The bands James Hetfield said Metallica shouldn’t have stolen from
According to James Hetfield, Metallica’s failures and mishaps are best dealt with by exercising a sense of humour. As he once said of their Load backlash, “You either laugh about it, or you get wound up”.
Although simple, this mindset is actually the secret ingredient to keeping a sensible head during periods of intense scrutiny, and for Metallica, these periods mostly occurred around the release of Load and Reload, when casual listeners and loyal fans alike felt like they’d lost their authenticity by going along with whatever sound and image was popular at the time.
This was a fairly accurate analysis – as Hetfield himself once admitted, they were doing just that: going along with the “cultural zeitgeist” and changing their aesthetic based on what many other rock bands were doing at the time. In turn, most people saw straight through it and wondered why they’d decided to head in such a controversial direction when they had nothing at all to prove.
However, both Hetfield and Lars Ulrich have both implied that their views about this decision shifted with the benefit of hindsight, and, at the time, they were merely following what they genuinely believed was the right thing to do for the band, because after all, every successful band needs to progress and develop artistically to keep things fresh and exciting, and it’s clear that Metallica thought they were taking the right steps to do just that.
Obviously, though, the payoff wasn’t as worthwhile as they’d hoped. Instead, they were subjected to intense criticism about virtually everything, from the sound of the records to their hairstyles at the time (mainly the latter). According to Hetfield, though, the hair wasn’t his doing at all. That, he pins down to the poor choices made by two other members of the band: Ulrich and Kirk Hammett.
Discussing this period of time with Playboy in 2001, Hetfield discussed their change from their classic denim and mullet attire to short hair and so-called “cool” clothes during the Load period, claiming the entire thing was “just a phase” and joked about potentially doing something “even more extreme in the future”.
He then said that he “let” Ulrich and Hammett “take over” their image, which he regrets because he can’t stand to look at that period of time. Recalling the response from others, he also said that fans used to say, “What happened to Metallica, the rebel, longhair, greasy-biker, fuck-you band?” and alluded to the fact they stole ideas from bands like U2, Stone Temple Pilots and others that “rely on an image” and little else.
He went on, explaining that his main takeaway from all of this was how “stupid” it was to try to mirror what others were doing, because, well, they’re Metallica, and they don’t need to do much to prove their value, so long as they remain honest. Then he shared his general mantra, whenever anything similar happens, admitting that a sense of humour is often the best way to deal with such regrets.
Still, as foolish as those periods of time seem now, the learning curve arguably made it worthwhile. After all, Metallica learned from then on out that doing something that’s not entirely them will rarely pay off, a lesson they no doubt carried with them across most of their following records. Load and Reload might have been embarrassing to endure and reflect on, but it reinstated everything they’re good for, and more importantly, everything they’re not.
