The classic Metallica song James Hetfield called “a fluke”
Over half of the greatest Metallica riffs can be traced back to James Hetfield’s guitar. Throughout thrash metal history, Hetfield has been responsible for reinventing the idea of the traditional rhythm guitar player, often playing insanely fast rhythm parts that often sounded like a machine gun whenever he strapped on his guitar. Although Hetfield was known to stockpile one extraordinary riff after another, he admitted that one of their biggest songs happened purely by accident.
Throughout the band’s first few years, though, Hetfield slowly turned himself into a guitar god without even knowing it. While he never saw the appeal in learning to solo, Hetfield preferred to be the engine of the group, often serving as the timekeeper in the band more often than Lars Ulrich from behind the fretboard.
Despite the massive precision that went into his riffs, the song never suffered for the sake of being too complicated. When writing songs like ‘Master of Puppets’, Hetfield would create hypnotic grooves based around a handful of amazing licks, from the bombastic midsection to riffs that had the potential to tear flesh from bone.
By the time the band started working on And Justice for All, they knew they needed guidance on the following record. Bringing in producer Bob Rock, thanks to his production accolades on albums by Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, the band were concerned with writing songs that were more straightforward, often revolving around a handful of riffs throughout the track.
While Hetfield had a ballad in mind for the album, ‘The Unforgiven’, he eventually stumbled upon a riff while talking with his wife on the phone. Without knowing it, Hetfield was quickly inspired to finish the song while talking on the phone, eventually fleshing it out into the song ‘Nothing Else Matters’.
When talking about the song’s genesis, Hetfield remembered almost being compelled to write the song, telling Classic Albums, “The opening of ‘Nothing Else Matters’ was more or less just a fluke. It started when I was talking on the phone with the guitar on my lap. I was just playing the strings because they were all open strings, *sings the opening melody*. And suddenly, it was like, ‘I gotta go’. And then, starting to do pull-offs and things like that and it started coming together”.
While Hetfield would write the song as a love letter to missing his wife back home, he didn’t consider the song worthy of being on a Metallica record. Since the rest of the album revolved around heavier material like ‘Sad But True’, Hetfield didn’t think about showing the band until Ulrich heard it on one of his riff tapes and thought it would be a great addition to the tracklist.
After adding in a string section, the song would become one of the most grandiose Metallica songs ever recorded, eventually becoming the centrepiece of their shows when playing with The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Even though Hetfield may not have seen ‘Nothing Else Matters’ as a song for Metallica, its addition to The Black Album helped prove that the band was much more than the headbanging riffs.
