We are looking at a beast today. I mean, really,
a cultural institution. If you were an alien
landing on Earth and you just, you know, looked
at the sheer volume of stats around this group,
you wouldn't think musicians. No, you'd think
multinational corporation. Or a small country,
maybe. Exactly. We're talking over 163 million
albums sold worldwide. We're talking about, and
this is the one that always gets me, the third
best -selling music artist of the entire SoundScan
era. Which is a massive distinction. I mean,
you have to understand what that means. Since
1991, when they started actually scanning barcodes,
only two artists have sold more albums. Garth
Brooks and the Beatles. Right. So that puts them
in some pretty rarefied air. It's not just about
being a big metal band. It's about being one
of the biggest recording acts of all time. Period.
And they are the first and I believe still the
only band to have played on all seven continents.
Yep. They hauled their amps to Antarctica for
a show called Freeze Them All. Just to check
that final box. It's that level of dedication
or maybe obsession. But here's the thing that
makes this specific deep dive so interesting
to me. We aren't talking about a safe, radio
-friendly pop act. We are not talking about,
you know, a Taylor Swift or a U2. No. Not even
close. We are talking about Metallica. A band
that built an entire empire on aggression. on
songs about insanity and nightmares and drug
addiction and war. They play fast, they look
scary, or at least they used to, and yet somehow
they became these mainstream superstars. That's
the central question, isn't it? It is. The mission
for this deep dive is to figure out how that
happened. How did a tennis -playing drummer from
Denmark and a painfully shy guitarist from a
Christian science family in Los Angeles, how
did they survive tragedy, addiction, and the
internet to become this massive titan of... the
big four. It's a story of paradoxes. I think
that's the only way you can really view it. Yeah.
You have a band that's defined by speed, by thrash
metal, that achieved its greatest commercial
success by slowing down. You have a band that
preaches this intense, almost cult -like brotherhood
and loyalty to the fans, the Metallica family.
Yet they have a history of some of the most bitter
internal and external feuds in all of rock history.
and of course the big one they're the band that
tried to destroy the very technology that eventually
you could argue saved the music industry oh the
napster war yeah we will definitely get deep
into that lawsuit because it didn't just change
the band's image it changed the internet forever
So we've got a massive stack of sources today.
We've pulled the historical timelines, the discography
deep dives, all the feud histories, and the critical
reception records from the archives. But I think
we have to start where all good stories start.
The awkward beginning. The awkward beginning.
Because before they were selling out stadiums
and playing in Antarctica, there were just two
lonely kids in Los Angeles who, frankly, couldn't
find anyone to play with. It's late 1981. And
you really have to understand the context of
Los Angeles at this specific moment. If you're
a guitarist in L .A. in 81, what are you trying
to look like? What are you trying to sound like?
Oh, it's Muttley Crue. It's Rat. It's the birth
of glam. You've got spandex. You've got hairspray.
You've got makeup. The music is all about partying,
girls, and, you know, having a good time on the
Sunset Strip. Precisely. And then you have this
Danish teenager, Lars Ulrich. He'd moved to Newport
Beach from Copenhagen because his dad, Torben
Ulrich, was a professional tennis player. Right.
The plan was for Lars to be a tennis pro, too.
That was the family business. But Lars had this
secret obsession. He wasn't listening to Van
Halen or the bands on the radio. He was completely
consumed by something called the new wave of
British heavy metal. The NWOBHM. Yeah. Bands
like Diamondhead, Saxon, Iron Maiden, Tigers
of Pantang. This was gritty, unpolished, working
class metal from the UK. It was the absolute
opposite of the Sunset Strip vibe. Yeah. Not
even close. So Lars is this total outsider. He's
short. He's got the Danish accent. He's not the
tennis star his dad wants him to be. And he wants
to play this obscure British music that nobody
in California has even heard of. So he does what
you did in 1981. He takes out a classified ad
in a local news. newspaper is a paper called
The Recycler. I love the specificity of this
ad. It didn't just say drummer looking for band.
