“The epitome of rock and roll” and the reason Metallica exist, according to James Hetfield
Metallica were never going to be satisfied playing traditional rock and roll. By the time James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich had assembled their first songs, what sparked their inspiration came from the new wave of British heavy metal, with bands like Mercyful Fate and Diamond Head becoming staples of their cover setlists.
When it came to the core ethos of rock and roll, Hetfield claimed that one man stood alone as the best example of what the genre could be.
For Hetfield, rock and roll was never defined by labels or subgenres. Whether an artist was described as rock, hard rock or heavy metal mattered far less than the attitude they brought to the stage, and few embodied that spirit more completely than Lemmy Kilmister.
Then again, rock and roll was never that different from what metal was in the beginning. Compared to the usual sounds of metal heard today, the first rock and roll bands were mining a similar aesthetic, creating songs designed to be as loud as possible, like The Who’s ‘My Generation’ or The Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’.
Once the first metal bands began making waves in the rock scene, though, they didn’t even self-identify under that banner. As much as acts like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin may have carried the flag for the genre, they considered themselves hard rock bands rather than progenitors of a new genre.
By the time the late 1970s had started, one other band were on the cusp of creating speed metal. Fresh off of leaving the psychedelic band Hawkwind, Lemmy Kilmister was looking to put together a band that was far heavier than anything that had come before with Motörhead, blending the sounds of Little Richard with the wild sounds of protopunk like The MC5 and The Stooges.
Even though Lemmy would claim that the band was nothing more than a typical rock and roll outfit, the seeds of thrash metal were planted on tracks like ‘Overkill’, featuring the sounds of double bass and Lemmy’s gargled-with-razors vocal delivery. Looking back on his influences as a singer, though, Hetfield would later claim that Lemmy had the most significant impact on him when he became a frontman.
When talking about the frontman’s influence, Hetfield would recall, “He was an inspiration without really knowing him very well. I didn’t know him as well as a lot of other people did. [He was] definitely a mentor in the heavy metal world. He is the epitome of rock and roll to me. Without Motörhead, there’s certainly no Metallica”.
That admiration extended well beyond music. Hetfield and the rest of Metallica frequently spoke of Lemmy’s authenticity, praising his refusal to compromise throughout a career that remained defiantly true to his own vision despite changing musical trends.
It’s easy to see where Hetfield took notes when listening to Motörhead’s deep cuts. Considering how guttural Lemmy’s tone of voice was, Hetfield would use that signature bark on most of Metallica’s most celebrated material, even growing out the famous muttonchops in Lemmy’s style when touring in the late 1980s.
That influence was a two-way street, though, with Motörhead scoring their first Grammy when covering the Metallica song ‘Whiplash’, only for Metallica to return the favour by writing ‘Murder One’ in the frontman’s memory after his passing in 2015. Lemmy may not have been looking to do anything but play rock and roll, but even he couldn’t have predicted that he had an entire genre of music that descended from his music.
Lemmy never seemed particularly interested in his place in music history, preferring to think of Motörhead as a straightforward rock and roll band. Yet his influence reached far beyond that description, inspiring generations of heavier artists who adopted his uncompromising attitude as much as his sound. For Hetfield, that legacy is exactly what makes Lemmy the ultimate embodiment of rock and roll.
