The singer who had no faith in Metallica: “Never going to go anywhere”
There was no way Metallica was going to rest until they were one of the biggest bands in the world.
Heavy metal may not have been a household name at all when the band first started, but looking at the way that all of them approached their craft, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield seemed hellbent on making the kind of tunes that would make anyone appreciate what the genre was all about. But that’s not to say that they had everything completely ready the first time that they made a record.
In fact, there’s debate whether they even have their shit together to this day. Ulrich is still coming under fire today for being a bad drummer compared to the Dave Lombardos of the world, but a lot of what Ulrich did was about more than proper technique. He could lay down a groove when he wanted, but half of their thrash heyday was about trying to play the most notes before anyone even knew what hit them.
He was flying all across his kit in the early days, so Hetfield was practically the one keeping time every single time they played. His rhythm guitar skills were practically superhuman when they first started, but when you look at the kind of tunes that they were working with on Kill Em All, there wasn’t a chance that they were going to be giving the REO Speedwagons of the world a run for their money on the radio.
I mean, think about it for a second. The closest thing to a “single” on the record would have been something like ‘Motorbreath’, and while that tune does have a catchy hook behind it, it wasn’t exactly pretty enough to hold its own on the top 40. Most people didn’t really know what they had on their hands here, and even when working with fellow heavy metal legends like Twisted Sister, the band still couldn’t catch a break.
The New York veterans had been slaving away on the club circuit for years at a time playing glam rock, and since Metallica were virtually the opposite of them in every way, frontman Dee Snider said that there was no way in hell that they would be famous, saying, “They had just come over, and I was doing my makeup like I always was. This is a classic case of nobody gets it right all the time. I clearly remember sitting on the side of the stage watching Metallica with [bassist] Marc Mendoza and turning to him and saying, ‘These guys got a lot of heart, but they’re never going to go anywhere.’”
Then again, Snider wouldn’t have been off base for thinking that. The entire metal industry was starting to pivot towards pretty boys, and with no disrespect meant to any member of Metallica, but it’s not like they were going to be able to pull off the teased hair and spandex look every single time they got up onstage. They were authentic, and if they were going to become legends, they were going to earn their stripes on the road.
So for the next decade of their career, the band got to become legends the old-fashioned way: one gig at a time. There were plenty of people who were on board once Kill Em All, but no matter how many metal purists claim that the band sold out by having the gall to write a song with acoustic guitar on it, their journey from clubs into arenas without a single video to their name in the late 1980s was unheard of at the time.
But that always came from the punk rock ethos that they always had. Twisted Sister was coming from a different place entirely whenever they made their records, but even if all of them could have some fun playing the dirtiest riffs ever made, Metallica were always going to do things their way and not take shit from anyone.
