John Bush Talks Being The Guy Who Said No To Joining Metallica

11-24-2025

John Bush (Armored Saint, Anthrax, Category 7) is the featured guest on a recent episode of the Talking Metal Podcast and during the chat with host Mark Strigl John touches on a lot of topics including being approached to join Metallica.

Other topics include his time in Anthrax, plus his upcoming shows celebrating that material, working with Dimebag Darrell of Pantera, his new band Category 7, and Armored Saint and their new album.

The show sent over the following excerpt where they discuss Metallica. (Stream the full episode here.

Strigl: Metallica. How many times were you approached to join the group? Was it more than once? Cause some interviews I read, it sounds like maybe it was numerous times.

John Bush: You know, I think before Kill' Em All was recorded was really the first time. I think that they, my friend John Kornarans is a connection with them, and I still play pickup basketball with John. And he knew them, he was there like in the very, very early days of Metallica, him and Brian, actually Brian Slagel.

He says, he always talks about like the guestless name at a show they did where it had said John Bush, "new singer", and I was on the list. And I was at like the Woodstock, which is in Orange County, probably was 1982. So that was the first time.

And then we got to know them because then we started playing shows with them and then kind of came back up. And I guess that I was, you know, as again, I've said this a million times, well, number one, I'm the guy who said no to Metallica. So like probably the biggest moron in the world.

But it just really was never my destiny.