It was so targeted. It said drummer looking for
other metal musicians to jam with Tigers of Pantang,
Diamondhead and Iron Maiden. He was filtering
out the glam rockers immediately. He was curating
his circle before he even had one. He was essentially
saying, if you don't know who these bands are,
don't even bother calling me. And that ad was
answered by James Hetfield. Now, James was in
many ways the opposite of Lars. He was this quiet,
angry kid from a very strict Christian science
family down in Downey, California. Oil and water.
James was already a phenomenal rhythm guitarist,
but socially. He was introverted, maybe a little
insecure. Lars was. Well, Lars was Lars. All
hustle. The first jam session was, by all accounts,
terrible. A disaster. Yeah. Lars apparently couldn't
really keep time. His cymbals kept falling over.
James just thought he was this weird, spazzy
European kid. But here is the Lars Ulrich hustle
that really defines the band's entire career.
He might not have been the best drummer in the
world at that point, but he was absolutely the
best networker. He had befriended a guy named
Brian Slagle, who was just starting a little
indie label called Mess. Metal Blade Records.
Right. So Lars goes to Slagle and asks him, hey,
if I put a band together, can I get a song on
your new compilation album, Metal Massacre? And
Slagle said yes. Slagle said yes. So Lars had
the record deal or at least the promise of a
slot on a record before he even had a functioning
band. Yeah. That's incredible. It's the ultimate
leverage. He called Hetfield back and basically
said, hey, remember me, the terrible drummer?
Well, I'm going to be on a record. Do you want
to play guitar on it? In 1981. That's the golden
ticket. A slot on vinyl, that's everything. So
they officially formed Metallica on October 28,
1981. That's about five months after they first
met. But we have to talk about the name, Metallica.
It sounds so established now, you know, like
Coca -Cola or Ford, but they almost lost it to
a fanzine. This is another perfect example of
Lars being, well, cutthroat. His friend, a guy
named Ron Quintana, was starting a metal fanzine.
and he had a list of potential names. He asks
Lars for his opinion. The two top choices were
Metal Mania and Metallica. And Lars, you can
just picture the gears turning in his head, realizes
Metallica is the coolest name he's ever heard.
Oh, absolutely. So he immediately tells Ron,
you know what, you should definitely call your
magazine Metal Mania. That's a way better name.
laughs just to get it out of the way so he could
take the other one exactly he just swiped it
i'll take that thank you very much classic so
they have the name they have the drummer and
they have the rhythm guitarist and singer but
that early lineup was let's say volatile we need
to talk about the lead guitar spot because before
there was kirk hammett there was dave mustaine
Dave Mustaine is such a pivotal, almost tragic
figure in this story. He was the original lead
guitarist, and by all accounts, a phenomenal
player. They recruited him partly because he
had really expensive equipment and he could get
them good gigs. But Mustaine was intense. That
seems to be the word everyone uses. To put it
mildly, he was a brilliant player. Very fast,
very technical, very aggressive. But he had a
serious problem with alcohol and violence. He
was completely unpredictable. The stories from
that era are just wild. He'd get drunk and start
fights with the crowd or with the other bands
or with James and Lars. He famously poured an
entire can of beer into the pickups of a rival
band's bass guitar right before they went on
stage. He was a loose cannon. And it got to the
point where Hetfield and Ulrich, who were no
angels themselves, they started to feel unsafe
around him. So this all comes to a head in April
1983. The band has traveled all the way from
California to New York to record their debut
album. Right. And one morning, they just wake
Mustaine up while he's sleeping it off. They
hand him a bus ticket back to Los Angeles and
literally kick him out the door. His gear was
already packed. No warning. No, let's sit down
and talk about this. Nope. It was just, you're
out. The bus leaves in an hour. And that's a
four -day bus ride home. Can you imagine? He
had nothing to do for four days but sit on that
bus and just stew in his anger and his resentment.
And that anger is so important because Mustaine
didn't quit music. He formed his own band Megadeth
for the specific purpose of being faster, heavier,
and more technical than Metallica. So that one
firing created the single greatest rivalry in
thrash metal history. It gave us two of the big
four bands right there. And what's even crazier
is that literally the same afternoon they fired
Mustaine in New York, they were already on the
phone with his replacement. They flew in Kirk
Hammett from a Bay Area band called Exodus. Kirk
was the perfect counterbalance, wasn't he? He
was calm. He was a little bit of a hippie. He
was a student of Jose Triani. He could shred,
but he didn't have that same... violent edge.
