The story of Metallica

A tennis kid, a grieving teenager and a newspaper ad

The Metallica story begins with a Danish tennis family. Lars Ulrich was born in Gentofte, Denmark, on the twenty-sixth of December 1963, the son of the tennis player Torben Ulrich. The jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon was his godfather. In February 1973 a spare ticket got nine year old Lars into a Deep Purple concert in Copenhagen, and the next day he bought their album Fireball. His grandmother bought him his first drum kit a few years later. In the summer of 1980 the family moved to Newport Beach, California, so Lars could train as a tennis player. He had been ranked among the top ten players of his age in Denmark, yet he failed to make the seven man team at his new high school. Music started to win.[1]

James Hetfield was born in Downey, California, on the third of August 1963. His parents were strict Christian Scientists who did not believe in medical treatment. They divorced when he was thirteen. When his mother Cynthia developed cancer, she stayed true to her faith and refused treatment, and she died in February 1980, when James was sixteen. He went to live with his older half brother David. That loss, and the faith behind it, would later pour into songs like Dyers Eve and The God That Failed. James had started piano at nine, moved on to his brother's drums, and picked up the guitar at fourteen. Aerosmith were the band that made him want to play. As a teenager he played in local groups, including one called Leather Charm with his friend Ron McGovney.[1] [2]

In 1981 Lars flew to London to see his heroes Diamond Head, part of the new wave of British heavy metal. Back in Los Angeles he placed an ad in a local paper called The Recycler, looking for musicians to jam with in the spirit of Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head and Iron Maiden. James answered it. Lars did not actually have a band, but he talked Brian Slagel of Metal Blade Records into giving him a slot on a compilation album called Metal Massacre. That was enough to get things moving, and the band was officially formed on the twenty-eighth of October 1981. The name came from Lars's friend Ron Quintana, who was choosing between Metallica and Metal Mania for a fanzine. Lars steered him toward Metal Mania and kept Metallica for himself.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For Metal Massacre they recorded Hit the Lights, with James singing and playing bass and rhythm guitar, and a guitarist named Lloyd Grant adding a solo. Early pressings spelled the band's name wrong, as Mettallica, which made them furious. Ron McGovney joined on bass, and a fiery guitarist named Dave Mustaine answered another ad. The first gig was on the fourteenth of March 1982 at Radio City in Anaheim, and it did not go well. Mustaine struggled with his distortion pedal and broke a string. James was so shy on stage in those days that Mustaine did much of the talking to the crowd. The band rehearsed in a house owned by McGovney's parents, and in the summer of 1982 recorded a demo called No Life til Leather, which spread fast through the tape trading underground.[1] [2] [3]

Cliff, Kirk and Kill 'Em All

Cliff Burton grew up in Castro Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. He started playing bass at thirteen, after his older brother Scott died of a brain aneurysm, and his parents remembered him saying he would be the best bassist for his brother. He practised up to six hours a day. In late 1982 James and Lars watched him play with a band called Trauma at the Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood. They heard a wild solo, looked around for the guitarist, and realised it was a bass, played through a wah pedal. That solo became the track Anesthesia, Pulling Teeth. Cliff turned them down at first. Then he agreed, on one condition. Metallica had to leave Los Angeles and move to the Bay Area.[1] [2]

Ron McGovney had come to feel like the band's driver and bank rather than a real member, and he clashed with Lars and Mustaine. Mustaine once poured beer into the pickups of Ron's bass, and Ron said he got an electric shock when he plugged it in. He quit on the tenth of December 1982. In February 1983 the band moved to El Cerrito, into a house they called the Metallica Mansion. Metal Blade could not afford to make their album, but a New Jersey record store owner named Jon Zazula had heard No Life til Leather. When no label would pay, Zazula started his own, Megaforce Records, and borrowed the money himself. He later said it was his mortgage money. The band drove across America in a rented U-Haul truck.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dave Mustaine's drinking, drug use and violent temper had been causing trouble for months. On the morning of the eleventh of April 1983, in New York, James and Lars fired him. They drove him to the Port Authority bus terminal and put him on a Greyhound back to Los Angeles, a ride of about four days. His replacement was already there. Kirk Hammett, guitarist of the Bay Area band Exodus and a former student of Joe Satriani, had got a call on the first of April and flown east. The first song they played together was Seek and Destroy, and James later said that after Kirk's solo he knew things were going to be alright. Mustaine went home, formed Megadeth, and carried the wound for decades.[1] [2] [3]

The debut was recorded in about two weeks in May 1983 in Rochester, New York. The band could not afford hotels and slept wherever they could, including a rehearsal space in Queens where Anthrax practised. They wanted to call the album Metal Up Your Ass, with a cover showing a dagger rising out of a toilet bowl. Zazula said distributors would never stock it. Cliff, fed up with the timid record business, came up with the new title, Kill 'Em All. It was released on the twenty-fifth of July 1983. Mustaine still received four co-writing credits, and many of Kirk's solos opened with bars Mustaine had written. It was pressed in batches of five hundred and sold slowly, but it is now seen as the true birth of thrash metal.[1] [2]

Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets

In January 1984, the night before a show in Boston, the band's gear was stolen. James lost the Marshall amplifier his late mother had helped him buy. Feeling powerless, he wrote the lyrics to Fade to Black, a song about suicide. In February the band went to Copenhagen to record at Sweet Silence Studios with producer Flemming Rasmussen. Lars picked him because he loved his work on a Rainbow album, even though Rasmussen had never heard of Metallica. They were so broke that they slept in the studio during the day and recorded at night, when it was free. Kirk took the title Ride the Lightning from Stephen King's novel The Stand, where it means execution in the electric chair. The album came out on the twenty-seventh of July 1984.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ride the Lightning showed a band growing up fast. Cliff, who loved classical music, taught James about harmony and counter melody. There were acoustic guitars, long instrumentals and a ballad, and some thrash fans were horrified by Fade to Black. The music industry was paying attention. In September 1984 Elektra Records signed the band, and Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch of Q Prime became their managers, a partnership that still stands as of 2026. The two men had noticed kids in a London record shop wearing Metallica shirts. On the seventeenth of August 1985 the band played the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington, squeezed between Ratt and Bon Jovi. James told seventy thousand people that if they had come to see spandex and eye make up, this was not their band.[1] [2] [3]

The third album was recorded back in Copenhagen from September to December 1985. Lars took drum lessons, Kirk worked with Joe Satriani, and the band stayed sober on recording days. Lars even borrowed a rare snare drum from Def Leppard's Rick Allen. The title song, about cocaine addiction, was recorded at a slower speed and then sped up on tape to sound tighter. Cliff shone on the instrumental Orion. The cover showed a field of white crosses hanging from puppet strings. Master of Puppets came out on the third of March 1986 and reached number twenty-nine in America with almost no radio play and no video. It sold half a million copies in its first year. In 2015 it became the first metal recording chosen for the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.[1] [2]

Instead of making a video, the band hit the road for five months opening for Ozzy Osbourne in American arenas. They played forty-five minute sets and won over his fans night after night. The press noticed how much they drank and called them Alcoholica, and the band wore shirts that said Alcoholica, Drank 'Em All. Midway through the tour James broke his wrist skateboarding, and guitar technician John Marshall played rhythm guitar while James sang. In September the tour moved to Europe, with Anthrax in support. On the twenty-sixth of September 1986 they played the Solnahallen arena in Stockholm, Sweden. The last song Cliff Burton ever played with Metallica that night was Fight Fire with Fire.[1] [2]

The crash in Sweden

After the Stockholm show the tour bus drove south through the night toward Copenhagen. The band had been complaining about their bunks, and Cliff and Kirk drew cards for the best one. Cliff drew the ace of spades and took Kirk's bunk. Shortly before seven in the morning on the twenty-seventh of September 1986, near the village of Dörarp in southern Sweden, the bus slid off the road and rolled over. There were no safety restraints on the bunks. Cliff was thrown through a window, and the bus came down on top of him. He was killed instantly. He was twenty-four years old. James, Lars and Kirk were not seriously hurt. Kirk has said that the thought that it could have been him has never left him.[1] [2] [3]

The driver said the bus had hit black ice. James did not believe him. He later said he walked along the road in his socks and underwear searching for ice and found none, and admitted he wanted to kill the driver in that moment. Police also reported no ice on the road. But the driver testified that he was well rested, the driver of the crew bus backed him up, and he was found not at fault. Cliff was cremated, and his ashes were scattered at the Maxwell Ranch in California while Orion played. In 2006 a memorial stone was unveiled near the crash site. It carries a line Cliff wrote, asking whether the kingdom of salvation could take him home.[1] [2] [3]

The three survivors decided Cliff would have wanted them to carry on, and his family gave their blessing. Dozens of bassists auditioned, including Kirk's school friend Les Claypool, later of Primus. Jason Newsted, a farm boy from Michigan playing in the Phoenix band Flotsam and Jetsam, got hold of the set list and learned every song before he arrived. He won the job at the end of October 1986. Cliff's parents, Ray and Jan, were at his second audition, and his mother hugged him and said, you are the one, please be safe. His first show was on the eighth of November at the Country Club in Reseda, California. His welcome was rough. The band tricked him into eating a whole ball of wasabi.[1] [2] [3]

The teasing went further than jokes. On the 1987 covers EP Garage Days Re-Revisited, recorded partly to work through their grief, Jason was credited as Master J Newkid. Many fans came to feel he was never truly accepted, and Lars later admitted as much. The band released Cliff 'Em All, a video tribute built from home movies and bass solos. Friends honoured Cliff in their own ways. Anthrax dedicated their album Among the Living to him, and Dave Mustaine wrote In My Darkest Hour for him. Cliff's parents came to a Megadeth show in San Francisco that December, the night Mustaine first played it. Jan Burton died in 1993. Ray Burton lived until 2020.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Justice, the Black Album and fire

