“Scared to pick up a guitar”: The Metallica album James Hetfield was terrified of
Getting over the hurdle of making an album is usually the hardest part of any band’s career. There might be a few guitars that need to get slammed down in frustration, but once someone lands on those few magical notes of a hit, it makes everything worth it when the record starts selling in droves. While James Hetfield could usually take any of his riffs and spin it into gold with Metallica, he remembered that he came back to working on this album absolutely terrified of what would happen.
This is strange, considering Hetfield’s reputation as one of the biggest badasses in metal history. While he had already been known as one of the most insane rhythm guitars in metal on Master of Puppets, he managed to keep up that demeanour throughout The Black Album, which made him sound even more menacing on tracks like ‘Sad But True’ and ‘Wherever I May Roam’.
Once the thrash icons finished their Load period of albums, it was clear that they needed to switch things up. Their attempt at being a glorified hard rock band didn’t quite work out, but when they began working on their first album of new material after S&M, things fell apart as soon as Jason Newsted announced that he was quitting.
Since they had bullied him throughout his time in the group, bringing in a therapist to help with everything only made things worse for Hetfield. Outside of him putting up a wall between himself and his bandmates, his problems with drinking were getting more out of hand during sessions, leading to a massive argument where he stormed out of the studio and didn’t return to the band for almost a year while he went to rehab.
While there was pretty much radio silence from Hetfield throughout that period, it wouldn’t be one big makeup session when he returned. He had been put through the emotional wringer after going to rehab. When he finally stepped into the studio, he was a completely different person and in a completely different headspace than he used to be in as the metal gunslinger.
In the documentary Some Kind of Monster, Hetfield even admitted that he was horrified that he may have lost that spark that he had when he first started writing songs, saying, “I was scared to pick up a guitar for fear of what would happen? Would I not like it? Would I love it? Would I be able to think of anything cool?.”
Even though the band welcomed him back with open arms, many of those therapeutic sessions got a bit too real on the final record. No matter how you look at it, St Anger is one of the worst albums in modern metal, especially since most of Hetfield’s vocal performances are about him dealing with his emotional issues while the rest of the mix sounds like absolute garbage around his voice.
Then again, St Anger isn’t an album that seems like it’s meant to have one singular fanbase. This was a record made to make sure that the group could still play music together, and even if it led to countless headaches among thousands of fans, we should still be grateful that we were able to get new music from them afterwards.
