In a revelation that has left fans of both wrestling and heavy metal scratching their heads, iconic wrestler Hulk Hogan claimed that he was extended an invitation to join METALLICA.
During his formative years in Tampa Bay, Florida, Hogan, in his early twenties, frequented activities beyond wrestling and weightlifting. Alongside his passions, he dedicated time to honing his skills on the bass guitar, actively participating in various local bands. Notably, one of these bands, RUCKUS, garnered a modest level of recognition within the local rock community.
RUCKUS‘ journey would eventually reach its conclusion, yet Hulk Hogan‘s aspirations for rock stardom resurfaced decades later. In a peculiar revelation during an interview with The Chicago Tribune in 2009, the wrestling legend asserted that he had endeavored to secure the bassist role in METALLICA after Jason Newsted’s departure in 2001.
“When METALLICA was looking for a bass player, I called and never heard a word back from them,” Hogan said while promoting his 2009 memoire, My Life Outside the Ring. “I would have quit wrestling in a heartbeat to be a bass player for METALLICA.”
Although this assertion didn’t garner much attention from the media initially, it wasn’t until three years later that Hogan provided a divergent account of the situation during an interview with The Sun. In this revised narrative, Hogan hinted at the possibility of almost joining METALLICA in the 1980s, purportedly at the invitation of the band’s drummer, Lars Ulrich.
He said: “I used to be a session musician before I was a wrestler. I played bass guitar. I was big pals with Lars Ulrich and he asked me if I wanted to play bass with METALLICA in their early days but it didn’t work out.”
The buzz surrounding the revelation grew to such an extent that when Ulrich made an appearance on The Howard Stern Show a few weeks later, Stern wasted no time in probing Ulrich to share his perspective on the matter.
Lars responded: “You know what?! I’m blessed or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with having more or less a photographic memory for pretty much anything that I’ve been a part of. That one, when that showed up two or three months ago, I was scratching my head over that one. Unless he went by… like…his Christian name or something, and I don’t know if anybody knows what his Christian name was — Dave Smith or something [Hogan‘s real name is Terry Bollea] — if there was a whole thing that we had with him under a different name, but I certainly have no recollection of doing anything with ‘Hulk Hogan’.”
When asked again about METALLICA, Hogan appeared to switch to his initial narrative during an interview with Vice in 2014. He said: “I heard that METALLICA needed a bass player, and brother, I was writing letters, made a tape of myself playing and sent it to their management company. Kept making calls trying to get through. I tried for two weeks and never heard a word back from them.”
In any case, the notion of Hogan wielding the bass guitar for METALLICA stands as one of heavy metal’s amusing “what-if” scenarios to contemplate – even though, in truth, it never truly approached reality.
