[Music] what i used to do a lot when we were recording we had a crazy night in the studio and you know it's like one or two in the morning and you were out and lancashire in studio city and you're so wired uh but you didn't want to go like engaged or anything you just kind of want so i would just drive and when i came in the other night it landed it was like midnight or one or something driving back all these freeways look exactly the same
as they did 30 years ago when i was driving around at one o'clock in the morning trying to come down yeah after a long night in the studio and then of course your head starts going but in 1990 30 years earlier in 1960 it looked hella different i do the same thing and when i first moved here i just felt so alienated especially in london where it's just so grid-like and everything just feels tactile and within reach i came here and i was like
i don't know where anything is i don't know where to go everything seems closed off and secretive this is weird and i'm weird but this is really weird you know this is even too weird for me and so i just drove for weeks at night and i and i it was awesome actually because i saw that side of la which is really dark i saw that after dark alley when the sun goes down and those the sepia lights of those street lights comes out there's definitely an
underbelly tail i've always felt that as much as it becomes the the fact of destination for you know i'm an aspiring actor screenwriter musician artist whatever i'm going to go to la and make it when you sort of penetrate yeah the
area really it feels like most of the people that are here are the ones that failed in that mission well that's why it is so dark after dark because you spend all day putting your best foot forward and then after dark you go home
and you're lament that it didn't happen for you that day so this is weird energy after dark are people trying to get their confidence back up and disappearing and putting themselves back together in this really interesting
place like that you know then they go out on the day and they're like hey what's up i'm zayn and the night they go home and they go this is a rough rough roller coaster ride i've always felt like the the the kinship with the people that
came out here to live that dream and to to experience that dream that never made it mm-hmm i mean the la is what 75 of those people that came out here and it never happened that leads to a really interesting question have you ever thought about what would have happened if you'd stayed in la and you hadn't had the incentive to leave la because a big part i think of what helped you define who you are as a band was the space
to be left alone and not be reminded that there was a whole lot of competition and labels and business around it's pretty interesting uh because i have some high school buddies that you know i visit quite often and they're they still live here and they have just kind of a normal life and goes to mesa or wherever they are and yeah i often wonder uh well i do love that i love their simplicity you know but they're not caught up in more of the
hollywood scene and and yeah for us it could have been very different could have been uh even darker than it already is as far as the darkness and the like you said the oh you know there's the the the daytime face and then there's the
nighttime sadness of l.a um i don't know there's so many what-ifs well you know what being in a band is is that in reverse isn't it for a lot of your life it's the it's the nighttime yay and the daytime sadness i think for us to a degree
you know we were so fueled by you know when we were down here by ourselves in l.a we were so contrary to everything that was going on on the strip and the clubs the music scene down here that i mean we were just fueled by by by the
contrariness and then when we went to san francisco it was felt that there was the first time that we that we belonged to something there was people up there that were like us there were people up there that were listening
the same music that felt like we did and and you know there was there was a whole kind of um sort of like a collection of misfits up in san francisco especially in the east bay that was sort of like all the the same ilk as us and it gave us it was the first time i think we felt that the sense of belonging to any place which we certainly didn't hear when cliff called up and said after me harassing him for six months burton a bass player said
i'll join on one condition which is you come to san francisco i mean we were out of here before i hung the phone up you know it was funny you can hear the music i mean for me to be really basic about it i mean you go back to the first
song that most people heard from the band which was hit the lights and you hear that you know here's a group of young guys who are just trying to manifest this this dream come true literally you wrote a manifestation
right you know we're going to do this for the rest of our lives we're going to rock your socks off this is it it's all over forget about it starts right here right now and i feel like it was so naive it could only have been done in that environment that you were in before you were in san francisco you know like i guess this is what we have to write in a weird way interesting we were asked a little earlier you know what was plan b it's
like well plan b was making plan a work i mean as simple as that because there was no other plan it was we're gonna do this and if it doesn't work out then whatever happens happens and but real honestly that's that's what
happened throughout our careers we don't know what's happening next we'd let let the uh let the challenges come to us and then write about them use them as what they're supposed to be which is experiencing life yeah there was a goal
but our goals changed as you know our goal is to get a tour bus and okay now we got that now we're gonna go on tour with a bigger band and then this and then that and you know the slow constant climb up your albums at one point went in at like 200 150 100 they literally were going like in sort of even numbers up the charts each time it was like taking steps with each record well it's kind of the classic european way i mean just growing
up in denmark uh you know thin lizzy rainbow different bands would come and they would play at the place you know the size of this and then you know two years later they'd play a size twice as big and then four years later they played
four times as big so it was that classic european way and i think um in retrospect that was the best thing that could have happened to us because i don't think either of us would have been fully equipped to deal with like zero to
10 million like overnight like happened to some of the other bands that came up in the 80s and the early 90s so the fact that we had five albums to sort of adjust to the eventual success of the black album was such a blessing you know you talk about the the european influence and the idea of what brought you together in the first place and and my final question directed to just the two of you before you even joined the band kirk is what
