Yesterday (Thursday July 24), the sports and entertainment worlds were stunned by the news that wrestling legend Hulk Hogan had died suddenly aged 71.
The Hulkster - real name Terry Bollea - left behind a complicated legacy. As Hulk Hogan, he was undoubtedly the single most impactful and influential character in professional wrestling history, a charismatic and beloved pop culture juggernaut in his heyday who helped establish both the WWF (now WWE) and WCW as pro wrestling powerhouses in the 80s and 90s.
He became a controversial figure towards the end of his career. A leaked sex tape featuring an explosive racist rant saw him expelled from the WWE in 2015 (he returned to the company in 2018), while his aggressive campaigning for Donald Trump in the 2024 US election alienated many fans; he was loudly booed at his final WWE live appearance in Los Angeles in January .
On top of all that, Hogan also famously liked to spin a tale or two - and one of his most outlandish anecdotes involved heavy metal heroes Metallica.
To understand the context for this particular story, you need to go back to Hogan's early twenties, where he spent time hanging out in Tampa Bay, Florida in the 1970s. When the 6'7" blonde behemoth wasn't watching wrestling or lifting weights, he'd spend time playing bass in a series of local bands - one of which, Ruckus, gained a sniff of popularity in the local rock scene.
Ruckus' story would ultimately end there, but it seems Hogan's own rock star ambitions were resurrected decades later. According to one surprising claim he made in an interview with The Chicago Tribune in 2009, the 13-time world champion attempted to put himself forward for the vacant bassist position that opened up in Metallica following the exit of Jason Newsted in 2001.
“When Metallica was looking for a bass player, I called and never heard a word back from them," he said while promoting his 2009 memoir, My Life Outside the Ring. "I would have quit wrestling in a heartbeat to be a bass player for Metallica."
That particular claim went largely unnoticed by the media, but it was three years later when, in an interview with The Sun, Hogan offered a completely different take on the whole thing, suggesting he almost joined Metallica back in the 80s by request of the band's own drummer, Lars Ulrich.
"I used to be a session musician before I was a wrestler," the Hulkster noted. "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."
This time, both the wrestling and music media took notice, so much so that when Ulrich himself appeared on The Howard Stern show a few weeks later, Stern asked him to give his side of the story.
"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," Lars replied. "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 - 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'."
The next time Hogan was asked about Metallica, it seemed he had changed his story back to its original incarnation, telling Vice in an interview in 2014:
"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."
Incredibly, in the very same interview, Hogan also claimed he once asked Mick Jagger's ex Jerry Hall if she could facilitate a rehearsal with The Rolling Stones ("I was like, 'Look, I used to play bass. I know all the Rolling Stones songs. Tell Mick if you guys need a bass player for the Rolling Stones, I swear to god I could show up'").
Whatever the real story behind the Stones thing is, it seems that Metallica truly have no recollection of Hogan being in the frame to join them. In 2017, frontman James Hetfield was shown a photoshopped image of Metallica with Hogan during a video interview with German outlet Bild. After chuckling at the photo, Hetfield looked bemused when the interviewer informed him that Hogan had apparently "tried to be in the band", simply replying with a blunt: "Really? Huh...definitely not."
Never a man to be denied, Hogan later maintained once again that he made an effort to join Metallica, telling the Full Send Podcast in 2023: "Metallica needs a bass player, right? I go, 'Holy smokes, Metallica! I could be in Metallica?!' I did an audition tape, put a tape together, sent it to the band, never heard a word from them."
Perhaps the tape got lost in the mail? Either way, as the world dissects Hogan's life, career and complex legacy in the aftermath of his death, let it never be forgotten that somewhere along the way, he managed to carve himself a strange little mythical corner in Metallica's story too.
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