WHEN Metallica released Load in the spring of 1996

Interview With James Hetfield

WHEN Metallica released Load in the spring of 1996, longtime fans and interested observers alike didn't know quite what to make of it, or more importantly, what to make of the band they saw before them. Short haircuts, flashy clothes, a headlining spot on the modern-rock fest Lollapalooza--this was not your older brother's Metallica. And, much to their chagrin, the four horsemen of hard rock found themselves answering more for their haberdashery than for their music--which, in hindsight, was some of the group's most adventurous yet. A year and a half later, Metallica--singer-guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Jason Newsted--has weathered that storm and, through a series of explosive concert performances, re-established some of its credibility with the headbangers. Last week, the band released Re-Load, a collection of songs begun during the Load sessions that's even more ambitious than its predecessor. As Metallica matures,
the band continues to explore intricate layers of sound, loops, slinkier grooves, and new avenues of guitar interplay between Hetfield and Hammett. Hetfield's lyrics are mining even deeper psychological terrain, and the album ushers in the heretofore unheard-of presence of extra musicians, including Marianne Faithfull, who sings on the first single, "The Memory Remains," and the hurdy-gurdy and other string players on the acoustic-flavored song "Low Man's Lyric." Acoustic Metallica? This is really not your older brother's Metallica, and that's shaking a few hardcore fans down to their foundations. Which, Hetfield tells Wall of Sound, is something he couldn't be happier about. It seems like the whole Load and Re-Load project has been about redefining Metallica, both for the band itself and for your fans." It always starts out for us and obviously it kinds of spreads to everyone else. But everything we do is for us; we really are and always have been selfish bastards. We need to do this for ourselves."
Q:How did you react to the initial response to Load, which was kind of ambivalent?
Hetfield:It was a little disheartening at the beginning, but as time went on, I found it more and more humorous, how someone could take so much attention away from the music and put it onto a haircut or a fuzzy jacket. I mean, "Bleeding Me" is, I think, some of my better lyrics of all time, and what are they talking about? They're talking about Lars's fuzzy jacket. It kind of let me down; humanity let me down right there for a minute. [Laughs.] I think it overshadowed a lot of cool music on there. But so be it; that's people's reaction. You can't change it. Perhaps there were so many different things going on that people couldn't quite get a grip on it, so they started focusing on other things.