Not at all. He basically learned the entire set
list on the flight over from San Francisco to
New York. But we are still missing the final
and maybe most important piece of that classic
lineup, the secret weapon, the bassist, Cliff
Burton. Ah, Cliff. Cliff was different. He was
on another level entirely. Hetfield and Ulrich
saw him playing a show at The Whiskey, a go -go
in LA, with his band at the time, a group called
Trauma. And they hear this sound, right? This
insane, distorted solo. Yeah, this crazy wah
-wah distortion solo. And they look at the stage,
expecting to see some amazing lead guitarist.
But instead, they see this guy in bell -bottoms,
just head -banging like a maniac with a Rickenbacker
bass. He was playing the solo on his bass using
a wah -wah pedal, which is, that's technically
bizarre, isn't it? The bass is supposed to be
the anchor, the low end. The wah is for the crying,
screaming lead guitar solos. Exactly. Cliff played
the bass like a lead instrument. He had classical
training. He understood harmony and melody in
a way that James and Lars, who were more about
brute force, just didn't yet. They were completely
blown away. So they begged him to join the band.
They did. But Cliff was a Northern California
guy through and through, a real Bay Area dude.
He hated L .A. He hated the whole glam scene.
So he told them, look, I'll join your band, but
only on one condition. You have to move. You
have to move your entire operation from LA up
to the San Francisco Bay Area. That is such a
power move. Move your entire lives and the band's
headquarters 400 miles north or I'm not interested.
And they did it. They packed up their stuff and
moved to a house in El Cerrito. And that geographical
shift is so crucial to their story. Because in
the Bay Area, they found their tribe. The Bay
Area thrash scene was just starting to form.
This is where you get bands like Exodus, Testament,
Death Angel. Right. And it wasn't about hairspray
and makeup. It was about denim jackets, leather,
high -top sneakers, and just playing as fast
and as aggressively as humanly possible. They
were home. So the lineup is finally locked. You
have Hetfield on vocals and rhythm guitar, Ulrich
on drums, Burton on bass, and Hammett on lead
guitar. This is the classic lineup. And they
drop what becomes known as the Thrash Trilogy.
Let's run through these because this is the foundation
of the entire legend. First up, 1983, Kill Em
All. Which they originally wanted to call Metal
Like Your Ass. Laughs right. With the proposed
cover art of a hand holding a bloody dagger coming
out of a toilet bowl. Very subtle. The distributors,
needless to say, refused to stock it. So Cliff
Burton, in his infinite wisdom, apparently just
said, you know what, man, just kill them all.
Meaning kill the record company executives. And
the name stuck. And the album itself is just,
it's pure, raw energy. It's basically punk rock
played with heavy metal precision and speed.
You've got songs like Whiplash and Seek and Destroy
that are still live staples today. It really
established the template for thrash. Absolutely.
And then just a year later, 1984, they released
Ride the Lightning. This is where I think you
really start to hear the Cliff Burton influence
in a major way. Oh, so? Well, their songwriting
becomes much more sophisticated. They start using
acoustic guitars. They write a power ballad,
the first of its kind, really called Fade to
Black. Which was incredibly controversial at
the time. Metalheads in 1984 were like, what
are you doing? Acoustic guitar is a slow song.
You're selling out. They got so much hate mail
for it. But Fade to Black. which is about suicide,
proved they could write emotionally heavy songs,
not just physically heavy ones. It showed they
were becoming real composers, not just bangers.
It expanded the entire genre. And then the big
one, 1986, Master of Puppets. The masterpiece.
There's no other word for it. They recorded it
in Denmark with producer Flemming Rasmussen.
It is, without exaggeration, widely considered
one of the greatest and most influential metal
albums ever made. It's perfect from start to
finish. It really is. The title track, Master
of Puppets, is this eight and a half minute epic
with multiple time changes, complex harmonies,
and incredible instrumental section. And the
themes are so mature. It's all about drugs controlling
you, the government controlling you, insanity
controlling you. It was their first album to
be certified gold. They were on a massive tour
opening for Ozzy Osbourne. They were, for all
intents and purposes, on top of the world. They
had finally... And that, of course, brings us
to the tragedy. Because right at this absolute
peak, everything changes. September 27, 1986.
