The Metallica song that made James Hetfield cry
Metallica was never a band that concerned itself with personal feelings. Most of the time, the band were more likely to talk about the darkest parts of the human psyche and usually made their audience make their own interpretations of how they should feel, like the man locked in an insane asylum in ‘Welcome Home’ or the war casualty clinging to life on ‘One’. Although James Hetfield was more inclined to sing about the most pitch-black subjects he could think of, the song ‘Bleeding Me’ had the power to bring him to his knees.
For the first half of the band’s career, though, the lyrics were easily the least important part of the song. While there would be the occasional cool lyric sprinkled throughout a song, it’s hard to take a track like ‘Whiplash’ seriously when you realise that it’s all about headbanging along to your favourite metal band.
After the band grew up on Ride the Lightning, Hetfield began expanding his craft past songs about heavy metal. Outside of the crushing songs like ‘Fight Fire With Fire’, ‘Fade to Black’ became one of the band’s most beloved ballads, featuring Hetfield telling a tragic story of someone who is suicidal and eventually ends up taking their own life.
If hardened metal fans may have been confused hearing a ballad on a Metallica record, they were in for a big surprise for the next few albums. Although tracks like ‘One’ blended the heavy and the light side of what the group could do, The Black Album marked a distinct pivot towards rock music, featuring the amazing production of Bob Rock.
Outside of singing about war and death, Hetfield also expanded his craft on The Black Album, eventually talking about his inner feelings on tracks like ‘The Unforgiven’ and ‘Nothing Else Matters’. Even though Hetfield’s heartfelt songs resonated with millions of people, they started to stray away from metal on albums like Load and Reload.
Fresh off the alternative revolution, the band made the closest thing to a hard rock record that they could on these twin albums, featuring songs with hints of Southern boogie and 1970s-style rock guitars. Although many a metalhead lost their lunches when hearing songs like ‘Until It Sleeps’ for the first time, Hetfield got candid about his personal struggles on ‘Bleeding Me’.
Still in the throes of alcoholism, Hetfield penned this song about his struggles, lamenting how his dark side keeps sucking the life out of him. Starting at a slow tempo, the whole song feels like you’re watching Hetfield exorcise his demons while singing, trying his best to keep his demons at bay.
To this day, Hetfield still felt the song was one of his most heart-wrenching tunes, saying, “The song ‘Bleeding Me’ is about that: I was trying to bleed out all bad, get the evil out. While I was going through therapy, I discovered some ugly stuff in there. I could be singing ‘Bleeding Me’ with a tear in my eye, and the rest of the guys might not have cared.”
This kind of pain would become hauntingly prophetic later when Hetfield checked himself into rehab during the recording of the album St Anger. He may have waited a few years to confront his troubles, but ‘Bleeding Me’ was Hetfield’s first honest attempt at cleansing his soul through music.
