METALLICA: THE BEST OF THE REST

Sometimes after interviewing and hanging out with a band for a big feature, you come back, look over your notes, listen back to your tapes, and you’re like, Shit, I got nothin’. What the hell am I gonna put in this story? Then there are times, when you have such a wealth of material that you’re like, What the hell am I gonna leave out? Such was the case when I returned from spending two days with Metallica down in Nashville, Tennessee, for our cover story on them in the new issue of Revolver, on newsstands everywhere now. From hours of interviews to endless anecdotes (like the time, during our photo shoot, that Lars’ youngest son popped in and asked his dad why he was wearing makeup. Lars explained that everyone wears a little powder and touch-up for shoots, to which little Ulrich responded: “That’s sad.” Everyone in the room laughed, and Lars sighed, “Thanks. Way to make me feel less like a sad, old man.”), whittling all the material down to a tight, streamlined story was tough. But thanks to the Interweb, all the extra shit need not go to waste. So I’ll be posting the best of the rest of my chats with the Metallica dudes right here, a different dude each week—so make sure and check back. First up was the newest member of the band, bassist Rob Trujillo; next, longtime lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, and then drummer Lars Ulrich. Finally, up now, frontman James Hetfield. —Executive Editor Brandon Geist

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REVOLVER When’s the last time you played a venue this size? [At the time of this interview, Metallica had just finished playing an approximately 150-person-capacity Nashville, Tennessee, club called the Basement…which you should know already, if you’ve read the Revolver cover story.]
JAMES HETFIELD Let’s see. That size. Let’s see. Metal Joe’s Basement—that was actually a basement. I guess the Fillmore is not that small for sure. What’s the last time we played…I mean, that just totally reminded me of Kill ’Em All, completely. You know, you can only play a little more than 45 minutes, supporting Raven on the “Kill ’Em All For One” tour, in ’83, going across the States in a Winnebago. I think we played probably 45 minutes, something like that, before them. Sweaty, hot, just fun. Couldn’t hear what the hell I’m singing. Couldn’t hear anything except volume.

I was talking to that guy [Ron from New York…again, read the cover story] that you called out during the show, who followed you guys through Europe. He told me that this was his 102nd Metallica show.
It’s bordering psycho. [Laughs] It’s kind of scaring me. You know, it’s like, Dude, don’t you have a girlfriend or something? You know, settle down somewhere. I was joking with him, saying “Where is everyone from?” and I was like, “You don’t know where you’re from; you’re all over the place.” But it is so unbelievably cool to walk out onto the stage—besides just walking on the stage, how cool that is—and you see this guy down in the front, and he’s been to, like you said, the last hundred-and-something odd shows and has not missed a show. And you look down and there he is, Ron in his wife-beater, right in the front. He’s got this lockdown technique where no one gets around him or by him. He just locks down, and there he is up against the barricade. He’s rocking the whole time. He’s a pretty big guy, so he can get up there, but he beats us to the shows. I was like, How do you get there? We leave before you and you’re there before us. That’s crazy. That’s dedication.

One of the things that really struck me about this show was the almost family-like vibe. Almost as soon as you guys came in and started interacting with the crew and with the fans and with each other, and then interacting onstage as a band, it really felt like a get-together of this big—or not so big, in this case—extended Metallica family. Is that sort of how you feel about it?
Oh, yeah. We’re all there for the same reason. We’re looking for happiness and a release and some kind of an acceptance in a group, you know. We’re all having a blast, and the music brings it, you know. And the energy that just goes back and forth, you know, you can’t describe it. I don’t know where you could create that anywhere else. Some other artists, say, that paint or create sculptures or do something, their ultimate thing is that they finally finished their sculpture and they go put it into a room, you know, and people come by and look at it. I guess that’s the ultimate for them, but for us, you know, we create a song that is in us, and it moves with us. And we play it, and people take it with them. And it creates certain feelings. It’s something that they get to do, too. You know, they get to sing it and, you know, this is…I can’t think of anything better to do in life.