made you want to answer that ad in the first place because you didn't have to and that was the moment that changed everything i suppose so uh that was the only way to meet other musicians and you know i was going to a couple different schools that didn't really have you know uh there there were other other bands doing you know uh covers and playing parties and stuff like that uh when i moved to orange county uh after uh my mother passed
i was live with my brother in orange county i mean there was no other option i went there and there was nobody in that school that played rock or or anything really it was you know like 4-h or sports and not a lot of music scenes so it was i was craving craving that that was what i loved and what spoke for me to me all of that so i knew i wanted to do it and yeah well pre uh internet yeah it was the recycler and that was it i guess
there was only like that was the only letter that was there that actually got your attention i can't imagine there was a whole long line of people saying hey i'm into heavy metal do you want to come and make some with me no it was let's drive to hollywood and meet other musicians you know and what you're really saying james is the 40 years of success by default because you were the only ones making it like you had to make it work
i think the bite to fold the moniker you can attach to you know most of this i mean who would know i mean feeling the gratitude the the the the appreciation and and how all of this has kind of been able to manifest itself for almost four decades
i mean who could think that 40 years ago that that this hit the lights the the the energy of that tune and and then what that led to could lead to where this sits today you know without getting into any of the but just the if
you break it down to that yeah in itself the fact that that we would still be here i mean it just you know even at that time you know when pete townsend and and roger dalton were talking about i hope i died before i get old i mean that was
the that was the spirit of rock and roll rock and roll wasn't supposed to age rock and roll wasn't supposed to live on like this so the fact that 40 years later we're here the fact that again you know the rolling stones are
going out on tour you obviously charlie rest in peace uh and so on but it it who knew there was a drive i mean really there was i was trying to find people that had the same drive to do this that i did and a lot of my friends were yeah sure i'll be in your band and what songs you know and it was you know it was the path of finding all those peoples that didn't work to find another person as driven as lars who had come over from europe and
had all of this knowledge of you know traveling with bands the business side of things a huge plethora of uh different kinds of music for me to just be a sponge and just going over to his house after the ad and just soaking all that up you know just finding someone else that had the same drive was so uh such a gift drive is such an important part of it i think you know we romanticize the luck and the talent and the and the success
but we a lot of times we ignore the work ethic that's required to succeed it's not the sexiest part of it you have to have it and so james for you at that moment in time if i may be so bold have you have you gotten better at understanding where
that drive was coming from it's good to to to think directly about that and when you were first saying that the word drives like well it was just what i what i was doing what i wanted to do that it was as simple as that
there wasn't a lot in the rest of my life my family had kind of disintegrated the people at my school i couldn't relate to so me and the music became best friends and i just wanted to learn as much as i could about what music had to offer me you know putting certain songs on the turntable slowing it down you know to learn the solo things and all that and then playing cover songs in a band and um there was so the word drive was like there was
there wasn't much else it's a getaway clause it's like i need to go and get somewhere else and this is going to allow me to construct an identity that allows me to start new because where i'm coming from it ain't working for me yeah that is awesome because yeah i wasn't happy where i was i wanted to be somewhere else and music took me there where were you when you got the call what was your life saying it depends on what car you're talking about
when your life changed i mean i have to say playing guitar and like discovering a type of music that was just like a little different from all the music that my peers were listening to was a major thing i mean uh recognizing that i was attracted to a certain type of music that was you know really energetic uh aggressive but also so emotional at the same time you know and a plethora of other other emotions and like discovering this music and then
kind of like realizing that yeah this is where i want to take my guitar playing i mean that was a major major thing and then discovering you know when i asked around that not like i couldn't really find anyone else who was into this uh this type of music other than just literally like two or three other friends yeah you know and it was a point of like i love this music and i want to i want to create this type of music
and so i you know i found a band a band called exodus and then i just totally we just totally got into this new wave of british heavy metal and it was our world it was our entire musical world and we wanted to live in it
24 7 and create more of it and so that's actively what we were doing we were just trying trying to create more music like the music that we heard and we loved and you know that was a real driving sort of force for me in the beginning you know it's
making more of this music that just sounds tougher you know it's more fun to play if you know it feels right from way inside my heart and my gut and there's no settling that's the other thing two of the things i love so much about metallica and about the legacy is that for the most part and there have been obviously times throughout your lives individually and there's a band where you've gone and you've you've lived your life and you've lived a
successful life and all the trappings that come with that but the overarching feeling about metallica was that you serve at the altar of the music yeah i mean you know i get the sense and i know this for myself
but i've always got the sense that we all expect so much more from ourselves almost like an unreal unrealistic expectation but look where it's led you know and i always say to myself it's i expect so much and a lot of times i fall flat by my own
expectations but you know at the same time it it actually you know like we all get results from them and i think that's something that we all share is just we want just that much more from ourselves and from the music and from each other and i think that's a real defining characteristic of this band it's just that we just like we're never ones to just like kick back sit down the couch and just watch our love our life go by and
