Frank Bello Recalls Kirk Hammett Pissed Off By James Hetfield And Lars Ulrich, ‘So Disrespectful’
In The NFR Podcast, Anthrax’s bassist Frank Bello has remembered a story which covers up an incident where Kirk Hammett was pissed off by Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield, an act which Kirk described as so disrespectful.
It is known that this year marks the 40th year since Anthrax was formed, and to celebrate it, the band will be performing in a global live stream show on July 17, 2021. In addition, after 34 years since the trash metal band Anthrax has released ‘Among The Living,’ the well appreciated album is being comemmorated in a comic book anthology titled ‘Anthrax: Among The Living’ which will be on sale on July 6, and was narrated by the band’s mascot Not Man.
During the NFR Podcast, the band’s bassist Frank Bello recalled an interesting story which also takes place in his book and involves the members of Metallica. Frank recalled the time Anthrax was playing at San Francisco that night when the Metallica members came down, and they were drinking and having a good time. He then noted that Kirk Hammett had already left to go home before the closing time, and they went to Kirk’s house in which there was a jam room they can spend their time in, at 2:30 in the morning.
Frank then recalled that after they had arrived to his house, they went to the jam room from the backdoor that was unlocked. He said they were screaming and jamming, making the loudest noise when Kirk came through the door shocked, saying this was so disrespectful. He described the memory as a funny one, but also remembered he felt really bad.
He said in the podcast that:
“I’ll give you a quick story, my favorite rock ‘n’ roll story in this book. Anthrax plays San Francisco one night, guys from Metallica come down – this was years ago – they come to the show, have a great time – this is the days of drinking, we’re all drinking and stuff like that, way back then. So, we go bar hopping and stuff, so comes a time when the bars close, 2 o’clock – whatever, 1:30 – and somebody comes up with a great idea, ‘What are we going to do now?’
Kirk had already gone home to his house, he went home earlier, so we were just still bar hopping, so somebody comes up with a brilliant idea, ‘Why don’t we go to Kirk’s house?’ This is 2:30 in the morning, dude, I don’t know who came up with the idea, somebody yelled it out, ‘We’re going to Kirk’s house! He’s got this jam room in the back, we could go in there and jam and have a great time!’ We wanted to make a lot of noise, we were all drunk – James, Lars – and it was a lot of fun.
So we finally get to Kirk’s house. … I think somebody knew, I don’t know if it was Lars or James, that he didn’t lock the backdoor. The backdoor was open, we went right around the back of the house, we opened the door, and there’s this great fucking jam room. … So we’re fucking drunk out of our faces, dude, we get these guitars on, bass – if there’s 11, you would turn it up to. … We were just jamming fucking E, screaming at the top of our fucking balls, the loudest noise you could, just raging. This is Kirk’s house, it’s 2:30 in the morning.
All of a sudden, there’s a little window that comes down from his house, and all of a sudden we see Kirk’s face. We couldn’t hear him, he goes, ‘What the fuck, man?! What the fuck?! This is my fucking house!’ He comes through the door, and I don’t blame him for him, ‘What the fuck, man?! This is so disrespectful! This is my fucking house!’ It was so fucking funny, we all just left laughing. But I remember feeling really bad…”
Frank Bello is going to release a memoir on October 12 titled “Fathers, Brothers, And Sons: Surviving Anguish, Abandonment, And Anthrax” in which he talks about his family and the tragedic experiences he had, along with stories like these. It is also foreseeable that Anthrax is working on a new material which might be due in 2022.