It's the great what if that just haunts the entire
genre. They were in Sweden on the European leg
of the Damage Inc. tour. They were traveling
overnight on a tour bus between Stockholm and
Copenhagen. And the conditions on the bus were
not great. No, they were terrible. The sleeping
bunks were small and uncomfortable. So to make
it fair, the band members would draw cards to
see who got first pick of the bunks for the night.
It was literally a game of chance. A card game
decided their fates. It did. On that night, Cliff
Burton drew the ace of spades. He looked over
at Kirk Hammett and said, I want your bunk. Kirk
had one of those slightly better spots. Kirk
said, fine, take it. I'll sleep up in the front
of the bus. So Cliff took the bunk in the back.
And then sometime near dawn, the driver lost
control of the bus. The bus skidded off the road.
It rolled over onto the grass. Everyone inside
was just tumbled around like laundry in a dryer.
James, Lars, and Kirk managed to climb out through
the emergency hatch. They were bruised, in shock,
standing in the freezing Swedish morning in their
underwear. But they couldn't find Cliff. The
bus had landed on top of him. He had been thrown
through the window as the bus rolled, and then
the full weight of the chassis came down and
crushed him. He died instantly. He was only 24
years old. The reaction of the band. I mean,
you think of James Hetfield as this stoic, tough
guy, the I am the table guy. But the reports
from the scene are just heartbreaking. He was
completely distraught. He was running up and
down the road in his socks, screaming for the
driver, threatening to kill him. He was convinced
the driver was drunk or had fallen asleep. The
driver claimed he hit a patch of black ice. And
James didn't believe him. No. James apparently
walked for miles down that road in the freezing
cold looking for the ice. And he found nothing.
It was just a senseless, tragic accident. Losing
a band member is hard enough, but losing Cliff...
He wasn't just the bassist. He was the musical
soul of the band. He was the one who taught them
about music theory and harmony. I mean, how do
you even begin to replace that? You can't. And
I think they knew that. They seriously debated
breaking up. But Cliff's family, his parents,
they told the band, Cliff would want you to carry
on. You have to. So they did. But I think they
processed their grief in a really... a really
unhealthy way. They didn't go to therapy. They
just got angry. And they took all of that anger
and grief and directed it at the new guy. Jason
Neustad. Poor Jason Neustad. Yeah, poor Jason.
He was a huge Metallica fan. He played in a thrash
band called Flotsam and Jetsam. He absolutely
nailed the audition. He knew all the songs. But
from the very moment he joined, he was the designated
punching bag. The hazing stories are just legendary
and honestly pretty cruel. It was relentless
psychological warfare. They would run up huge
bar tabs on his hotel room service without telling
him. They would tell interviewers he was gay.
They famously tricked him into eating a giant
ball of wasabi by telling him it was guacamole.
And musically, they shut him out. Completely.
They never let him have a real say in the music.
For 13 years, he was the new kid. And that hostility
actually and audibly impacted the sound of their
very next album, 1988's Injustice for All. This
is the album famous for the missing bass. Right.
Audio engineers and fans still debate this to
this day. If you listen to Justice, the production
is incredibly strange. It sounds dry. It's clinical.
It's thin. There is almost zero low end. The
drums sound like typewriters, just this click,
click, click sound. And Jason's bass lines, which
were apparently very complex and well -written,
are virtually inaudible in the final mix. So
was that deliberate? Was it part of the hazing?
The consensus is yes. The story goes that Lars
and James went into the mixing room with the
engineers and basically said, turn the bass faders
down until you can barely hear them. And when
the engineer did that, they said, okay, now turn
them down another five decibels. Wow. So they
were sonically erasing him from the record. It
was a sonic manifestation of their grief and
their anger. They were hazing him on the actual
vinyl. Which is a real shame because the songs
on that album are incredible. They're so complex
and progressive. You've got Blackened, Harvester
of Sorrow, and of course the big one, One. One
changed everything for them. Up to this point,
Metallica had stubbornly refused to make music
videos. They thought MTV was for posers. They
thought it was selling out. But for one, they
finally caved. They bought the rights to a 1971
anti -war film called Johnny Got His Gun. Which
is a terrifying movie. If you've never seen it,
it's about a soldier in World War I who gets
hit by an artillery shell and loses his arms,
his legs, his eyes, his ears, and his mouth.
