Music

Drowning Pool desperate to hire 82-year-old singer

by Jesse Locke

Earlier this week, a retired aerospace engineer who worked on the Hubble Telescope hit a new career high when he performed Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” on America’s Got Talent. 82-year-old khaki/karaoke enthusiast John Hetlinger won over the crowd, judges, and the Texas nu metal group themselves.

“I would love to have him come out onstage and sing a song with us,” Drowning Pool guitarist C.J. Pierce told Billboard. “We had a guest onstage with us last week, Aidan Fisher; he is 13 years old and plays guitar. He was amazing, so we had him up to play ‘Bodies.’ So I would love to have John up there singing a song with us.”

Shortly after the release of their 2002 debut Sinner (which went platinum on the strength of “Bodies”), Drowning Pool’s original singer Dave Williams suddenly died of heart disease. They’ve cycled through a few frontmen since then, with Jasen Moreno currently holding down the lead growler position for their latest album Hallelujah and 2016 tour dates. Now, the band is desperate to get the octogenarian Hetlinger onstage with them, and they even have a date in mind.

So how do they hope to recruit the nu metal answer to the Grindmother? They’re going to snatch him in a van like Blue from Old School, proving they really have been frozen in time since the early 2000s.

“We got friends in Colorado and Denver [who said], ‘We’ll go track him down, we’ll go pick him up'” Pierce said. “I told them to go pick him up like in that movie Old School where they pulled up in that black van blaring Metallica and they grabbed Blue,” he laughs. “I think they should go pull up with Metallica blasting and go pick up John and bring him to the airport and we’ll go do a show.”

Watch Hetlinger’s original performance below:

[h/t Billboard]