congratulate ourselves you know we're not about that we're about what's right around that corner and that was the primary point that was made when when the guys called you and asked you to play a part in this because
when you're young and in a band see if i can phrase this right and a member of the band departs for substance abuse a lot of your contemporaries who are young and in bands are like isn't that the point like and then you call him up and go you
gotta join this band but we just kicked a guy out because he's not clean you're like am i clean enough to join this band like it's just an interesting call to get at a young person at a young age does that make sense it was in that particular point in time it was all about you know playing the music but you know also like yeah and drinking but you had to give it some sort of balance you know what is that and we gave him that he
might have might have given it you know you know some sort of balance but you know it's it was just like yeah i think it's fascinating when i got the call from from uh uh mark whitaker who was working with these guys you know it made perfect sense to me because we're i was coming from the same musical place as these guys but you know separately you know i i was uh into this music with my friends up in the bay area and just happened to be the
same stuff that these guys were into and so you know i understood where they were coming from musically because i was coming from the same source and like like listening to all the same stuff so it was very easy for me to just go yeah
i get this instantly this is like this is what i want to do and you know the ironic thing is when i left exodus then i started in high school and i started playing with these guys i felt more at home with these guys than i did the band
that i i started which is a wild observation because anyone who's ever been a fan or knows the story of metallica and i mean this with the utmost love and respect knows that the bond that you two have the union that you share is brotherly i
mean you love each other but you've also had challenges that only family can have and yet you somehow and i think this is a testament to you and your ability to find a spiritual glue wherever you seem to be able to go
didn't seem to didn't seem to affect you that it was like how do i fit into this union it's more so just like you know what does the music need and what can i bring to the music you know it's just like not not like you know okay this you're gonna do this you're gonna do that i mean listen to the music what can i bring to it you know there's obvious gaps in here that you know need to be filled and that was always been my approach
you know and that wasn't about okay you know he's going to play this he's go i'm not going to play this you know divvying it up we never do that i mean we it's all instinctual it has been ever since i've joined this band
you know it's just like it's this way we all work we just kind of naturally settle into our parts and and everyone kind of just has a feel for you know who should do what you make us sound better that's the greatest thing anyone joining a band
could ever hear from bandmates you make us better man is the quote like i cried the first time i saw that because that's what everybody who's a musician dreams of hearing when you join your dream band yeah and the reason i bring it up and just kill the timeline for a second is because we're talking about what it is to co-ex to begin to exist in an existing chemistry bands don't survive without chemistry when the harmony goes i'm not talking
about the musical kind you're doing it for the money and that's it how was it for you looking back on that now that you are a legacy player and an essential part of the legacy of this ban and ongoing well you know obviously going back to when i first really met the guys in metallica which would have been actually probably preceding the black album around town when they were recording the black album seeing them around hanging out i mean it
was a great we were talking about this earlier it was a really exciting time to be in los angeles because everybody was writing and recording their records with their producers in the various studios but at the same time every night there
was a different place to hang out with these people there was just a lot of excitement in rock and roll uh with lots of different bands i mean it was kind of everything was on full tail the new bands were like alice in chains
you know what i mean and i was playing in suicidal tendencies at the time and we had made a record that uh i guess lars seemed to like and we were able to tour with metallica and opened for them in 1993. so um for me to watch metallica every night and also even funny things like you know we would get to eat their leftover you know dinners when they leave i never told you guys this but we'd actually they you know and it wasn't like we were
stealing dangerous man you know i got my first my first official bonus i'll never forget that i believe it was in europe and we were summoned to uh you know go meet meet them in their uh their tour lounge i guess you'd call it and we were handed each an envelope with uh cash it's about a thousand dollars and that was the most money i'd ever made or seen through music so wow all these things take me back now all of a sudden you fat yeah he
doesn't remember but i'm not sure kirk was signing the pno you know what i mean like he goes wait i gave you a thousand dollars hold on i want that money back yeah he's gonna bounce a check here yeah well you spell your name yeah
but it was just so kind and amazing was that on your mind when you were auditioning and was that the rob you remembered or were you sort of because so much time had passed between then was it a different a different experience
when you saw rob for the first time and all of a sudden it's like different now it's not like you're on tour drinking jagermeister and eating scraps man you know you're trying to join a band and you've got to get a bass player yeah with rob i mean when we were getting to that point of of needing to find a bass player you know when rob was on the list i'm just thinking no way he's going to join us he's he's too amazing i mean he's too spectacular
i mean the things that he's got going on i mean he's so connected and he's so wanted and needed you know he's just he's he might show up as a kind of a a kind gesture right and then yeah he's jason bourne is what you're saying like he ain't taking a day job right yeah he didn't need it uh he'll be he'll be fine without us um but when he did play uh i mean whoa okay yeah i get it i mean i there were a few other people i had in mind and then when
rob showed up it was like okay that this is this is is that great scene fills us so much great scene in the documentary film where you're like you're like you know any others and it's like he's really you up like he's just they were throwing songs at me that i hadn't officially worked out because i got the call to come in and play i believe it was on a thursday i think i was in tahiti and all of a sudden i realized uh that i was