But his mind is still perfectly awake. He's just
a prisoner in his own body. Chilling. So they
intercut scenes from that movie with shots of
the band playing in this stark, empty warehouse.
It was dark, it was gritty, and it was deeply
disturbing. And MTV put it on heavy rotation.
It broke them out of the metal underground and
put them into living rooms all across America.
It did. And it led to the infamous 1989 Grammy
Awards. This was the first time the Grammys ever
had a category for hard rock metal performance.
Metallica was nominated for rules, and Justice
for All, they were the heavy favorites. They
were the only logical choice. I mean, they performed
one on the broadcast that night. Everyone, including
the other nominees, just assumed Metallica would
win. And then Alice Cooper opens the envelope
and he announces the winner is Jethro Tull. Laps
for the album Crest of a Knave. Jethro Tull,
the band with the flute. The flu -heavy folk
rock band Jethro Tull won the first ever award
for best hard rock metal performance. The audience
just gasped. It was so embarrassing for the Grammys.
It just proved how completely out of touch the
Academy was with modern music. Metallica took
it in stride, though. They put a sticker on the
next pressing of the album that said Grammy Award
Losers. They did. But I think that loss and that
chip on their shoulder, it pushed them toward
the biggest, most important pivot in their entire
career. It pushed them towards the 1990s and
towards the blockbuster. This is where the story
shifts from big metal band success to global
domination. Absolutely. So after the tour for
Justice, they decide they're sick of the complex
10 -minute songs of the dry production. They
wanted something that sounded huge. So they hired
a producer named Bob Rock. And Bob Rock was known
for working with bands like Metley Crue and Bon
Jovi. The sworn enemies. The bands Metallica
had spent their entire career railing against.
So why hire the enemy? Because those albums sounded
enormous. They sounded expensive. They had this
punch and this low end that Metallica's albums,
for all their complexity, just didn't have. They
wanted that sonic weight. But Bob Rock had a
condition for working with them. He did. He basically
told them, look, I don't want to just engineer
your songs. I want to produce them. Meaning he
wanted to be involved in the arrangements, in
the songwriting. He wanted to simplify everything.
He listened to their demos and he told them,
you guys play too fast. You have way too many
riffs in one song. I want you to slow down. I
want you to find a groove. Think of a song like
Sad But True. That's the Bob Rock influence right
there. And I imagine James and Lars, who are
notorious control freaks, just loved hearing
that. Oh, they hated it. The recording of what
became the Black Album was a complete war. It
took nine months to make. It cost over a million
dollars, which was a fortune back then. Three
of the four band members got divorced during
the recording process. Three of them, wow. Yeah,
including Lars and Kirk. They argued with Bob
Rock over every single drum hit, every vocal
inflection. Bob challenged Hetfield to actually
sing, you know, not just bark and yell. That's
how we got songs like The Unforgiven and The
Big One, Nothing Else Matters. But when that
album finally dropped in August of 1991, Bob
Rock was proven right. He was 100 % right. It
debuted at number one in 10 different countries.
It went on to sell 16 million copies in the United
States alone. It's one of the best selling albums
of all time. And Enter Sandman became like the
national anthem of stadium rock music. It did.
And this is where that SoundScan data becomes
so important. Ray, explain SoundScan for anyone
who might not know. Before 1991, the Billboard
charts were based on a pretty archaic system.
They would basically just call up record store
clerks around the country and ask, hey, what's
selling well this week? It was easily manipulated.
SoundScan introduced barcode scanning at the
point of purchase. It counted every single actual
sale. And when SoundScan turned on, the music
industry was shocked. They were floored. They
realized that country music, hip -hop, and heavy
metal were selling way, way more than they thought.
Metallica wasn't just big for a metal band. They
were one of the biggest bands in the country,
period. The numbers finally proved it. But with
that level of fame comes that sort of spinal
tap level of disaster. The tours were just massive.
They had the snake pit stage in the middle of
the arena. And they had the pyro. We have to
talk about Montreal. 1992. The infamous Guns
N' Roses Metallica Stadium Tour. It was the biggest
ticket on the planet that summer. Just two juggernauts.
But in Montreal, during the song Fade to Black,
there was a pyrotechnic miscommunication. The
pyro guy got the cue wrong. Yeah. James Hetfield
stepped onto a spot on the stage where a 12 -foot
pillar of magnesium flame was scheduled to erupt
a few seconds later. But it went off early. And
it just engulfed him. It did. It completely engulfed
him. It melted his guitar. He suffered second
and third degree burns all down his entire left
side. Jason Neustadt described seeing James'
skin literally bubbling. It was horrific. And
yet, they finished the tour. James was back on
stage just 17 days later. He was all bandaged
up. He couldn't play guitar. But he was up there
singing while his guitar tech played his parts
from the side of the stage. It just cemented
his reputation as this indestructible, iron -willed
frontman. But you have to imagine, underneath
all that, the cracks were starting to form. Let's
jump forward a few years. The mid -90s. The alternative
rock era. Grunge has come and killed off the
hair metal scene, but Metallica decides to change
again. This is the load and reload era. This
is what a lot of people call the identity crisis
era. And the first thing they did, they cut their
hair. It sounds so silly now, but in 1996 for
a metal band, that was a huge deal. It was a
massive betrayal to the purists. Seeing Metallica
with short hair, wearing eyeliner and, you know,
designer shirts. It was like the world was ending
for some fans. And the music changed, too. It
was much more bluesy. You have songs like Until
It Sleeps and Hero of the Day. It definitely
wasn't thrash metal. No, it was alternative hard
rock. Yeah. It was them trying to fit into the
Lollapalooza generation. And the art. Let's not
forget the album art. The cover of Load is a
piece by the artist Andre Serrano called Blood
and Semen the Third. And it is literally what
the title says it is. It is literally a photograph.
of a mixture of bovine blood and the artist's
own semen pressed between two sheets of plexiglass.
I just wonder how many millions of kids bought
that album at Walmart having absolutely no idea
what they were looking at. A lot of them. But
while the fans were all arguing about haircuts
and controversial art, a much, much bigger storm
was brewing on the horizon. A storm called Napster.
This is the part of the story that, I mean, they
make business school case studies about this.
The year is 2000. Okay, here's the setup. Metallica
records a new song called I Disappear for the
Mission. Impossible 2 movie soundtrack. The song
hasn't been released yet, but one day they hear
it playing on the radio. And they're completely
confused. They're thinking, wait a minute, we
have the master tape. The studio has a copy.
How is this on the radio already? So their team
does some digging and they trace the leak back
to this new file sharing service called Napster.
It was a peer -to -peer network. People were
uploading their MP3s from their own computers
and letting other people all over the world download
them for free. And they didn't just find I Disappear
on there. No, they found their entire back catalog,
every album, every song available for instant
free download. Now, let's be clear. Legally,
Metallica was 100 % in the right. This was copyright
infringement. It was theft on a massive scale.
Legally, yes. But optically, from a public relations
standpoint, it was an absolute disaster. Lars
Ulrich became the face of the lawsuit. And he
didn't just sue Napster as a company. He went
after the fans. He did. He had a team track down
the IP addresses of over 300 ,000 users who had
downloaded Metallica songs. and he physically
delivered a printout of that list of names to
Napster's office, demanding that they all be
banned from the service. That image. That image
of Lars, the millionaire rock star, handing over
a box full of names of, like, teenagers in their
dorm rooms to get them kicked off the internet.
It was PR suicide. It completely destroyed their
man -of -the -people, us -against -the -world
image that they had cultivated for so long. There
was that famous skit at the MTV Video Music Awards
where Marlon... Alan Wayans is playing a college
kid listening to Metallica on his computer. And
Lars storms into his dorm room. Yeah, and starts
stealing all his stuff. He grabs his beer and
says, that's mine. He takes his posters off the
wall. Barwing is sharing. Lars was booed on stage
at that award show. For years after that, they
were branded as the greedy band. Which is ironic
because in hindsight, they were the canary in
the coal mine. They were the first ones to really
sound the alarm that digital streaming, if left
unchecked, would completely devalue music. But
at the time, they just looked like rich rock
stars bullying college kids. And while they were
fighting this war with the Internet, they were
completely falling apart internally. This leads
us to the St. Anger era. This is the absolute
bottom. 2001 to 2003 is just one disaster after
another. First, Jason Newsted finally snaps.
After 14 years of being the new guy, he had started
a side project called Echo Brain. And James Hetfield
completely vetoed it. He told him he wasn't allowed
to do it. He told him, you can't do that. When
you're in Metallica, you're married to Metallica.
A side project is like cheating on your wife.
Which is just incredibly controlling. It was.
It was the final straw for Jason. So he quit.
He just walked away. And that shock, combined
with all the other pressures, it sent James into
a complete spiral. In July of 2001, James entered
rehab for alcoholism and other undisclosed addictions.
He was gone for months. The band effectively
ceased to exist. They didn't know if he was ever
coming back. And the craziest part of all of
this is that they had hired a film crew to document
the making of their next album, and they ended
up documenting the near total collapse of the
band instead. The documentary... Some kind of
monster. If you haven't seen this film, you have
to watch it. It's one of the most painfully honest
rock documentaries ever made. It shows them hiring
a performance enhancement coach, basically a
therapist named Phil Towel, at a cost of $40
,000 a month to help them just talk to each other.
It's excruciating to watch. You see these metal
gods sitting in a room talking about their feelings,
using therapy speak. It's surreal. And the album
that came out of all this turmoil and all this
therapy was Saint Anger. Probably the most hated
and ridiculed album in their entire discography.
It is raw. It is messy. Sonically, it's just
abrasive. They made a rule that there would be
no guitar solos. Kirk Hammett wasn't allowed
to play any solos because they decided it wasn't
honest enough for the raw emotion of the album.
And the drums. We have to talk about the trash
can snare drum. Oh, the snare drum. Lars decided
to turn the snares off on his drum, so instead
of a crack, it just rang out with his high -pitched
King ink on every beat. It literally sounds like
he's hitting a metal trash can lid or an oil
drum. Fans absolutely hated it. Critics were
just confused. But, you know, looking back, it's
a perfect sonic representation. of where the
band was at. It sounds like a band having a nervous
breakdown on tape. It's ugly because the situation
was ugly. But they survived it. James got out
of rehab. They hired a new bassist, Robert Trujillo,
from Suicidal Tendencies, who is an absolute
beast of a player. And they paid him a $1 million
advance just to join the band, which tells you
something about the scale of Metallica Inc.,
even at their lowest point. So how do you redeem
yourself after St. Anger? How do you win the
fans back? You go back to basics. 2008, the album
Death Magnetic. They fired Bob Rock and they
hired Rick Rubin. And Rick Rubin is like the
anti -Bob Rock. He doesn't hold your hand. His
production style is very hands -off. He basically
told them, I want you to go back and listen to
Master of Puppets and remember who you were.
Pretend it's 1985 again. So he forced them to
go back to their roots. Completely. He made them
return to standard tuning, write long, complex
songs, and most importantly, he told them to
let Kirk Hammett shred again. The guitar solos
were back. And it worked. The album was seen
as a massive return to form. It was. It debuted
at number one on the Billboard 200, which made
them the first band ever to have five consecutive
studio albums debut at the top spot. It proved
they could still be Metallica. And this era also
brought about a lot of healing, didn't it? Specifically,
the Big Four tour in 2010. This was huge. For
the first time ever, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth,
and Anthrax, the four pillars of American thrash
metal, shared the stage together. And the visual
of James Hetfield hugging Dave Mustaine on stage.
It was closure. It was the end of a nearly 30
-year feud. It was a really powerful moment for
the entire metal community. But because it's
Metallica, they couldn't just stay safe and play
the hits. In 2011, they did. Lulu. Oh, God. The
infamous collaboration with Lou Reed from the
Velvet Underground. It's an art rock concept
album based on a set of... German expressionist
plays from the early 20th century. It's basically
Lou Reed doing spoken word poetry over these
sludgy, repetitive Metallica riffs. It is virtually
unlistenable to most fans. It's one of the most
critically reviled albums ever released by a
major artist. Lou Reed actually challenged Lars
Ulrich to a street fight during the recording
sessions. But you have to give them credit. For
what? It showed that even in their 50s, even
as billionaires, they were still willing to take
massive, insane, career -damaging risks. They
followed their artistic muse even when it led
them off a cliff. Let's talk about the business
side again for a second, because in 2012, they
did something incredibly smart. They launched
their own record label, Blackened Recordings.
This is the key to their modern wealth and power.
After their contract with their longtime label
was up, they negotiated the rights to all of
their master recordings back. They own everything.
So every stream, every vinyl reissue, every time
a song is used in a movie or a video game. That
money goes straight to them. They cut out the
middleman. They're a fully independent, self
-contained corporation. And they are using that
independence to stay incredibly relevant. They
aren't just a nostalgia act playing their old
hits. Not at all. Look at what happened with
the show Stranger Things. In 2022, they used
Master of Puppets in a key scene. Right. The
Eddie Munson scene in the Upside Down. Exactly.
And the song, which was 36 years old at that
point, just exploded. It shot up the charts all
over the world. A whole new generation of kids
discovered it. And instead of being old and gatekeeping
about it, Metallica embraced the new fans. They
posted videos on TikTok duetting with the scene.
And then just this year, in 2024, they did a
massive integration into the video game Fortnite.
A fuel, fire, fury, in -game concert event. They
understand that to survive in the 21st century,
you have to capture the 14 -year -olds, not just
the 50 -year -olds who grew up with them. They're
constantly looking forward. I want to zoom out
for a second and look at the so what here. We've
tracked them from the garage in L .A. to the
corporate boardroom, from the alcoholic days
of destroying hotel rooms to the All Within My
Hands Foundation. Which is their charity, and
it does some amazing work. It donates millions
of dollars to community colleges for workforce
education, to food banks, to disaster relief
efforts like Maui wildfires or supporting Ukraine.
They've really matured. But the music, even on
their latest album, 72 Seasons, is still incredibly
heavy. It is. And I think a lot of that comes
down to one specific technical thing. We've talked
about them being fast, but we haven't really
talked about the Hetfield right hand. The down
picket. That is the engine of the entire band.
James Hetfield almost exclusively uses down picking
on his right hand. Most guitarists use an alternating
up -down motion to play fast passages. James
just goes down, down, down, down. Which is physically
exhausting. It's like a jackhammer. It requires
incredible stamina and precision, but it creates
this percussive, machine gun -like attack that
is just tighter and more aggressive than anything
else. That physical discipline is the absolute
core of their sound. And that discipline, that
refusal to quit, has allowed them to outlast
everyone and everything. Think about it. They
outlived the cassette tape. They outlived the
CD. They outlived the MP3. They literally outlived
Napster, the very service they tried to destroy.
They are currently outliving the concept of an
album itself. They are the cockroach of rock
and roll. You just cannot kill them. And they
are still filling stadiums. Their current M72
world tour is this massive production where they
sell out two nights in every single city with
a completely different set list each night. It's
remarkable for a band that's been doing this
for over 40 years. So here's my final provocative
thought for you to chew on. In a genre like heavy
metal, which is so often obsessed with youth
and aggression and rebellion, Metallica has somehow
become the classic rock of our generation. They
are to us what the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin
were to our parents. That's a very fair comparison.
They are the institutions now. The elder statesmen.
But it raises a really interesting question.
Metallica is still, by a huge margin, the biggest
metal band in the world. They have been for over
30 years. Who's next? Is there anyone even on
the horizon? Or did Metallica climb the ladder
to the top of the mountain and then just pull
it up behind them? That is the worrying part,
I think. There are great modern heavy bands.
You've got Slipknot, Gojira's Ghosts, but none
of them are Metallica big. None of them sell
16 million albums in the U .S. big. None of them
are playing Antarctica big. The industry has
just fragmented too much. It has. The monoculture
that allowed a band like Metallica to get that
huge just doesn't exist anymore. We may never
see a rock band or really a band of any genre
achieve that level of global saturation ever
again. So Metallica might just be the last of
the Titans. A lightning strike that happened
because a Danish tennis player put a weird ad
in a newspaper and a shy kid from Downey decided
to answer it. And thank God he did. Absolutely.
Thanks for unpacking this absolute monster of
a topic with us. We'll see you on the next Deep
Dive.