WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: THE BEST OF THE REST OF JAMES HETFIELD ON WINNING ALBUM OF THE YEAR

When I interviewed Metallica’s James Hetfield to tell him to he won Revolver’s Album of the Year (announced in the issue on newsstands now) for the band’s latest, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros.), I asked him if he knew what the interview was “about,” wondering if someone had already spilled the beans. He said, “Yeah. About 20 minutes.” Cue the rim shot. Anyway, once we got going, we chatted for far more than that. Turns out, even with all the hoo-ha surrounding how good Death Magnetic is (including ours), Jaymz is keeping everything in perspective. After submitting the interview for the “Victory Lap” that accompanies Mr. Mikael Wood’s fine review in the issue, I thought it would be a waste to let the rest of our conversation disappear into the ether, so I’m including it here. Enjoy. —Associate Editor Kory Grow

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REVOLVER You’re on tour right now. Have you guys been doing anything fun lately?
JAMES HETFIELD Mmm, mostly sleep. [Laughs] We went and saw the Sword play the other night. We don’t really get to see ’em that often. I mean, they are on tour with us, but we got to see ’em in a little club, which was awesome.

I’m guessing it confirmed why you brought them out on tour?
Oh yeah, they’re awesome. I mean, they’re young kids, man, having some fun. Reminded me a little bit of us starting out, you know?

With all the critical praise you’ve been getting, it seems like writing about death has brought a lot of life to the band.
Well, we went through a near death, between the Monster movie, and St. Anger. [Pauses] A lot of clichés apply: “You never realize you’re alive until you almost die,” “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone,” but it’s very, very true, and it’s very true for us. And the gratitude we have for still being together, it shows. It shows on this record. You know, in other interviews, I’ve been saying—we need each other more than we hate each other. It’s as simple as that. And we focused on that instead.

What did it take, personally, between the four of your to make a record like this?
Personally? A lot of respect. A lot of communication, and a lot of focus when we are there. There’s a lot of honesty, and, y’know, giving honest feedback that’s helpful for the project, not just button-pushing and twisting knives. Stuff that’s really honest and will make the project better. And I think we’re all getting a little better at that; our skin is a little thicker, and we’re able to let stuff we don’t think fits bounce off, y’know. And working with Rick Rubin, we learned a lot about that!

You learned about having a thick skin?
Well, you’re putting your heart out there, y’know? And anyone who writes music or writes like you do knows that you put your heart out there with your art. And when someone judges it, of course that’s going to hurt, but you either have to have the confidence of, “Yes, OK, I can make it better,” or “Part of this guy’s statement make’s sense—this part doesn’t,” and roll with it.

Can you give a specific example from one of the songs where you needed a thick skin?
Well, riff-wise, I’m pretty damn confident. But when it comes to lyrics, that’s when it gets even more personal. It’s coming from somewhere, and you’re not really sure where it’s coming from. No matter how external, it’s digested by you; it’s attached to your life somehow. Whether it’s your upbringing or recent events or whatever it may be, it’s attached, and you’ve got to have feeling in it, and that means there’s an opportunity to have feelings hurt.

So when you’re writing lyrics and someone says, “Meh, that’s not so good,” you think, Wow, OK. ’Cause they’re basically saying your life isn’t so great! It feels kind of like that, because you’re putting yourself so far out there. But being up to the challenge—that makes more sense to me. Getting all pissed off and rewriting works in one way, but taking the challenge is always good. So there were quite a few lyric things. There were quite a few on some songs, just as we would do on Lars doing a certain drum roll and say, “Meh, you can do better than that, try a few things.” We did that, where they said, “Those lyrics are OK. Try something else.” There were quite a few on this record. They didn’t sit down and analyze every little thing like Rick did on this record, but I sat at Rick’s house in his bare-bones living room, where he’s got basically a white leather couch and a big-ass stereo, and we sat there and went through it.

We were basically looking for stuff that moved us: “This moved me. That moved me. I don’t know what the Hell these words mean,” you know? Even [the title] Death Magnetic, what the hell is that? I don’t know, but it moves me! It’s got emotion to it! We looked for a lot of that, and through the past, even the earlier records had a lot of that cryptic attraction. You didn’t know exactly what it was, but the minute you sang it or felt it, you knew what it meant.