going to be at a friend of mine's birthday party in the bay area mike borden actually and that was a saturday night so i was flying into la from tahiti to go to a birthday party in san francisco lars says oh that's great why don't you come in on monday and and you know come hang out with us and so everything was happening so quickly i didn't really have a lot of time to to you know take all the material in i knew uh battery
fairly well did you know that was such a flicks being one of the most singularly challenging songs in the repertoire for you to pull that one out of the house well i was just lucky though i i had the feel for that one you know
that the kind of the gallop and everything and i had a bit of that in my in my former band suicidal tendencies so i felt they could identify with that and if any if there's any song that would have some sort of impact yeah right at
least it's that one you know what i mean everyone's going to play sandman or whatever so and then i remember i don't know if they remember this but they were like you know can you play sad but true and i didn't really know that one but i had to kind of figure it out on the spot now the good thing about sad but true is that's a feel a feel song that you got to have kind of this kind of groove um feel and and i felt connected to that so
i was really happy that they kind of offered that as a as a song to to jam on so i felt i was tested on a few different levels you know um there's this the speed the feel you know the kind of the swagger of the song a song like actually a song like
battery has a certain thing you know it's special not everybody can play that so um i immediately felt connected to what they were doing in more of a live formula and a live format and at the same time i was trying to be
really humble and just be like look i'm just happy to be here you know what i mean i drove up here to jam with these guys and i'm gonna go back down you know to la and i'll do whatever i got whatever i'm doing down there i was still kind of working with ozzy at the time but but it was just an honor to come up here and play these songs with these guys and that's that was it for me it was like as long as i can do that
i'm happy you know what i mean and uh luckily it worked out and it was you played the perfect hand i mean i'm so glad that was documented because it was a lesson in all aspiring musicians on how to do it right be a master at your
craft and then crouch at the bar and wait to be invited one thing i need to say though is is in being in a band like metallica it requires a lot more than just being able to play the songs you've got to get along with with your
people you know and you've got to understand how to gauge the territory oh that's even way more complicated it's been so well documented you guys were far from there yourselves you were going through effectively a real transition personally as a band yeah and it was a challenging time so i was able to adapt to that just for whatever reason the other bands and other situations i had been in were also very challenging you know i was working
with ozzy at a time when he was you know he was uh he wasn't maybe drinking all the time but maybe there was some pills involved or whatever he was not sober zach wilde was definitely out of his mind and then in the suicidal camp
you know rocky guitar player is you know i'm sure kirk can attest to he was a wild man i think there was even a fight where he and i rocky and i physically fought on stage during a metallica show by james's guitars i tackled him and i
wear about a foot from poor james's guitars luckily nothing got damaged but this is what was going on in my life so i learned to understand personalities and how to try to create balance you know just in that sort of universe
alone so me joining metallica i could bring that as sort of uh you know i guess an ingredient that i could offer beyond the music but not to over pathologize too but at that point we were in kind of life coaching therapy all of that you
know there was there was depth a lot more depth than you know hey he's you know let's listen to a tape of another guitar player yeah yeah he's pretty cool call him in he's in the band you know it wasn't we were a lot more
complex and there was a lot more you know there were lots of different lives so for robert to come in and uh display such a feeling of groundedness uh and it was so comforting at that time he's a grown-up he yeah finally there's a
grown-up in the room and um you know trying to find someone who fits in it's it's not easy when you're at a point where we were at that time you know he's got to be our age he's got to know you know our musical histories you know there's plenty of bands that have are well established you need you know 30 or 40 years into their career and they get a like a young hot guitar player from l.a it's like there's it's like getting a you know girlfriend
that's way too young it's like this is not what do we have in common like creepy pretty much you know but he he had the the chops the history the touring experience and like he's saying the the uh neutrality in the uh the room of drama well you're an emotionally intelligent human and you had to be in order to join the band at that time because you'd all unravel just so funny that a lot is made about um within that time frame of of the work
you had to james but what i always took from that time frame was that each of you were in tandem doing your own work you were on a different spiritual quest yep yeah absolutely yes you had made lifestyle changes that you were now
starting to get into the rhythm of and you were also developing a new sense from what i could tell of real compassion openness and listening and trying to kind of again explore your own sense of emotional intelligence which
you can't do when you're touring can black album it's not on the table right everyone like lars was saying earlier you know you want to be young you know everyone wants you to stay young and be young that's what you're not encouraged you're not encouraged to grow up in this the in this there's money in stupidity yeah but it was also the first time we took a long enough breath to just sit there and actually look at it because
and then you could argue that the reason we ended up in that situation was you know in retrospect we had never really checked in with each other yeah for 20 years yeah of course hey how you doing but not really like how are you doing what's going on where are you at where are we at what's what's going on here emotionally how are we connecting how is what we're doing affecting the individual it was like this metallica juggernaut just
rolling across the land just taking no prisoners i watched you struggle with it dude even that you know you're just like come on come on come on come on come on we're ready we're ready we're ready and eventually the drumming slows down the
stillness sets in and it's like yeah okay but so it was definitely a transitional period and and rob came in and added and agreed added an ingredient that i don't think we actually realized that we needed until after he'd been on
