Metallica’s self-titled 1991 album “Black” has a stat sheet that would make any record executive’s head spin.
With more than 17 million copies sold, it is the best-selling album in the US in the past 30 years and has been in the Top 200 album charts for more than 600 weeks overall. The band performed hundreds of live gigs for millions of enthusiastic fans in the three years following its debut. One might continue, but the fact is that the band had earned a break by 1993.
The giants wouldn’t make a comeback until 1996 with the album Load, which marked yet another shift away from the brand’s frantic thrash beginnings. In an interview conducted around the album’s release, James Hetfield told Guitar World, the time away from Metallica was both a blessing and a curse.
He remarked at the time, “I can’t be away from [music] for too long because I’ve conditioned myself to need it for so long.” “I’m like, ‘Whoa, I really need to pick up the guitar and start playing.'” And it’s frightening when you can’t recall the Seek & Destroy riff after not playing for a long time.
“After a two-year tour, it’s challenging to decide what you want to do,” he added. You develop a list of things you want to accomplish after the trip while you’re traveling, but you wind up just vegetating when you get home. Being alone once more without the Metallica family around is an odd sensation.
Hetfield has been open and honest with fans over the years about feeling uncertain when playing. In 2022, he told a stadium-sized crowd in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, that he had felt like “an old guy” backstage and that he “can’t play anymore.” He overcame these doubts with the help of his bandmates.
Prior to the most recent leg of the band’s M72 tour, he acknowledged on The Metallica Report, the band’s official podcast, that he had nightmares about guitars only this year.
“We’re old, we can’t do this,” he continued, “and I start to doubt myself.” “Where is everyone?” I was having nightmares about how I’m the only one who is interested in what we’re doing here.
“There are just two strings on the rubber-made guitar neck. “Where’s my roadie?” because I can’t reach the microphone because of the guitar cord. That kind of silly crap
It’s “part of the [touring] cycle; it just is,” however, according to the unquestioned maestro of metal rhythm guitar at the moment. Don’t allow your nervousness control you. It has built up. And everything will be OK once you get up there.