The guitarist James Hetfield called “the best” at playing rhythm
No one really knows what it is that makes some guitarists better than others, except for James Hetfield, whose favourites are usually those who have mastered their own niche.
In music, being a jack of all trades but a master of none isn’t usually enough to make history. There are the prodigies, obviously, like Prince, Paul McCartney, Brian Jones, and so on. But the difference there is that they mastered multiple instruments, genres and innovations. Being slightly good at multiple things, or one thing, on the other hand, just isn’t enough to cut it.
It’s the same with guitar-playing. No one is going to make a name for themselves if they embrace it casually, even less so if they fail to study the greats. It’s probably also why most of our circle of heroes never once picked up a music manual. Jimi Hendrix, for one, was big on feeling from day one. He had laser focus, but his version of becoming a master was the same as most of those we still discuss today – nothing he did was ever half-arsed.
But that’s also a painfully obvious observation. It’s also like saying Metallica revolutionised the hard rock genre because the band had the passion, the drive and know-how to make it work – it’s a bit of a given, even if they were still feeling their way through in the early days. The thing that makes it different is their attitude and humility, of knowing how to make one singular thing great before moving on to the next.
And mostly, for Hetfield, becoming a true master also happens when you know how to go against the grain. Which is also how he discovered many of his own favourites. “Their music was so cool because it was completely anti-hippie,” he once said, discussing Black Sabbath with Guitar World. “I hated The Beatles, Jethro Tull, Love and all that other happy shit.” Early on, Metallica was also about breathing new life into existing tunes, like Venom and Diamond Head.
And taking on those challenges eventually led them to finding their own sound, their own approach and distinctive space in the rock arena. Along the way, Metallica’s raucous thrash riffs and rhythms became their staple, but Hetfield also developed a bone-deep fascination with people who mastered their own heady rhythms, but to a level where it’s hard to describe unless you truly get it.
While he once named his “rhythm gods” as the “guys who just keep it steady”, like Tony Iommi and Malcolm Young, the one who really, genuinely tackled the art of simplicity in a way that stuck was Rudolf Schenker, because he stayed in his own lane, simple as that. “There have obviously been influences that have shaped it somewhat. Listening to Scorpions, I like that he’s just the rhythm guy,” he told Total Guitar. “He’s not trying to be everything. He’s the best at what he did. At the time, he was really percussive in a way.”
Interestingly, Schenker once described Metallica as one of the few acts that managed to transform from a master of none to a true pioneer. His words were a bit scathing, essentially saying they couldn’t play their instruments in the beginning, until one day they could play “extremely well”. Clearly, though, it proved that Hetfield gained that important laser focus that cemented their names as rock gods.
