“I was outside shoveling some moldy hay into a wheelbarrow, and my wife comes out holding the phone. She thought it was a prank call”: Scott Reeder on the time he auditioned for Metallica – after Lars Ulrich cold-called him

Newsflash: Scott Reeder never got the gig as Metallica’s full-time bass guitar player. Robert Trujillo got the role.

The whole saga of Jason Newsted’s exit, the acrimony and fracture as St. Anger came together as Metallica were imploding, and their torturous hunt for a bassist, was all captured for posterity in one of the most notorious music documentaries of all time, Some Kind of Monster. We have all watched it.

And we saw everything – Some Kind of Monster took us inside the room. But, as they say, you weren’t there, man. Reeder was, and the former Kyuss and Obsessed bassist’s recollections of his brush with metal’s biggest band is a remarkable story, and it is one he shares with Guitar World in a new interview.

This is a story that begins and ends with rejection, only in the beginning it was Reeder who said no to Metallica when the Q Prime industrial complex cast the net wide for a new bass player to replace Newsted. As Reeder remembers it, they were in no mood to waste time.

“Somebody from their organization asked me if I would be interested, God, probably right after Jason was out,” says Reeder. “I was in the middle of making a record with Unida, and was like, ‘Thanks, but I’ve got to follow through with this thing. We’re kind of in the thick of it right now.’”

That was to be the end of it. Reeder is not a man whose calendar needs filling. He is always in the thick of it. But his name was clearly burning a hole in the Metallica Rolodex.

“I got another call, it had to be at least a year later, from Lars Ulrich,” he says. “My wife and I have a 50-acre ranch, and I was outside shoveling some moldy hay into a wheelbarrow, and my wife comes out holding the phone… she thought it was a prank phone call.”

This was not unusual.

“We used to get prank phone calls from Maynard [James Keenan] from Tool,” says Reeder. “She’s all, ‘Says it’s Lars Ulrich,’ and she’s rolling her eyes. I grabbed the phone, and it was fucking Lars Ulrich. [Laughs] He said, ‘Hey, man, we’ve got to make a move here. We’ve got to pick a bass player, and would love it if you could come up and jam for a few days.’”

Ulrich officially had Reeder’s undivided attention. Reeder was stoked. But he took a beat. If this was to be his one big chance at landing a life-changing gig, he needed some time to prepare.

“I was like, ‘Fuck, yeah.’ I didn’t take the first audition for that weekend. I said, ‘Let me hold off for a week, and I’ll learn some stuff.’ I think I had a week to work on stuff; I probably learned 20 songs, and went to the headquarters, and we had a meeting around the table.”

That meeting is in the film. It is an age ago now, but this was the era of Dr Phil and norm-core knitwear, of an ashen faced Bob Rock filling in on bass, of door slamming, poorly tuned snare drums, of no solos, no fun because there were no solos – everybody was tense.

Some Kind of Monster is listed as a documentary but at times it could be a comedy. Others have an air of horror about them. All of it was faintly surreal.

“They had their life-coach guy, Phil, that was part of everything,” says Reeder. “We walked for a while, and then we got to go in and jam, and it was so fun playing some of the classics. And the next day, they were in recording mode, working on Some Kind of Monster, and I was sitting on the couch next to James Hetfield while he’s cutting vocals.

“I’m like, ‘Is it okay if I’m in here?’ He’s all, ‘If it wasn’t, I’d let you know, man. It’s cool.’ So, I’m sitting next to fucking Hetfield recording vocals for an album. That was pretty crazy.”

Reeder never got the gig but maybe he played his part in some small way. Metallica were piecing themselves back together again. Maybe the audition process helped. Either way, they treated Reeder right and let him down gently. And he had definitely been in the running before Trujillo got the gig.

“We said our goodbyes, and the vibe was that I was going to come back at some point. Kirk [Hammett] said, ‘We haven’t seen the last of you, Reeder.’ And then, they called me, probably about a month later, a conference call with all the guys,” he continues.

“They said, ‘Hey, man, hope you’re doing okay. Just want to let you know we have our guy. But you’re family for life. You’re going to be a part of anything you want to be a part of. Let us know.’

“So, that was it. James called me back about a half an hour later, ‘You sure you’re alright, man?’”

Who could say how Metallica might have turned out with Reeder on bass. No one knows for sure – well, there would be less crab-walking onstage. But all in all he wasn’t too bummed out, and let Ulrich know that there were there were no hard feelings.

“I told him, ‘Dude, if there were like the Metal Olympics or something, to get the silver medal,” says Reeder. “Not too shabby.’”

Metallica wasn't the only big-name band that Reeder rubbed shoulders with. In a previous interview with Bass Player, he recalled the time he jammed with Tool.