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During a recent appearance on The Rockman Power Hour podcast, Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher talked about how Kirk Hammett and Rob Trujillo surprised him with a request.
The guitarist recalled how it was to meet the two Metallica members:
“When I met Kirk and Robert, they were walking around together and they saw me, and they came running over and they’re like, ‘Hey, man, what’s up? Can we get a picture with you?’ I was like, this is a joke. Like, I should get pictures. Yeah, you guys are Metallica. I’m just f*cking Bill from Mastodon. That’s awesome. It was wild.”
In the same interview, Kelliher also shared a funny moment meeting another Metallica member James Hetfield at a festival. He thanked Hetfield for teaching him guitar, but Hetfield seemed confused. Kelliher explained that the singer paved the way for him in guitar playing.
Kelliher Admires Rush’s Alex Lifeson
Another important name in Bill’s career is Alex Lifeson of Rush. Last year, he shared in a chat with the Metal Voice:
“Rush was definitely one of the bands that I could actually play some of their riffs when I first got a guitar at 15 years old, so 1986, I was like, ‘Oh, cool. What’s this band Rush all about?’ Alex Lifeson was kind of my first guitar hero. I was like, ‘This guy is really cool.’ I couldn’t play his solos, but I’d like the songwriting. Just the fact that they didn’t do stuff the same every single time.”
He added:
“If you listen to any of their songs, it’s like, ‘Here comes that, here comes the chorus again, are they gonna change instead of three, they do five, or they do four and a half for something weird?’ Why’d they do that? I don’t know, just to be proggy, I guess. I guess that’s what it was. Once in a while, we like to throw something like that in the mix and get a little.”
Mastodon will tour with Lamb of God this summer. Kerry King will also support them with his new solo band. The tour starts on July 19 in Texas and ends at the end of August in Omaha, Nebraska.