board for a little while do you know what i mean and and that i think that's a key thing when we sit now it's interesting to hear the different reflections on this but obviously it's all instinctual you know when you're okay we got to go on tour we're finishing a record our producers played bass on this record blah blah blah we got dates okay let's call this guy this guy this guy this guy they all show up they're all
gracious they're all engaged and then now we've got to make a decision your instinct tells you it's the right thing all of a sudden these things are there like james said it sort of played out differently than most of us expected
but again you're rolling the dice it's easier to sit here now 20 years later and go this all worked out great but at that time it was a seriously crazy time of transition because we had never taken a time out we never checked in
with each other subsequently by checking in with each other then all these unraveling of the onions and different things started happening and and then uh we were off to the races for a few years and then came a very experimental record out of that that certainly was the right thing at that time for us in terms of of moving forward but of course in retrospect has a sort of an unusual the way it fits into the sort of the arc of metallica
yeah i love that and i love many elements of the two but it was a very it was a very transitional record and obviously was very experimental record but it feels like the the brunt the results of all the work that we were doing in
2000 to 2003-4 really started coming into fruition when we sat down to to do death magnetic in like oh six or seven because that's when the energy within the band had settled that's when it started coming to a place where they felt like
there was a unity and and bringing in rick rubin and there was a whole set of things that happened at that time but it was a it was a very interesting time and it's really interesting to hear you talk just about your perspective and in depth about you know what that was like right there when when the call came you know what's interesting is that i actually i think about the history of the band and i think about what i witnessed when i
spent the four days with you and san rafael around the finishing of saint anger which was when i first got to see phil and see what was happening before the movie came out you know this guy coming up to me and saying to me hey you know i'm not just here for the band if you're here on site i'm here for you too if you want to do a session i'm like dude i'm not ready for this you know and i'm experiencing it all firsthand to some degree and james
the work that you had to do to me was an untangling of the identity that that really that this the costume that you put on that got heaviest when you got most successful and the black album being an essential turning point
in that where it became you were so much bigger up front than you had been before your personality i guess had to reflect that right you had to be there for people which in a weird way that trade becomes imbalanced it stops being an
equal trade between fan and artist and it becomes far more one way is that fair to say very well put uh they i there was such an expectation already on myself to to not let the team down and be the best as possible but then you add you know 60 000 people out there every night you need to be what they need you to be because this is what you've evolved to be and it is you know a little bit of oz like the man behind the curtain you know pay
no attention uh but this guy behind the curtain is just dying and struggling and freaking out and not knowing who he is and you know i the word unraveling is is a great as a great word like unlearning unlearning all of what happened before and being you know that was a part of me for sure but it dominated it dominated all of me and um the the parts that weren't happy about me the code you know this is a huge codependence and insecurity a lot of a
lot of that that gosh i can't you know i'm i'm i'm no good without these guys you know who am i you know off tours like who am i oh i never want the tour to end because guess what when the applause stops i don't know who i am
well like like any first responder or football player or even a soldier you take your uniform off and you're a civilian again and who am i i don't know who i am there was a lot of a lot of fear in that yeah the album itself a lot
was made you know in after the record come out was successful people love a drama that there was you know i think those key moments in the documentary of just like you singing what i love is no one ever puts the laugh at the end and i know it was a tense moment it's like you want to sing the song you sing it and then there's a laugh and you go no but seriously no one ever puts that bit in they just wanted the drama of it right
they just wanted to show that right cut cut cut that literally compared to the saint anger era felt almost joyous to watch that movie again in a strange way but it's also i mean i think you have to remember there was
no social media at the time nobody was uh televising to the world what they were having for breakfast every day and so there hadn't really been an insight yeah into you know the way that the cameras ended up being a part of that whole journey
for two years first of all it wasn't planned it wasn't like oh let's document what's going to happen the next two years in the ensuing show i mean that wasn't the plan it was they're going to come out we're making a new record joe
berlin and and bruce are going to come out and sort of document what we're doing we'll maybe make an infomercial it'll be on after the guy with the ginsu knives and whatever else at two o'clock in the morning you know metallica has a
new album blah blah blah and then all of a sudden that whole breakdown started happening in front of the cameras yeah and then they ended up sticking around to sort of document you know and get the arc of it but nobody but nobody had seen nobody had that kind of access to a rock and roll band this is 22 years ago nobody had ever seen that moment when you agree sorry but i'm so with you on this that moment when you agree and you
go let's stick with this i'm just going to say man i've wanted to say to you for a long time that was the moment when i think the conversation changed for the arts for music and for the desire to actually be transparent and
not hide behind the curtain every night and not put on the superhero costume and actually it needed the toughest guy to make the biggest statement ironically yeah showing your vulnerability is the toughest thing you can do absolutely
well i think you you know people forget it's sort of it obviously 20 years later it's like there's a couple sound bites in there like you're saying hahaha you know the therapist is handing the singer lyrics and and all that type of stuff but it really was um an incredible i mean the project in itself was very i think ahead of its time and you know when the movie came out you know the biggest uproar was in the world of rock and roll because nobody
