Metallica frontman James Hetfield might not have been the permanent singer of the band today.
On the latest episode of ‘The Metallica Report,’ James Hetfield was asked if there’s any new music that has caught his attention lately. He replied:
“As far as new music goes… Let’s see. I flipped through Sirius [XM satellite radio] a bunch. I mean, it’s just so easy to go on to your playlist and listen to the same stuff over and over. And if I’m not listening to the radio of some sort where someone else is in control, I’m not learning new stuff so much. I don’t like getting caught in that rabbit hole: ‘If you like this, you might like this.’ And then sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn’t. That’s a computer telling me what I might like.”
He then mentioned a name that sounded familiar to him. Apparently, it was the singer that Metallica approached about joining the band before him:
“But listening to the radio, I guess the newest thing that I was surprised by and really made me smile was Category 7, a band that’s kind of a collaboration of few people. I was listening to it, I’m going, ‘That voice is awesome. And it sounds very familiar.’ It was fricking John Bush [of Armored Saint], our singer that we never got.”
Hetfield also mentioned Bush’s band with other names from different bands and also praised the singer:
“And so John Bush is in a band with a few other well-known people out there, Phil Demmel from Machine Head, [bassist Jack Gibson from] Exodus, a few other people in this band, kind of a — I don’t know if it’s a, whatever, supergroup of metal guys, but they all wanted to form a band and start playing. And Brian Slagel [of Metal Blade Records] has signed him. So I heard one song on the radio, and that’s it. And it was great. It was really good. And I’m glad that John has kind of gone out on his own and done his own thing. And he was so, so, so tied to Armored Saint and then the Anthrax thing. Yeah, it’s exciting.”
Bush Doesn’t Regret Turning Metallica Down
Bush was offered to join Metallica back in 1989, around the ‘Ride the Lightning’ era. The rocker turned it down, but apparently, he doesn’t regret doing so.
In an interview from 2017, the singer recalled the day he was offered the join the now-iconic metal band and explained why he turned it down:
“Do I regret turning that down? What I always tell people is that Armored Saint was developing and we were doing well, and these guys were my buddies, you know? Metallica were doing well, but it wasn’t like it was Metallica in 1987. It was a few years before that. So, I didn’t want to leave my band. I liked them and I still do!”
You can hear the podcast episodes here.