Q:Do you sometimes feel like Metallica is trapped in a box--a black album box, maybe?
Hetfield:Well, we hate boxes, be it the thrash-metal box, the speed-metal box, the heavy-metal box, whatever box. [Laughs.] We don't like being closed in. We gotta move on. The black album [1991's Metallica] just did its thing; it was amazing for the time and place and everything. But you can't live off of that and try to re-create that the rest of your career. You have to move on and try things. We weren't gonna do the black album, part two, that's for sure.
Q:Do you feel like that's what people want?
Hetfield:Oh, people want us to do Kill 'Em All, Part Twelve or part seven it would be now. It can't be. We grow. We grow and move.
Q:You're married now and have a child on the way. I assume that gives you a greater richness of experience in your own life
from which to draw for song material.
Hetfield:Yeah, definitely. Without even thinking about it or trying to incorporate the two, evolution as an individual plays into the new set of lyrics. People ask me, "Wow, on your hunting trips, doesn't that give you inspiration to write?" I don't do it like that. It comes a little more subliminally, not "Now I'm out in the wilderness, I'm going to write about a tree." I don't get inspired by things like that. It's all pretty much from within. It has to kind of get in there first.
Q:Speaking of hunting, if you and Ted Nugent went into the woods, who would have the better kill?
Hetfield:Who would survive, you mean. There's no doubt--Ted, because he would shoot everything. I'd never get a shot off. [Laughs.] Ted's pretty intense, put it that way. I love hunting; I love getting away and the quiet part of it all. I think he's a little opposite of that--whack 'em and stack 'em.
Q:"Low Man's Lyric" is quite a departure for Metallica.
Hetfield:I'm really into Tom Waits and the real stripped-down sound he gets, making music out of things that shouldn't make music. We ended up rerecording the song, getting Lars to play a tambourine instead of a snare. We had a hurdy-gurdy man in the studio. We had a violinist there, too. We'd never had other musicians in the studio before. It was intense but liberating in a
way; it was so loose and so fun that we all really learned a bit about ourselves in that session. I would love to explore more of that.
Q:What was Marianne Faithfull like to work with on "Memory Remains?"
Hetfield:I wasn't too familiar with her work at all, and Bob [Rock, Re-Load's producer]gave me this Twentieth Century Blues album, which was the thing she had toured on last. It had this real barroom vibe; you could just feel the vibe on there, and her voice was exactly what we needed. It was weathered in a cool way; you could smell cigarettes coming off the CD. She's quite a character, and I love that. She could sit and tell stories for days. But she's a very, very elegant and pleasant woman, really kind of "been there and done that." Experience just sits there in the chair. You could learn a lot from that.
Q:So where does Metallica go next?
Hetfield:Well, I don't know, and I don't want to know. I see us expanding. Having these other musicians, it turned me on. It was very cool. Who knows if we're gonna try more of that. We just did this Neil Young acoustic thing, which was a pretty cool challenge as well. So we just have to sit down and figure out what we want to try and do. Incorporating acoustic into the show, who knows? We'll just have to see what feels right.
Q:Was the Bridge concert [with Neil Young] a weird experience?
Hetfield:Yeah, because I had wound myself into thinking "Metallica's not an acoustic band." I love playing acoustic. I don't know how we can gel as a band acoustically; we're not the best jamming band. We're getting better at it, but acoustic jamming is a whole new thing. It really shows where your skill lies. You can't hide behind anything. So I was a little afraid of how miserable it could be. Not just for us; I mean, I don't mind sitting there failing at something. At least I'm doing it. But having to sit there and listen to it is probably not very fun. But the thing came together cool. We just sat in a room
and started playing--"Let's try 'Four Horsemen,' let's do that"--and ended up doing some songs in different styles, different ways. So I kinda went in with too serious of an attitude, and the gig itself was very loose. I'm glad it was, because it allowed us to be a little more comfortable.
Q:What kind of tour plans do you have for 1998?
Hetfield:We're starting off in the places we haven't been yet: the Pacific Rim, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, some places we hopefully haven't been before. I think we're hitting up the States in spring- summer, so we're going to be doing probably some sheds, the amphitheaters.
Q:You finished your shows on the Load tour with roadies falling out of the lighting rig and catching on fire. How many
people who saw that thought it was real?
Hetfield:There were quite a few posts on the Internet that were just humorous to read. There were some people that took it hard; some other people you could not fool. It was just a fun piss-take on ourselves and our hugeness--"Look, it all falls apart! They've gone too far.'' It was pretty cool, and it worked, no matter what people thought. There were a few out there
who thought, "Oh, I'm not going to be a Metallica fan anymore because you scared me." That's also pretty humorous to me.
Q:Did you have any mishaps during the tour?
Hetfield:Oh yeah, there were a few things that went wrong. A guy didn't exactly catch on fire, but an explosion went off in his face at one point at a rehearsal. And the guy who was swinging out of the truss, he actually really did go into the P.A. and cut his head open, fun stuff like that. He had gotten so into this thing that he had blood packs and he was dripping onto the floor. I
saw the blood, and it was real blood. So we called him "Stitches" at one point, because he had stitches--actually, staples--in his head. So there was some real live stuff going on, but really fun. The crew were loving it; I'm glad they went for it.
Q:So how's married life?
Hetfield:You know, it's not as different as I thought, which is kind of disappointing. But it's fine. Everyone said, "Oh, your life is going to be totally different," and it's the same. Which is good, in a way.

Q:With you and Lars both married, does that impact the material, and life in the band in general?
Hetfield:Yeah, it does. I think there's a lot more agreement that, "Gee, the tour doesn't have to be two years long." Ten years ago, it was "You're bringing your girlfriend on the road? Fuck you, pussy!" Shit like that. It's more embraced now, like, "Wow, there's a family starting here," and "Wow, that's so cool." Just overall acceptance to other parts of life. But Metallica is the number-one love for us, and all the women in our lives know that.
Q:Finally, what do you make of the state of hard rock these days? You guys are doing fine, but Soundgarden is no more, Alice in Chains is close to that point, and Guns N' Roses is MIA. What's going on?
Hetfield:You know, I search and search for something I like, and I hate doing that. Something sneaks up on me all the time, like a Soundgarden, like an Alice in Chains, like a Rocket From the Crypt, which is this band I just fell in love with for quite awhile. I'm waiting for the next one; it's not there yet. It's sad that some of those bands aren't kicking around anymore. I listen to the radio and get really disgusted; it's saturated with the same crap over and over. It's turning into like what we used to hate in the eighties. It's got to fall at some point. It's becoming bland and too mixed up--put a violin in with the heaviest bass sound on the planet; combining all these sounds that don't belong. I don't know, but something's gonna shine through again.

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