had ever seen i had never seen anything like that now in in documentary film in the film world yeah the whole film world embraces go this is a great you know it's among the best documentaries it's got you know all documentaries that succeed have a natural art to them and obviously it wasn't really a movie about a rock and roll band yeah it was a movie about relationships and and so but it was set against the world of rock and
roll but everybody in music were like that's way too much access that's way too much transparency we don't want to see we're showing the card tricks yeah we don't want musicians we don't want to see that well the only the natural reaction we have to that because we're scared and we don't know how we and by the way a point somewhere at me and i don't know what i'm saying what's this gonna unravel in me so by the way uh you know no one wants to see
you crying come on man you're in a rock band come on your dreams have come true like come on man no no that was never gonna last because you started this ball rolling in a really meaningful way and artists needed to find that voice to be
able to say hey the trade is off if you're going to be a mentor or role model for younger bands why wouldn't you put that out this is what really happens yeah we're 40 years into this you know so it's the first 20
years this is simplifying it obviously but the first 20 years of the second 20 years but where we are now and the love and the respect that exists between us and the gratitude and the appreciation we have we just
talked about it before uh just for all this incredible adulation and so on we wouldn't be equipped to deal with that if we hadn't gone through that whole show 20 years ago do you know what i mean and so all the the the the results of of all of that
have really come to fruition starting with death magnetic in 708 and now continues to be such a big presence in the good energy and the goodwill that exists and and i will say like i find myself saying all the time when you talk about
this movie even though phil was made out to be the villain you know because for dramatic purposes we wouldn't be sitting here in a band talking to you if he hadn't done what he did i agree and and he really was an instrumental
part in getting us to open up and talk about this and start us on the path that we're now on 20 years later on these two couches so how does it feel then as a band now as you as you you know as we speed towards a 40-year anniversary of of of forming the band as a band that to your point james has never been nostalgic ever really to reflect upon starting with the black album to have that time and space to think about that different people all
together what do you see in these conversations and in this process of reviewing and renewing it i feel connection i feel the fact that people are are grateful for that album that it happened you know i don't i didn't see it then i i see it
a little bit now but it's still just the thing we had to do and you know we come in and we do our interviews and there's a lot of you know again we've been away from this for a couple years like all the kind of
sparkly oh you're so good you know just like what this is weird you know we're just we're just playing music man you know i love the fact that i absolutely know in my heart of hearts that that album happened for a reason it couldn't happen again it was there it was then all of the things that were happening at the time it all happened because of those things too it was us who played it it could have been somebody else but
we're grateful that it's us and we were there to accept the challenge and we had no clue we had no clue i mean i'm outside having a smoke and the guy out there you know giving yeah um you know sodas and stuff to people he's
like i'm not supposed to do this but i'm like a little girl right now oh my god that album helped me change my life and i wouldn't have heard that before and i understand it now and and know that the four of us sitting here still
it's a blessing this absolute blessing and him saying that is a blessing too so with you know it's it's not it's not about us it's it's about all of it it's about everything everyone who made this possible bob rocks the the everyone that was around at the time even the bands that were you know challenging us you know in the studio next door you know we gotta be better than them and all that there's so much that goes into it and you can't make it
up you couldn't make that up you couldn't recreate that it happened and i'm grateful that we're here after 30 years celebrating it when cliff passed away it was really clear from the way that you move forward as a band that he was forever going to be a member of the band and the legacy of the band not just in the time that he was in the band you would carry his influence through all the music that you made and you you put him front and center
right next to you everywhere you went with some of the other members of the band i think in the past there was a sense of like you leave we're done and i wonder now as you get to a point at this point in your lives with the
spell being broken over the last couple years and all the work you've done as a unit whether you can think differently about that about someone like jason and what he represented to metallica especially when you're thinking about an album like the
black album he's not here to talk about it today but what what he means to the man absolutely you know my my theory now is i could love anybody really at the end of the day you get to know them you get to know where they've come from you understand where their parents came from all of that how are you you i can accept that i can really accept that um there was more to be revealed i mean really he he was at a point where he was at we
were at a point where we were at it happened because it happened if it was like that right now say you know robert comes and says you know hey you know i'm i'm i'm done here i don't know we would we would fight we would
fight or i would fight for him you know i didn't know about the fight back then you know i mean if you think about it jason is the only member of metallica who's ever left willingly and that as a self in itself is a statistic yeah um
and the resentment from james and i was just so you can't you can't do that yeah you know you can only leave if we want you to leave or and then we weren't equipped at the time to do a deep dive into why he was
leaving and so of course now you can say 20 years later it makes complete sense but okay we write the songs we make the decisions we do all of it you have no creative outlet in this band you have no creative voice and then when you go and do
something that gives you satisfaction and a way for you to express yourself to the rest of the world then we get pissed at you and then that resentment then goes to you leaving the band i mean that's kind of you know psychiatry 101 here but we weren't equipped to to see that side of it 20 years later so now it makes complete sense jason gave 14 years every day every performance he was there always i mean we almost used to joke it's like
he's so fired up come on dude slow down you know he was the first guy in the last guy out he was signing autographs you know when we were driving by waving on the way out of the buildings i mean he he really was and i
now have finally equipped to appreciate every moment that he give and and that he gave and and we have i think so much respect for each other now so much appreciation uh ten years ago when we did the 30th anniversaries uh when he came up and
played four nights it was that the four fillmore shows played two nights with us uh you know seeing robin him together up there but you know that felt like it was the beginning of the thawing of of where we are now but he's been a very technical part of the reissue and the re-release and has done you know interviews and and been very very helpful he did the unboxing of the box for the the cameras and the whole thing and i mean he's been
so gracious and it's great for everyone that's the thing right sometimes when people leave bands you feel like you've got to do more for one side or the other in order to make peace but peace only comes when everybody's heart is full
and you're able to say like i get it now i get it now i always got it but i appreciate you do and now we can come together and we can figure this out and it is this is about life this is the craziest thing about metallica is that
we focus on the records but 40 years is an exercise in life lived and ongoing love loss life death having it in your hands nearly losing it you guys have been through it all and it's a life story isn't it not a bit it is a life story and set in a setting of extremes you know where you're going really far farther than other people would normally go or or even shallower you know we we were in such denial at times you know because
of all everything else is fine i'm not going to pay attention to this like i was talking about relationships yeah we don't have to work a relationship we're good you know and we're not you know all obviously the jason all the unresolved stuff from cliff that jason had to be kind of the target for you know we see that now and yeah i love that we've created music together but we've also just grown up together and we're still
growing up we're still teachable and we're still learning from each other one thing i have to say about jason is that he was there for us a hundred percent in a real real dark time he was like a real positive light
written that that those few months just right after cliff's passing i mean it was a a pretty dark time and you know we were just kind of like uh i don't know kind of like a mental weird mental state you know we weren't really old enough
and experienced enough to like digest you know the whole whole thing with cliff and we we didn't have any mentors you know i didn't have like a role model in my life to like tell me how to deal with you know passing of of such a close dear friend i don't think any of us did and then here came jason he was such a bundle of energy and light and positivity and and forward momentum and we really needed that at that time and you know
sure in retrospect you know we're hugging him but we're also pushing him away at the same time punching it was a weird bag it was a weird thing you know we love you and we hate you we love you we hate you we love you we hate you
i mean but you're not cliff you're not cliff yeah you know it was all that but man i i have to say you know i gotta give jason so much credit cause like in those those eight or nine months i mean when we were just trying you know
pulling ourselves out of that hole he was there for us and he was a stabilizing force man you know and he really he was there for us when we needed him you know you've all been there for each other in time and
that's the thing that's so beautiful about this story is that each of you have found a way to support one another and grow individually through that experience as hard as that is you're still making fire records like the last album i put on again
yesterday when i was driving back and i was like holy sh hard wired doesn't stop so as we near the end of our time i i've got a really clear pathway forward and it starts with this where are we at with music and i don't want that classic lars you know we're always thinking about music and we're always working out ideas you know i don't think we ever stop making music as metallica it's just finishing it's the problem yeah that's that's right
wow we can now so let me tell you saying you know where there's always just music um i mean listen we haven't been out of the house for a year and a half and so it's uh it's very rejuvenating um and and the last couple two three days as we've played played with miley yesterday played with miley today you're kind of getting your uh getting your groove back getting your spunk back getting your confidence back getting the band back together yeah man
discovering the fun yeah and um because that's what it looks like when you guys are on fire it looks like the most fun thing to do yeah but you listen i don't know i know everybody's had a different version of obviously the last 18 months it's impacted all of us in different ways but sitting still as you know is not my forte it's not great not great for the artistic experience right and uh so it it you know just getting out again and
and getting amongst it is so re-energizing and um you know it in the last couple days i mean like james said earlier like celebrating the the the the legacy of this record so on is it's kind of cool but still it's like a little like okay well what about the future what about the future i just get too i mean obviously ultimately you like the seesaw element of it the the the the balance but still it's like let's get on with it let's go
play some shows that's going on with our fall let's hope that that we can get through the next few months without anybody going down you know keep our fingers crossed let's be cautious let's be respectful of of the situation out there
and and of course there's new music coming there's always new music i mean new music is picking okay i can't help you hear that he had to slide into that they just i mean we're always making new music it keeps us alive you know that
i'm greedy i'm greedy but i'm respectful of the need to for the boundaries you've set you know and i think that fans are now i think that that idea of us getting used to the metallica juggernaut i think we all know accept
and acknowledge that a happy and healthy bunch of guys is a much better trade than listen i wish i could i mean of course there's new music i mean but there's nothing cohesive there's not a story there's not a there's not anything
to really back it up yet i mean it's it's it's the four of us connecting through music and through you know some new music some older music some okay nothing else matters awesome you know miley covers and digesting the blacklist and yeah let's talk about the blacklist for a second i mean we have to for a second because of it everybody you know so many people showed up and showed what that record means to them is so many different
