In a new interview with Guitar World, Jane’s Addiction’s Eric Avery talked about how he once auditioned to replace Jason Newsted in Metallica.
“I have. I’ve thought about what that would be like – and it’s not all to the positive,” the bassist replied when asked how he ever thought about his possible addition to Metallica. “Well, I shouldn’t say that in both of those cases. For different reasons, I went into them thinking that I didn’t hope to get the gig because I really thought that I wasn’t right for them.”
Avery continued his words, “So I entered into them as experiences, like, ‘I’m gonna have a life experience; I’m gonna create a memory.’ Not every day does one travel to Santa Rosa [California] to play a few songs with Metallica, you know?”
“I didn’t see it as a job audition; and in that way, it really delivered. They were great to me, too. I came away with a great day from my human lifetime,” the rocker further discussed his Metallica audition.
Besides Avery, Metallica also auditioned Scott Reeder from Kyuss and The Obsessed, Chris Wyse from Hollywood Vampires, Jeordie White (Twiggy Ramirez) from Marilyn Manson and A Perfect Circle, Danny Lohner from Nine Inch Nails, and Rob Trujillo.
“It was a two-day audition, but the first day was more fly-on-the-wall,” Trujillo recenlty said of his Metallica audition. “Bob Rock had already recorded bass guitar and he was also producing ‘St Anger,’ so I’m just there at the studio watching guitar tracks go down.”
He added, “The evening rolls around and Lars says, ‘Hey, let’s go get a drink.’ I could hold my own with a few beers, but we end up drinking until 5 in the morning. I wake up with the worst hangover of my life, and now I’ve got to play with Metallica.”
“James is sober. He’s gone through rehab. So I decided I would connect with my bass tech and decide what bass I was going to use, and what amp,” Rob further said. “What I was really trying to do was get away from Hetfield because I didn’t want him to smell the alcohol on me. Lars was probably just testing me to see how much I could handle, but I just felt like a loser.”
Trujillo became the new bassist of Metallica in 2003 to replace Newsted.
