Surprisingly enough, Britney Spears former backing guitarist doesn’t come from a pop background, but rather, used to dabble in metal music.
“I was playing in a hair metal tribute band,” shared Zach Comtois, who played with Spears for the full run of her Las Vegas residency, on Rob Scallon’s YouTube channel.
The guitarist revealed that he met Spears through another member of the hair metal tribute band.
“I didn’t know this at the time. But the keyboard player of that band was the musical director for Britney Spears. Yeah, success is where preparation meets opportunity, right?
“All I knew about these guys was that they were killer players. And I just had fun playing that kind of music. Shred metal music from the ’80s and ’70s, like all of the notes on the entire fretboard,” he said.
Comtois said that the keyboard player auditoined him for Spears’ band without him knowing.
“The keyboard player of the band started to like, put me through little tests. [He would] text me and be like ‘Oh, tonight, can you learn this song, this song, this song, this song, this song.’ Like give me like five songs to learn.
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“And I’d be like ‘Sure.’ [He was] auditioning me without me knowing it. Unbeknownst to me, he had already kind of been in touch with management and production for the Vegas residency, which started in 2013,” he said.
Comparing his experience playing in an unknown metal band to playing with one of the world’s biggest pop stars, Comtois said he didn’t’ realise the magnitude of the gig until he was up on stage.
“[Once] you’re on stage. And you’re in front of that crowd that you’re like, ‘Whoa, this is different.’ Any gig I’ve done my entire career, whether it’s a backyard birthday party for 20 people, or it’s 60,000 people in a park in the middle of Israel. Like, I tried to approach it the same way every time,” he said.
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