuesday’s Gone by [Lynyrd] Skynyrd. But this was crazy."
As for how he landed the audition, Keenan recalls Hetfield calling him one day, saying he wanted somebody who wasn't "necessarily the best player."
"Even at the time, I was looking at Metallica from a fan's point of view, what I would want Metallica to do? First things first, I would’ve brought back the OG logo, got back in that world and started on some Master of Puppets shit! Get back in the garage. I remember going in, we rehearsed, and it was killer.”
Robert Trujillo eventually ended up landing the highly-coveted gig, but as Keenan assures there's no bad blood between the metal brothers, “It's all good. It was super-fun.”
Keenan spoke more at length about the Metallica audition with Guitar World – and mused on what the band would’ve sounded like had he joined the lineup.