I know that the mission statement behind this new album was to kind of try to tap into the early hunger of albums like Master of Puppets. But obviously, that’s kind of impossible to do, so what is the hunger now? What, if anything, does Metallica feel like they need to prove now?
What do we need to prove? We need to prove that it lives in us. It’s not so much our career; it is our life. Besides being a dad and being a loving family, I don’t know what else I would do. If I wasn’t doing this, I would be trying to do it, simple as that. What are we hungry for? There’s always something: the hunger to write the better album, the hunger to write the better song, create the ultimate lyric, get the ultimate guitar sound. I mean, I’m never satisfied. I go back and listen to some of these records and go, Man, no, no. Yeah, the songs are good, but the sounds…. Always, always striving for the better something. Some of it’s the perfectionist in us. Then I guess also the other thing is survival. A band like us being together, you know, 26, 27 years. It doesn’t happen every day. There’s not a whole lot of bands that can claim that. We’re pretty fortunate we’ve stayed kind of a household name for that amount of time, and to still be loving it and doing it and being pretty much the same guys in the band, and we’re sitting here on a bus doing it again. [Both laugh] It is a nicer bus than in 1983. We have doors that I push a button, they go woop, they close; you’ve got direcTV; you’ve got high def; you’ve got microwaves. You know, there’s a shower in the bus! [Laughs] Not saying that there aren’t bands out there that pay dues, but this is pretty nice.

Are you guys kind of surprised that this many years later you are still the biggest metal band in the world?
Oh, yes and no. I mean, we don’t take it for granted. It is a huge gift and the dedication that we put into it is what we get out. It’s as simple as that. If you put hard work or hard dedication or, you know, focus your powers and your ideas to something, you’ll get results. If you start taking it for granted, you know, and get absorbed, self-absorbed in the material objects that come to you because of that, then you might not stick around. You know, we’ve gone through those points, each one of us at different times—you know, the Porsche and the this and that. Everyone kind of just slaps each other around and says, “Hey, wake up!” The real thing is the gift of creation and connection with someone that understands your music or needs it for an energy. But, yes and no. We’re somewhat surprised but not, because this is what we wanted to do; Lars and I especially, you know. Lars, in high school, he had drawn that “Metal up your ass.” Thunderfuck, I think, was the name of the band. Metallica, I think, is a little better name. [Laughs] I don’t think Thunderfuck would…I wouldn’t be sitting here having an interview with you after 27 years. But it’s a vision, and it’s still in our vision.

What did you think of Rick Rubin’s mission statement, his mantra of “Go back to what you were thinking with Master of Puppets,” when you guys first started working on this new record?
It’s tough, you know. It’s really tough. We know so much. We know how to get sounds. We know how to manipulate what we need here. We know how to make a song that’s OK into a song that’s pretty good—it might not be great but pretty good. Oh, man, how do we erase the knowledge and do something very, very now but with the essence of Puppets? How do you get the essence of Puppets? Difficult, but OK, we both have egos. Metallica has an ego. Rick Rubin has an ego. Yes, he’s “Zen master” and all of that, but when Rick Rubin shows up, he’s Rick Rubin and he’s coming in. He wants to be respected. I think Metallica in the past has been really good at unshining the ego of others, you know. Stripping people down. It’s kind of one of our things. We worked with Rick long enough we’d probably be doing this, you know, dragging him down. There’s something great about ego obviously, but if it gets in the way of creation then it’s not good. But the guy has got an amazing discography, great track record. It’s not luck. The guy knows what he’s doing. So for us to trust enough, and for us to be able to get as much of our input in there as possible. Every idea was tried. It just took longer.