shades and styles you know what annie clark what vincent did versus you know um what rodrigo gabriella did versus you know what you did what miley did with alton and pulled the whole thing in and gave it another level so how was that experience watching an album which has existed in a architectural blueprint for so long it completely torn destroyed it's amazing it's so great at least for me yeah you know just to see all the various
different interpretations the individuality the musical personality being put into all these songs you know and these are songs you that all of us are used to hearing a certain way you know then all of a sudden it's
like an explosion of all these different types of versions and i am i'm i'm amazed yeah it's pretty crazy i mean there's been cover versions of metallica songs for just about since the black album came out we were talking the other day about
uh i remember around 92 93 there was a german edm band called d croups yeah that started doing some edm versions of like sandman and a few of the other songs yeah it was like holy really like nobody we weren't prepared
for that part of it and subsequently blue grass and lullaby and you know korean death metal the compilation albums and 12 spanish bands do uh their take on reload or whatever i mean there's been a endless slew of of this stuff and some
of it interesting some of it may be slightly less interesting but always very we're very appreciative but we've never curated any of it it's always been stuff done by the artists themselves yeah this was the first time when we kind of said maybe we could invite a few uh artist peers who we know uh have where metallica's had a a a part in their growth a part in who they are and that started on a very small scale and then it just went nuclear and
53 artists later i mean you have this smorgasbord of this incredible so diverse and that's i mean and that is really the key thing is diversity yeah all genres all countries all parts of the world all styles tastes approaches
gender i mean it's just everything that it to me it's so 2021 did it surprise the key word is different diversity just did it surprise you even after this amount of time just how your music can be perceived and re-contextualized which ultimately is a
mirror reflection on how somebody who's a completely separate musician is inspired by what you do that it's as much as you've done for heavy metal and let's be very clear you went from being the only ad in that paper to making it a global humongous right from the white house to the rest of the rest of the world and there's no other way to put it james this is how it is right that is it in a nutshell but putting that to one side you know
seeing how far the music goes with musicians who don't play heavy metal who don't understand the energy well earlier when we were playing with miley and elton john was on a zoom call and he says that's one of the nothing else matters one of the most beautiful melodies and kind of i guess ballad love songs written and i i you know it's like well no way there's no way this man is saying that who wrote you know you know goodbye yellow brick road
i mean the oh my god candle in the way come on you know are you sure you know a huge compliment and i will take it for what it is from the recycler to the recycling of the black album you know nice these people have that's great they have digested this the song as you say you know they they can take the the heavy metal ingredient out of it and go this this song is cool here's melodies here's what happens here i'm going to take this i'm going to
swallow it i'm going to shut out my way you know and they did they did not phone them in they they they put work into these things that is the most that's fear my friend because what you don't want to do is put your name out in front of metallica fans and not do something that is unique authentic or brilliant if because there's no way you're going to match the power there's no way you're going to match the authenticity so
you've you gotta do it your way it's the only way otherwise it's a very very hard and that's what we do we do it our way they did it their way it's beautiful well guess what you're doing an entirely away now and what i love is the fact
that what started out as an independent operation became probably the largest well i don't think probably you were the you're the most profitable organization in music for probably two decades making a lot of people a lot of
money and then you're out and now you're independent again and now you get to run your own thing to some degree and i wonder how that experience has felt but having control of you know having the rights back and having some control to be able to make decisions as with what you've learned well it's uh chasing the carrot of autonomy and and just living in our own bubble not having to answer anybody not having to owe anybody anything not having to
through that uh giving them access to have you know input into what we're doing and it's being able to look the fans in the eye and go whether you like it or not it's 100 us yeah i mean talk about hit the lights 40 years ago i mean that is the spirit of how the band started exactly so that part of it has come full circle uh and it's a great um it's a great you know position to be in i mean and now obviously uh at a time when when the word freedom
has so many different meanings to so many different people you know for us the freedom to just be able to do what we want how we want when we want without having to answer or do it to anybody else's timelines or anything that is ultimately
the greatest uh benefit of the success that we've achieved and i think that the way we've been able to set it up for ourselves we put into place um a setup or system that is the most promising for longevity i mean we
we may be able to ride this out you know physical ailments aside hopefully for another 20 30 years because of the way we've kind of set it up because in that comes the space to finally respect the individual respect the individual needs be respectful of schedules and and and so on and so forth and find a way to make it work there's a lot of resources that go into that but ultimately it makes the band healthy and a healthy band has the biggest
chance of longevity so my last question gentlemen and this has been such a wonderful day for me is um if you could have seen into the future when this is kind of for the three of you because rob when you joined things were already moving forward and you would have seen like you'll be here in 40 years and you'll you'll still be together and you would have been through this life and you've gone through what you've gone through would you done it
would you stuck it out would you have signed up right away absolutely yeah without a doubt it's it's been more than worth it i mean just in terms of like just experience and growth and just like you know experiencing the human condition you know to the fullest yeah no regrets this metallica experiencing the human condition was this come on so are you saying this was just like all like a scientific experiment this is it's an illusion