The old adage “never meet your heroes” usually rings true. However, for Mastodon's Bill Kelliher, meeting guitar heroes like Metallica's James Hetfield and Slayer's Kerry King were key moments in his career that pushed him to improve his guitar playing.
“It was funny when I first met Hetfield, who's been an idol of mine. It was in Portugal or some big festival we were doing, and I shook his hand,” Kelliher says on The Rockman Power Hour podcast. “I was like, ‘Thank you for teaching me how to play guitar.’ And he was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Like, you know what I'm talking about. You paved the way for me.’”
