Country Music Artist KEITH URBAN Reveals He Was Once in a Metal Band

Apparently, before Australian-American country superstar Keith Urban became known for his uniquely pop brand of country music, Urban originally dabbled in heavy metal. In a recent interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that was reported on by Loudwire, Urban revealed that, in his younger days, he played guitar in a metal band called Fractured Mirror, which was named after the instrumental track that closes out former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley’s self-titled solo album in 1978.

Urban recounted on the show that, even though he was primarily raised on country music, he got into Iron Maiden around 15 or 16, leading to him joining Fractured Mirror as a guitarist. But it was also around the time that Urban became interested in bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs and his “chicken picking” style, which clashed with what Fractured Mirror was trying to do.

“I’m suddenly into that, and I’m in this band, and we’re doing this full-on Saxon song,” Urban recounted during the interview. “They throw me a solo and I’m chicken picking it. The lead singer looks around like, ‘What the?’… They fired me.”

Urban didn’t explain what happened to Fractured Mirror after he was allegedly fired for chicken picking a Saxon cover. Loudwire pointed out that there is a band out of Indiana with that band name, although the likelihood of that being the band that Urban was talking about is extremely low. Besides the fact that the members of that Fractured Mirror look a little young to have been around in approximately 1983, when Urban would have been the age mentioned in his story. Furthermore, Urban would have still been living in Australia at the time he was in Fractured Mirror. It would be a nice addendum to his story to find out that Fractured Mirror went on to success without Urban, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened.