When a young guitar player named James Hetfield and a young drummer named Lars Ulrich put a band together in California in 1981 and called it Metallica, they had very similar taste in music – except when it came to the kind of soft rock they heard on the radio. Hetfield hated that.
In a 2008 interview with MOJO, Hetfield talked about his formative influences and revealed how he argued with Ulrich – and with Metallica’s original bassist Ron McGovney – about the smooth, radio-friendly sound of mainstream rock acts such as Styx, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner.
Hetfield said of the late ’70s: “In America, there was early glam, like Kiss and Alice Cooper. I was into Aerosmith, Ted Nugent – rawer, crazier stuff.
“My best friend was a Kiss freak. He had every Kiss poster, and back then every magazine was Kiss. Finding Aerosmith stuff was a little tougher. I only had three of my walls done, and my friend was working on the ceiling already!”
When Hetfield attended his first concert in 1978 at the age of 15, it was Aerosmith at the Los Angeles Forum – with AC/DC as the opening act.
He recalled to MOJO: “I was a big Aerosmith fan, but I had no idea that AC/DC was that cool. I went with my older brother. I was so excited.
“AC/DC, that was the first time I heard them, and I dug it. But when you go to see your favourite band you don’t really want to see anybody else. Some Metallica fans are like that.
“So when AC/DC were playing, I was just waiting for Aerosmith. Like, ‘Get off! Hurry up!’
“I remember I bought an Aerosmith bootleg shirt, it fell apart after two washes, the sleeves were two different colours. And I remember smelling this very strange smell at the gig. I didn’t know much about pot but… learned kind of quickly!
“It was a pretty eye-opening experience, going into a big arena to see a big rock concert. Just the whole feel – the lights going out, the anticipation, the crowd, the smells… I mean, every sense was just soaking it in.
“I never got over that, man. I need to feel that, still. I was very impressed. I wanted to be on stage. I wanted to be the guy up there, not hanging around in the crowd.”
Hetfield also talked about the Foreigner fan who ended up being the bassist in Metallica from October 1981 to December 1982.
“We had this other friend, and his favourite band was Foreigner. So we kinda knew that he was a little different. Actually, his name was Ron McGovney!
“I tried to teach him, man. Like, ‘Come on, dude!’ He’s like, ‘They’re heavy!’”
Referring to Foreigner’s 1977 hit Cold As Ice, Hetfield joked: “Maybe on the next [Metallica] covers album we’ll do Cold As Ice! No, we were never Foreigner fans.”
But he said that Lars Ulrich did have an interest in some of the more melodic rock bands of that era.
“I remember when I hooked up with Lars,” Hetfield recalled. “I was so into the stuff that he had, that he brought over from overseas. We’d go to the record store and start soaking up some of the metal imports. The records – the vinyl – it was packaged differently, and it was real thick. Like, wow!
“I’d go over to Lars’ house and he’d have been shopping. He had a pretty well-off family, they had some dough.
“I remember he was unwrapping all these Styx and REO Speedwagon records and I’m going, ‘What are you doing?! What are you buying this crap for?’ He’s like, ‘I wanna check it out!’ And I was like, ‘We’re sick of that!’”
Ultimately, what Hetfield and Ulrich used as the template for Metallica was a blend of classic heavy metal such as Black Sabbath and Budgie and the new, streetwise early ’80s sounds of Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Diamond Head.
As a result, Metallica’s super-heavy sound made them outcasts in the Los Angeles rock scene of 1981 – so much so that they eventually relocated to San Francisco.
“Hair metal,” Hetfield mused. “There wasn’t a whole lot of other stuff in LA. There was punk, but that had kinda of drifted away a little bit.
“So hair metal, that’s what there was. Stuff that was…. hmm, heavy but not. You know, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, they were playing the clubs a lot back then.”
He laughed: “If you wanted to go to gigs and meet chicks and hang out, that’s where you went. But it wasn’t easy, trying to pick up chicks when you’re not really wearing the proper LA gear, you know?”
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