“Next thing you know, I get handed one of Kirk Hammett’s Les Pauls!”: System Of A Down‘s Daron Malakian reflects on filling in for James Hetfield during Metallica‘s Summer Sanitarium tour
Prior to the release of 2001’s Toxicity, System Of A Down were scrambling to make their mark on heavy metal. When Metallica offered them a support slot on their 2000 Summer Sanitarium tour, it was the perfect opportunity to reach new audiences – and it would even see Daron Malakian temporarily joining the world’s biggest metal band – onstage at least.
When the Summer Sanitarium tour kicked off in June, all was well. However, on 7 July, Metallica’s James Hetfield was injured in a jet ski accident right before a show, leaving him unable to perform. “They didn’t know what to do, because James wasn’t there,” Malakian tells Rick Rubin on his Tetragrammaton podcast.
Rather than cancelling the tour, Metallica enlisted the help of their support acts. “Jason Newsted was singing, and then they brought the guys from Korn on and they [covered a] Cheech & Chong song,” he recalls.
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Seeing fellow openers Korn up onstage, Malakian thought he’d try his luck. He knew “a lot of [Metallica’s] shit”, and he was adamant that his guitar tech should communicate this detail to Metallica’s team. “My tech goes and talks to their guitar tech,” he explains. “Then my tech comes back like, ‘All right, come with me.’”
“Next thing you know… I get handed a Les Paul,” he continues. “I think it was one of Kirk Hammett’s Les Pauls. And [Metallica’s guitar tech] is like, ‘All right. Go.’”
Up until that point, Malakian hadn’t properly met Metallica. System Of A Down were the first openers of the evening, and there had been no opportunity to meet the stars of the tour. “I met Metallica on stage playing with them,” he reveals. “I’d never met them before – we were the first band. Nobody knows us.”
“You gotta understand – our band’s not big yet,” he emphasises. “I’m still a kid – I’m 22 years old! I can’t even believe that we’re even allowed to open up for Metallica. So this is all new to me.”
Suddenly, Malakian finds himself out on stage with his metal heroes. “I turn and I’m, like, ‘Hey – it’s Lars, it’s Kirk, it’s Jason Newsted,’” he says. “They’re, like, ‘What do you know?’ I go, ‘I don’t know… Master Of Puppets?’”
And, just like that, the band are counting in to perform one of Metallica’s biggest hits – but, without frontman Hetfield around, Malakian had a burning question on his mind. “I’m up there with Metallica playing Master Of Puppets in front of 60,000 people… and I’m, like, ‘Who’s gonna sing?’” the guitarist recalls.
Quickly, Malakian decides who is going to sing: him. “I said, ‘Fuck it, I’ll go sing!’” he explains. “And I sang. You would think we’d rehearsed it, but we didn’t rehearse it. And I didn’t even know it was gonna happen! And it happened.”
The fateful day was even captured on film, and you can see the band deliberating on-stage. Someone else even gets picked out of the crowd to perform with the band first, before Metallica decide to boot him off and invite Malakian out instead. Then, the System Of A Down guitarist and vocalist absolutely smashes it.
As he puts it, it was a true ‘pinch me’ moment. “I’m up there, and I’m playing Metallica with Metallica, in front of an audience where I would’ve been in the fucking cheap seats just three years ago,” he says.
The impromptu performance was so good that Metallica even asked Malakian to keep performing with them until Hetfield was well again. “I got off stage, and next thing you know, [Metallica’s team] are coming to me like, ‘Hey, James isn’t gonna be able to play for a few nights, [the band] want you to play with them,’” he explains.
Suddenly, Malakian was moving his suitcase out of a shoddy tour bus and into Metallica’s private jet. “They were, like, ‘Hey, get your shit from your bus, because you’re flying on the private jet with us now,” he recalls. “Oh, man. I’ll never forget it.”
Malakian went on to perform with the band for the following few dates. On 8 July, Malakian was even joined by bandmate Serj Tankian to help Metallica perform Mastertarium, as well as Korn’s Jonathan Davis emerging to perform One.
“Even though my band is where we’re at right now, it still brings goosebumps that I had a chance to experience that at that point of my career,” he concludes.
This year, System Of A Down are set to embark on a European arena tour, which will see them playing two nights at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in July. For more information, head to the band’s website.
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