James Hetfield’s favourite Black Sabbath song
When Metallica had the honour of inducting Black Sabbath into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, drummer Lars Ulrich claimed that if there was no Sabbath, there would be no Metallica. In fact, he said the entire landscape of hard rock and heavy metal would look entirely different. As he put it: “If there was no Black Sabbath, I could possibly still be a morning newspaper delivery boy.”
Although Ulrich and lead singer and guitarist James Hetfield have had a fraught relationship over their years in Metallica, a shared love for Sabbath has consistently united the two. Both were heavily influenced by British heavy metal, taking its doomy riffs and morose lyrics and injecting it with trash metal speed.
Over the years, Hetfield has extensively praised British bands like UFO, Led Zeppelin, Motörhead and Judas Priest, but remains the most emphatic about his love for the Birmingham foursome, revealing his favourite song of theirs was ‘Black Sabbath’, taken from their self-titled 1970 debut.
Hetfield might have been nine-years-old at the time of its release, but the song stayed with him throughout his entire career. It was a staple of his brother’s record collection, and although he wasn’t old enough to grasp the demonic imagery, it deeply resonated. The song is unsettling and dark, considered by some to be the first doom-metal song ever created, and as Hetfield told Rolling Stone, “scared the shit” out of him because it was “beyond heavy”.
He decided to mention that moment when he inducted the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, initially planning on saying something to the tune of: “Black Sabbath is mammoth riffs with menacing lyrics that made me oh so happy.” That was the extent of his speech until he realised Bruce Springsteen “kind of upped the ante” with his the year before.
So he resolved to go a little deeper, wanting the audience to picture a well-behaved nine-year-old, desperate to listen to something that would move his soul, a spiel Hetfield thought was “pretty lame” but continued, explaining Sabbath’s riffs “lived inside him, and spoke the feelings he could never put into words”.
The influence of that one thunderous track he loved so much was evident as he closed out his speech. “I realise that without their defining sound, as my friend Lars has said, there would be no Metallica, especially with one James Hetfield,” he said. “Never have I known a more timeless and influential band. They have spread their wonderful disease through generations of musicians.”
