James Hetfield explains how music gave him an identity
Extroversion is something that is required to be a rock star. When you get on stage in front of thousands of people, being uncommunicative and shy doesn’t exactly work. You have to be able to make connections with fans and listeners who are at the very front and the very back of the bar, theatre, or stadium that you’re playing in. It doesn’t take much, but the best make it look easy. That’s what James Hetfield does every time he takes the stage with Metallica.
It wasn’t always that way. Despite having one of the most distinctive voices in metal, Hetfield was initially uncertain of opening his mouth. “I was pretty much afraid of everything,” Hetfield revealed when he sat down with Guitar Center in 2014. “Afraid of the world, afraid of speaking – a really, really shy kid. Music was a way to speak, as simple as that. I could either just journal, write poetry, write whatever was in my head, and sit down, strum a few chords, and put that together. That’s me, that’s me telling the world about me when I can’t do it on my own. Music was the voice I didn’t have.”
It didn’t take long for the guitar to become Hetfield’s primary way of expressing himself. “There was a kid in my high school, Downey High, who was in the jazz band, who was selling his guitar,” Hetfield said. “I think it was a ‘69 [Gibson] SG, with the tremolo. He wanted to sell and he said, ‘Do you want it?’ and I said, ‘Yeah! How much do you want for it?’ He said, ‘200 bucks’. So I begged my mom, did chores, did whatever I could, and she bought me my first real guitar.”
Hetfield soon joined a cover band in his school, with one band, in particular, getting frequent plays. “Black Sabbath was the band that just totally lit me up,” Hetfield added. “So heavy, so moving. I sunk right into that. I could close my eyes and be in there.” It didn’t take long for Hetfield to gain skill on the guitar, and when his bandmates didn’t express interest in writing their own material, that’s when Hetfield began searching for new players.
Hetfield explained that, by the next school year, he had grown his hair long. As he was preparing to play for the school’s football team, the head coach told him that he had to either cut his hair or get cut from the team. “Right then it was one of those forks in the road that was pretty pivotal in my life that I had no clue about,” Hetfield said. “I kinda just said, ‘Screw this. Do I want to be second string, playing football, or do I want to be up on stage with a mission?’ Speaking through music. I didn’t know it at the time but it was pretty much the right choice.”
Check out Hetfield talking about his origins in music down below.
