“Challenged me”: The artist James Hetfield said challenged him to play better
There’s usually little room for error in any Metallica song. The entire process of them getting a song to sound exactly right involves a lot of overdubbing, and James Hetfield is very meticulous in making sure that every single one of his rhythm guitars sounds absolutely ferocious the minute that it leaps out of the speakers. But when it comes to songwriting in the group, there’s more than one way to get a song to the top of the charts.
When Hetfield first started jamming with Lars Ulrich, though, there were far more avenues to go down, and none of them were the traditional radio format. No one was looking at a song like ‘The Call of Ktulu’ and picturing it breaking into the Top 20 by any stretch of the imagination, but the main appeal was that they were having fun making the music that they wanted, even if that meant tunes that stretched for eight minutes of chugging riffs.
After all, that’s how most of Hetfield’s heroes thought about their music. The unholy trinity of protometal at the time was Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple, and while each of them had their classics, they were far more concerned with framing their albums as massive pieces of work with each song going on for extended jams that lasted however long they wanted them to.
But that’s not to say that the pop charts couldn’t get complicated. Every generation has the typical fluff that clogs up the charts, and while some years have a greater number of forgettable tunes than others, it took a lot of guts for stations to take a chance on something like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ when Hetfield was growing up. Coming from the pop world, though, Elton John seemed like the antithesis of what Metallica were all about.
John was always a true craftsman of his art, and he made sure that every one of Bernie Taupin’s lyrics sounded absolutely gorgeous by the time that he was done. The piano legend also never stopped being a fan of music, occasionally talking up whatever musician he loved at the time and even singling out Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’ as one of the finest songs he had ever heard.
While the band ultimately returned the favour by playing a hardened version of ‘Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding’, Hetfield admitted to taking a lot of lessons from what John had done later, saying, “I get inspired [by] all kinds of different music, listening to it. Even the Elton John thing, hanging out with Elton and Bernie Taupin, challenged me. Watching Rocketman and seeing how they wrote – Elton is such a visionary in the way that Bernie sets a set of lyrics, a poem, in front of him and he sees the music just appearing, which is bizarre to me.”
It’s not like Hetfield doesn’t have the power to be flexible, either. John had always had an affinity for classical music, and considering the knowledge of harmony that Hetfield had when putting together guitar parts, hearing his band performing a letter-perfect rendition of Ennio Morricone’s ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ was another way of him challenging himself in the same way John would do for him later.
So, for all the people that get a bit snobby when talking about the way that Metallica have evolved over the years, Hetfield only sees it as a natural thing for him. Most people can spend their time making as many hits as they can to please their audience, but it’s normally more fun when they take a risk.
