“I didn’t know anything about Metallica. I’m not into that kind of music, really. But it was funny; they got in touch with me,” Bell said.
“Someone from their setup phoned me and said, ‘I work with Metallica. We’re doing a world tour. Would love to have you come along to play with us in Dublin and do Whiskey in the Jar.’”
Bell highlighted that the cover itself was acceptable. However, the performance presented unexpected challenges. During rehearsal, he discovered that Metallica tuned their guitars a whole tone down which was a significant departure from standard tuning that caught him off guard.
“I was trying out this Marshall amp, and Metallica walked in sort of like cartoons. They said, ‘Hey, man, when we do this, we tune our guitars a whole tone down.’ I thought, ‘A whole tone? The guitar is going to sound like a f*cking banjo,’” Bell recalled.
When asked if he enjoyed performing with Metallica, Bell was honest about his reservations. He explained that playing in standard tuning while the rest of the band played in a lower tuning forced him to adapt on the fly, creating an awkward situation.
“No. I mean, it was okay. I just felt a bit out of place, especially as my guitar was in standard tuning and I was playing along in F instead of G,” he said. “If I had the chance again, I’d tune it down because it was tricky playing it in F!”
