Alien Ant Farm frontman Dryden Mitchell sat down with NME for a new episode of ‘Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?!’ During their chat, he was asked if he ever met one of his childhood icons. He recalled spending time with James Hetfield and explained the Metallica frontman being impressed by his ‘ballsy’ move:
“Metallica’s James Hetfield took me and my parents out to dinner. We opened for them in Germany and, instead of ‘Smooth Criminal’, we played Sade’s ‘Smooth Operator’ in front of a metal crowd – and we got away with it! James said: ‘You guys are ballsy as hell! I can’t believe you did that and the crowd liked it!’ Anyway, I left him a CD of ours and I put my number inside.”
That was not just it. Mitchell had to turn down Hetfield for one reason, but Hetfield was impressed that he did so:
“Months later, he texted me asking: ‘Would you like to come to dinner tonight?’ My parents were visiting so I had to turn him down! Moments later, he hit me back saying: ‘That’s pretty cool that you turned me down for your parents,’ and invited them along too.”
Metallica Invited Alien Ant Farm For A Festival
This was not the only conversation Metallica had with Alien Ant Farm. Back in 2010, the band sat down with Las Vegas Sun to discuss their music plans. When asked what was next for the band, they revealed Metallica asking them to play at a festival. The band said:
“We’ve been writing a record right now and meeting with interesting people about who is going to do this record. We’re hoping for a summer release at the latest. A couple months ago, Metallica asked us to play the Sonisphere festival in England with them, so we were really excited about that. We did some touring with them back in the day.”
They also revealed ‘one cool thing’ about Metallica:
“One cool thing about playing with Metallica was it gave us a chance to see all our old booking agents and seeing how the crowd reacted so well to us still.”