“I can’t sing that”: The one note James Hetfield thought was impossible to hit
Heavy metal has never been a genre with a heavy emphasis on Freddie Mercury-style vocals. Although Rob Halford and Ronnie James Dio have shown the world what virtuosos could be like with heavy guitars behind them, there are even more vocalists who see the lyrics as another percussive instrument in the group, usually spitting out tales of carnage and bloodshed like they’re trying to assault the listener’s senses with every word. While James Hetfield started off in that style before taking better care of his voice, that didn’t mean that every single Metallica song was suddenly easy to sing.
Because when you think about it, Hetfield was never cut out to be the lead singer in the first place. His strength was always in writing the perfect riff for whatever the song needed, and considering how well songs like ‘The Four Horsemen’ worked with that swinging riff, he was practically serving as the melodic drummer alongside Lars Ulrich whenever he started playing.
And listening to Kill Em All, it’s safe to say that he wasn’t exactly going for technique. Out of all of Metallica’s core studio albums, this is most likely the one that gives him the most trouble singing now, with most of the songs being made up of shrill attempts at him trying to scream and the odd moment where he sounds like a teenager who hadn’t quite hit puberty yet.
While Hetfield admitted that the band were looking for replacement singers up until making Master of Puppets, there was always something special about the way he approached his ballads. ‘Fade to Black’ may have been greeted with confusion by people who wanted headbanging riffs, but by the time the band started making their slower moments on Master of Puppets, those melodic sections became iconic, like the dual guitar solo in the middle of the title track.
If ‘Fade to Black’ was the beginning of dark subject matter, ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ was an entirely different matter. Whereas the former was about someone contemplating taking their own life, this tale through the mind of a mentally ill patient in a mental hospital is ripped straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, culminating in the final verse where Hetfield sings about breaking himself out and killing everyone in his wake.
It’s easy to hear the pure hurt and anger in his voice, but a lot of that was coming from the fact that he wrote a note that was impossible for him to hit properly, saying, “It was a really high part. I’m like, ‘I can’t sing that’. And [producer] Fleming [Rasmussen] says, ‘Well, James, you knew this was coming. What are you going to do about it?’ I was just like, ‘Fuck!’”
When listening to the track in isolation, though, the beauty of it comes from how imprecise it is. Hetfield had yet to take the singing lessons that led to him taking care of his voice, but hearing him sing this song about someone losing their mind puts the listener in that mental state for a quick second every time he hits that note.
Then again, if this was the process for him getting the vocals right, it’s no big surprise that he ended up blowing his voice out one album later. Because if this was considered challenging, And Justice For All is the sound of vocal cords on their last legs and ready to burn out.