I have to ask this, as a fan: Did you have much interaction with Rick when you tracked your vocals for the first Danzig record?
Ah, yes. [Thinking] Yeah. Yeah, he was there. That was the first time I actually worked with him. I showed up, I was more in awe of “Hey, that’s Danzig!” I don’t remember what the direction was. “OK, yell it more. OK, try singing it more. OK, try this.” We just did a bunch of different stuff and said, “OK, that’s it.” “OK, thanks. We’ll call you.” [Laughs]

To what extent do you guys keep up with what’s current in metal? And to the extent that you do, why do you do it? Are you a fan of newer stuff? Is it kind of part of your job, do you think, to stay tuned into what’s going on?
That’s pretty interesting. It’s very interesting because I think Lars and Kirk are very knowledgeable magazine-wise. Maybe Kirk because, you know, he’s just obsessive-compulsive. He’s just got to have a magazine all the time, you know: Rolling Stone, or Revolver, or whatever it is, keeping up on all this stuff. And it’s weird because it’s like, yeah, this is my gig, this is my life. But I don’t really read who’s going out with who, and who put out what, or, hey, he’s jamming with that. I kind of hear it secondhand from the guys. I don’t know. There’s probably a part of me that just really despises gossip, and when news and gossip fuse, it kind of bugs me. So, I don’t really keep up with all of this stuff. Just like, if I was a mechanic, would I be reading car magazines all the time? I don’t know. I’m not a mechanic but I like car magazines. There’s some guy that works in a shop, I’m sure he’s reading the metal mags. But I do know what I like. I hear bands. I browse through stuff, hear a name of this band, OK, check ’em out. There is stuff that I really like. And there’s stuff you rediscover, like I’m just going through this phase: The Bay Area was frickin’ amazing in ’84, ’85. That era is like, holy smokes, man. The decade back from Ride the Lightning, it was going on. Obviously before that there was Exodus and all this stuff, but, boy, it was huge, huge then in the Bay Area. We’re so proud of being a part of that and kind of getting nostalgic about it. But this band Machine Head, the two of the guys who were in Vio-lence [frontman Robb Flynn and lead guitarist Phil Demmel], we just did some dates with them over in Europe. And man, I couldn’t get enough. It was unbelievable.

Yeah, they rule.
They’re so heavy, and super-friendly. They get it, and they love it. The last album, The Blackening, unbelievable. Unbelievable sound, power. It sounds like a band on fire. They have really turned it on again for me. And then this band Mnemic, which, you know, I like. We’ve done some other shows with them. There’s a lot of real intense stuff out there that I like. Sometimes vocals really do turn me off, you know.

Yeah, me, too.
It’ll go from [growls] to [in high-pitched voice] la, la, la. And then all of a sudden, whoa, what happened? The pop chorus came in. It’s like, wait a minute, you guys are still a little too attached to nu-metal. It’s like, ugh, it’s so predictable. It gets old very quick. But dude, there are some insane players out there. These, what I call “bedroom guitar players,” you know, obviously DragonForce, stuff like that but not just them. There are so many, and not just guitar players, drummers are blowing me away with their feet, with their hands, they are the Yngwie of drummers. Almost to the point that it’s too good. It’s too unbelievably precise. It’s like, oh no, it’s prog rock again. But it’s unbelievable to hear some of these guys play together.

Well, you guys’ new record seems to be more technical than ever. Is that something where you feel that you were being pushed by this newer generation into proving you could top that, or is it more organic?
I think there’s no lack of that in our catalog. …And Justice for All was kind of our show-off record, I’d say. But just trying to get 16 riff CDs into 11 songs. So we gotta take eight riffs and just shove them into that. That’s not new for us either, trying to shove as many riffs into one song as possible. And that was probably something that I’m guilty of winding Kirk up with. You know, “Wow, did you hear this guitar player? Check it out!” Or seeing these dudes on the instructional videos. “OK, play it faster,” wirrreeww. “OK, faster,”wirr. “OK, faster,” rirrr. Like, holy shit. I think it really made Kirk step up. He’s playing really amazing, again. I think it’s great to hear Kirk doing solos, again. But yeah, there’s the Thin Lizzy dual guitar going on. I’ve always loved doing it. I mean, as soon as [Metallica’s original bassist, the late] Cliff [Burton] showed me what a harmony meant, that was it.