TODD HUTH: I remember he disappeared for a while. We kept playing, and I was doing some other stuff on my own. I just remember that Metallica needed a bass player, and he said he was going to go try out.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: I just remember him preparing for the audition, and me thinking it was probably a pretty weird match for Les, to actually be accepted in Metallica. Just because he was such a different person. I knew he could handle the playing, but I just felt that aesthetically, he would never make it.
LES CLAYPOOL: First of all, I had no idea how big they were. I just didn’t know the scene, so I had no clue. I knew they were touring the world, which was really cool. But I didn’t know how big they were. So I get there, and I’m met outside by some crew guy, and he’s like [adopts Secret Service Agent–type voice], “Okay. Don’t be nervous. You’re going to go in, you’re going to be in one room and they’re going to be in another room. Set up your stuff, get ready to play, and then they’ll come in . . .” All of a sudden I felt like I was getting ready to meet the Pope or something. I was like, What the fuck? I wasn’t nervous before, but now I’m nervous!
So I go in there, I’m doing my thing, and in comes James Hetfield. He’s wearing some camo fatigues or some shit. They come in, “Hey, how’s it going?” I could just tell right off the bat that James was not into me. I could feel it. I show up with this bass that looks like a hunk of driftwood, I’ve got baggy pants on and a floppy hat. I think they just kind of went through the motions with me. At that point, the Carl Thompson was the only bass I had. I didn’t have any money, so that bass was my darling. James picked it up and checked it out for a minute, tripping off the whammy bar. I was hoping I could play “The Thing That Should Not Be” with them, so I could show them my whammy technique.
KIRK HAMMETT: I always knew that he was more than capable of doing it. At the time, I was pretty much trying to . . . We were desperate and we were flying people in from all over the place. I was just trying to think about who played bass that was local, that had the ability. So I asked Les to come down and play.
LES CLAYPOOL: So when I learned “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” I didn’t know that was bass at the beginning—I thought it was guitar. So they were like, “Okay, we’re going to play ‘Bell’.” And I remember when Kirk had given me the list of songs to learn, they were all abbreviated, so I was like, “Well, what song is that?” And then he would tell me the whole name. So that’s how out of it I was on the Metallica front. “Okay, we’re going to play ‘Bell’.” They’re looking at me, and James kind of smiles, cracks up, and starts playing the bass part himself. I think that was the beginning of the end.
KIRK HAMMETT: That’s right! I remember looking at him and waving my hand, pointing to his bass. And he looked at me, like, What? At that point, the other guys didn’t really know who he was. And I remember having to say to him, “Man, that’s actually a bass part.” “Oh, okay!” And at one point, he starts thumping his bass—popping notes—and I remember thinking, Wow, that fucking sounds great. And I looked over at James, and he didn’t know what he was seeing. He’s like, “Whoa!” I think that’s another thing that might have intimidated James—maybe he was afraid that Les would bring that element to the sound of our band. But it was still a very decent audition. Don’t get me wrong, those guys were super friendly toward Les.
LES CLAYPOOL: And another thing too: I’m sitting there playing through Cliff’s old rig. And I could tell Kirk was all fucked up—I think they were drowning their sorrows in booze. I’m playing through his amp, and I’m looking over at Kirk, and he’s mouthing the words, You’re too loud! I was used to being the loud guy in the band. So I turned down, and we played the first song. After the first song, I said, “Man, that was loud!” Lars Ulrich was probably the most into me out of anybody. He was being very cool to me. But he’s like, “You’re not used to playing this kind of music, are you?” I put on my Cheech Marin voice, and I said, “No. Do you guys want to jam on some Isley Brothers?” Nobody laughed.
KIRK HAMMETT: He did really, really well. But I think part of the problem was he was wearing a beret. [Laughs] I don’t think James took to Les’s image. I think Les’s image was maybe a bit too left field for James. It had nothing to do with his abilities. It had everything to do with Les not really having a look that we needed. But it would have been interesting if he had actually joined the band. I mean, that would have been an interesting little hybrid.
LES CLAYPOOL: It was actually a newsboy cap, twenty years too early I guess. I remember after the audition, I followed Kirk out into the little waiting room, and I’m like, “Hey, man,” waiting for him to say, “Good job,” or anything. I could tell he was avoiding even looking me in the face. [Laughs] Like he didn’t want to tell me, “Dude . . . that fucking sucked.” [Laughs] I could just feel it. I didn’t fit. I still don’t fit. They’ve got the greatest guy they could get right now—Robert Trujillo is an amazing player and he’s the fucking nicest guy on the planet.
ROBERT TRUJILLO [Suicidal Tendencies bassist, Infectious Grooves bassist, Ozzy Osbourne bassist, Metallica bassist]: It’s hard for me to see [what Metallica would have sounded like with Les on bass], because I feel that Les is kind of a powerful personality in himself. He’s a leader. And Metallica, between James and Lars, there’s not a whole lot of room for extra leaders . . . especially these days. I don’t know. It would have been interesting. I think it’s great that Les has been able to carry on, waving his own banner and just taking on the challenges of what he’s been able to do.
It’s almost like, to me, Metallica is this beast that stays within itself, in a way. And I mean that in a positive way, it’s not a negative thing. And Les is somebody who really likes to collaborate. He’s his own guy, but he loves to collaborate and get into the mix with other musicians. Whether it’s someone like Bernie Worrell, Tom Waits, or Buckethead—he likes to get out there and get in different situations and be creative. It’s sort of a different form of energy.
But I think if, god willing, from Hetfield and Lars, if it would have happened, it would have been incredible, anyway. It would have been a bit more progressive and maybe a little different than what had been going on. But I think it would have been quite the adventure. I would have loved to have seen it, for sure. Maybe it wasn’t the right time at that moment, because at that time, it’s almost like they stepped away from bass for a minute, with the . . . And Justice for All album. Metallica sort of detoured from it for a minute. They were still kind of healing from the whole experience with Cliff.
LES CLAYPOOL: I was such a fish out of water for it, I was listening to, like, Fishbone back then. So to play the Metallica audition . . . there’s a reason why I didn’t get the gig. They say on VH1 that I was “too good.” Well, that’s not the case at all. I didn’t fit. I had baggy skater pants on, with two different-colored tennis shoes, and a weird blond Mohawk. And I was smacking my bass with my thumb. Going to the audition to do the Metallica thing, Kirk was telling me on the phone, “I’ve got to tell you, one thing you might not want to do is don’t use your thumb.” And I had already figured out “Master of Puppets,” how to do it all peck-it-a, peck-it-a, peck-it-a. After I did the audition, I was like, Wow, this music is pretty cool, because I had gotten into listening to all those records, having to learn the parts.
KIRK HAMMETT: I don’t think that it was [recorded], because we had such a high turnover. On the first day, we tried out, like, fifteen people. They’d come in, they’d play the song. If they were good, we’d play two or three songs with them. But if they weren’t very good, we would set our instruments down and walk out of the room, and someone would walk in and tell them, “Thank you for coming, but we’ll see you next time” sort of thing. No one really bothered with recording anything, because it was an audition, and like I said, it was a high turnover rate. We were only interested in recording people that made it to the final three. It was down to three different