Now more than ever, touring is complicated. It's hard to put a crew together, gas prices are through the roof, and hotel rooms are covered in blood. Wait—what?
Ok, so now that I got your attention, no—not every hotel room is soaked in mysterious blood. But when a band is young and doesn't have lots of money, finding a decent place to stay can be a challenge. Anthrax bassist Frank Bello recently shared his experience staying in a sketchy hotel during the band's mean and lean years while on the Side Jams podcast with Bryan Reesman.
Asked if there were any freaky motel stories he'd love to forget, Bello shockingly had a horse head-in-the-bed situation a la The Godfather one night on tour—minus the horse head, thank God.
"This happened, God's honest truth. I've been doing it for 40 years… so [on tour] you go from disgusting [hotel] rooms, like the cheap, cheap ones, to the higher-end ones," Bello began. "So in the early days, you're lucky you can get a bed, right? There's no money, all that stuff. So, you get into the bed of that night after your club gig and you're hoping that it's clean. There are times in this life where you're so exhausted you just go right into bed. You just want to conk out. These nights are the nights you have to be careful."
Bello continued saying, "There's [was] no horse, but there was blood. And it was underneath, so if I just pulled the sheets and went underneath when I was tired, I didn't see anything. But that freaked me the hell out because — and I'll be honest with you, man — it wasn't old. Somebody must have checked out, whatever they did they did. Maybe they set the bed up so the maid thinks, 'I don't have to change it today, they didn't touch the bed.' But let me tell you, that bed was not made up."
Bello apparently that woke up "screaming at the top of my lungs. 'What the fuuuuck!'"
"The blood thing freaked me out because it was on my leg," he continued. 'Who is this? Am I sick now?' All this stuff goes through your head. 'Oh my God, am I going to get some kind of disease from this blood?' Who needs that?"
Absolutely no one, Frank.
Later, when trying to get some attention from the hotel staff, and presumably speak to someone at the front desk, Bello realized that barely such things were available.
"There's was a partition with a person behind the desk that doesn't want to be bothered with anybody. So I say, 'Look, there's blood in my bed! I'm letting you know, we're not paying for this room. I slept in blood last night!'"
You can watch the full interview with Frank Bello and Bryan Reesman below.
Ugh, what a nightmare. And I wonder what the condition the rooms the other members of Anthrax stayed in were like. Of course, a pro like Bello, who has been rocking the road for as long as he has, is hard to trip up, as they likely have seen everything. Just ask Frank about his plane that skidded off the road last month.
Bello's flight from Texas to Idaho skidded off the runway into a ditch upon arriving at its destination.
"Ever have one of those flights to start a tour where on landing you feel a 'thud,' then you hear the brakes screech a bit, and when you finally stop moving the plane is a bit tilted down to the right side in the front?" said Bello in an Instagram post. "Well after keeping us in the plane for 3 hours after landing- we found out we were in a ditch… anyway- Not the best way to start a tour, but I’m really looking forward to playing the first show in Idaho tonight!! Good times ahead!!"
Stay safe out there, everybody!
