Mullet Mania

On the tour I spoke of in the last post, I got to meet more fantastic heroes of metal lore. Danzig and his crew of course. More importantly, the other openner Sacred Reich! Loved, loved, loved Sacred Reich. My old thrash band didn't play many covers... however, we whipped out 2 SR tunes during certain shows. We also did a heavy version of Sunshine of Your Love long before it became the hip thing to cover - but I digress.
While in San Fran I got to hand out with Chuck Billy from Testament. He sat on our bus and chatted for quite a while - towering a good head above everyone else on that couch. Jason Newsted and James Hetfield also came to that show. Funny story: I was looking for the tour manager, "Yogi", and I popped my head into Glen's dressing room - James was in there. This was the time period between the Black Album and Load when all of Metalica cut their hair off. In Glen's dressing room stood James sporting a full-on Achey Breaky Mullet! I was so stunned by this sight I blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "Has anyone seen Yo... holy shit! You look like a prowrestler!" James stopped mid-word and looked at me sideways with an unmistabeable "what the fucking fuck?" look on his face. I immediately switched tracks and yammered something about, "Give Yogi my love!" and hauled ass out of there. I started giggling uncontrollably halfway down the hallway. Incidentally, Jason was sporting a buzzcut - I know you were wondering.
The coolest person I met on that tour was definitely Tom Araya. That's right. I met Tom fucking Araya! And his brother. And his sister. And I sat in his black Jeep Wrangler with the license plate "S8 10". Not to brag or anything. lol He was absolutely genuine and gracious and super fucking cool! He came to all three Cali shows - San Bernadino, San Fran, and San Diego.
The San Diego show was SR's last night on the tour. Phil and the drummer Dave invited me up during Surf Nicaragua for the wipeout drum solo. That was definitely one of the highlights of that tour and my life for that matter. Incidentally, SN was one of the 2 covers we used to do. It was a real honor to be asked to play that live with those guys.
Other celebs I've met but not played with: Billy Milano and Grace Jones. Both came to one of gigs at some point. Pretty neat. I see pics of my former band-mates hanging with all sorts of people. All part of the rocknroll package I suppose. That mullet takes the cake though.