“Holy s**t… he hates Reagan!”: Machine Head’s Robb Flynn recalls the time he met Metallica’s James Hetfield as a teenager
Before he was fronting Machine Head and levelling stages around the world, Robb Flynn was just a teenage metalhead chasing his next great metal gig – and one of his earliest live show memories included a brush in with a young James Hetfield, who was wearing a t-shirt that made a very loud political statement.
READ MORE: “I’m in a situation where I can actually say thank you to the progenitors of a freaking genre”: Kirk Hammett on why Metallica are “lucky” to play Black Sabbath’s final gig
Speaking on a recent episode of the Garza Podcast, the Machine Head frontman recalls the fateful night in 1983 when he caught the second-to-last show of Metallica’s Kill ’Em All for One tour, with Exodus and headliners Raven rounding out the lineup at the now-legendary Keystone venue in Berkeley, California.
“We walk in, and the first person we see is James Hetfield from Metallica, and he’s at a bar stool and he’s signing autographs,” says Flynn [via Ultimate Guitar]. “We paid our $7 or whatever it was, and we walked 10 feet, and there’s James Hetfield signing autographs.”
For 16-year-old Flynn, the experience was as surreal as it gets.
“And we’re like, ‘Holy shit! This is the dude we were singing Whiplash to while we were drunk the other day!’ We just walk up, and we’re like, ‘Can we get an autograph?’ He’s like, ‘Fuck yeah!’ He writes ‘Fuck yeah’ and signs his name.”
“And then he goes up, and Cliff Burton’s there. And I remember every second of this show, dude. Cliff Burton’s wearing a Dawn of the Dead jersey, he’s got big bells [bell bottom jeans] on, James Hetfield’s wearing a ‘Ronald 6 Wilson 6 Reagan 6’ t-shirt. So, ‘666,’ with an upside down cross behind it. And I was like ‘Holy shit…he hates [then-US President Ronald] Reagan! Sick!’”
While Flynn didn’t brave the pit that night, the energy of the crowd left a permanent impression.
“Me and my friend, we don’t go up front, because we’re kind of scared because everybody’s like…circle pit, and we’re like, ‘Whoa. This is crazy,’” he says. “It’s kind of the first time I’m really seeing like, a raging circle pit. We headbanged the whole show.’”
That night would prove to be more than just an unforgettable gig: Shortly after, Flynn started his first band, Forbidden Evil, planting the seed for a career in heavy music that’s still going strong today.
The post “Holy s**t… he hates Reagan!”: Machine Head’s Robb Flynn recalls the time he met Metallica’s James Hetfield as a teenager appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