And Justice for All, recorded in Los Angeles in early 1988, was the band's most complex record, with long songs crammed with riffs about corruption, censorship and war. James later said they were simply showing off. It is also famous for something you cannot hear. Jason's bass is almost inaudible. Flemming Rasmussen said James and Lars told the mixers to turn the bass down, and then down again. Mixer Steve Thompson blamed Lars. In 2019 James and Lars said it was never meant to belittle Jason, and that their hearing was shot from touring. The album still reached number six in America and went platinum in nine weeks. On it, James wrote Dyers Eve as a furious letter to his own parents.[1] [2] [3]

For years Metallica had refused to make music videos. That ended with One, a song about a World War One soldier left blind, deaf and limbless by a landmine, begging God to let him die. The black and white video mixed the band with scenes from the 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun, and rather than keep paying licence fees, the band bought the rights to the film. At the Grammys in February 1989, Metallica became the first metal band to perform at the ceremony, and everyone expected them to win the new hard rock and metal award. It went to Jethro Tull. The band put a sticker on the album that read Grammy Award Losers. A year later they won the new metal category, for One.[1] [2]

By 1990 the band wanted shorter, heavier songs. They hired Bob Rock, who had produced Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood, and spent eight tense months recording in Los Angeles. Rock made them play together in one room and pushed James to sing and write better, and the arguments were constant. The album cost a million dollars. During the sessions Lars, Kirk and Jason all went through divorces, and the joke working title was Married to Metal. A riff of Kirk's became Enter Sandman. James's first lyrics for it hinted at crib death before he rewrote them. Nothing Else Matters was a private love song James had written on tour and almost did not share. The album Metallica, forever known as the Black Album, came out on the twelfth of August 1991.[1] [2] [3] [4]

It went straight to number one in America and nine other countries, and became the best selling album of the SoundScan era in the United States, certified twice diamond in 2025. On the twenty-eighth of September 1991, a month after a failed coup in the Soviet Union, Metallica played a free festival at Tushino Airfield outside Moscow alongside AC/DC and Pantera. Around eleven thousand soldiers, police and guards struggled to control the enormous crowd. Police swung batons, bottles flew, and fifty-one people were taken to hospital, though nobody died. The band's world tour ran on for years. In April 1992 they played the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley, where James sang Stone Cold Crazy with the surviving members of Queen and Tony Iommi.[1] [2] [3]

On the eighth of August 1992, on a co-headlining stadium tour with Guns N' Roses, Metallica played the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. During Fade to Black, after a mix up over new pyrotechnics, James walked into a twelve foot column of flame. He suffered second and third degree burns to his arm, hand, face and legs, and Jason said his skin was bubbling. After a delay of more than two hours Guns N' Roses cut their own set short, and an estimated two thousand fans rioted, overturning police cars and looting. James was back on stage seventeen days later, singing with a thick bandage, while John Marshall played his guitar parts. Years later James got a tattoo of playing cards wrapped in flames to remember that night.[1] [2] [3]

Short hair, Load and Napster

After the Black Album tour, Lars took Elektra Records to court to try to escape the band's old contract, which still paid a low royalty. Warner Music offered them a better deal, and the case was settled in January 1995. Then the band reinvented itself. The members had been listening to Tom Waits, Nick Cave, old blues and Oasis. They cut their hair, wore make up for photos by Anton Corbijn and changed their famous logo. Load came out on the fourth of June 1996, running almost seventy-nine minutes, the most a single CD could hold. The cover was an artwork by Andres Serrano made from blood and semen. Jason hated it and refused to discuss it. Load still went straight to number one.[1] [2]

It was a painful time for James. In late 1995 his father Virgil was diagnosed with cancer, and James went to Wyoming to be with him, writing lyrics while he was there. Virgil died in early 1996 as the album was being finished, and James said it took him right back to the day Cliff died. Songs like Mama Said and Until It Sleeps circled around his late mother. Until It Sleeps became the band's only top ten single in America. The leftover songs became Reload in November 1997, with Marianne Faithfull singing on The Memory Remains. Some fans called the whole era a betrayal of metal. Lars answered that anyone who judged them by their leather jackets should not be buying the records.[1] [2] [3]

In 1998 the band went back to its roots with Garage Inc., a double album of cover songs, from Black Sabbath and Diamond Head to the Misfits and Thin Lizzy's version of Whiskey in the Jar, which won them a Grammy. They promoted it with club shows opened by a Metallica tribute band. In April 1999 they played two nights in Berkeley with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Kamen, who had arranged the strings on Nothing Else Matters. James said the idea of joining metal and classical music went all the way back to Cliff. The live album S and M reached number two in America, and Kamen's orchestral take on The Call of Ktulu later won a Grammy of its own.[1] [2] [3]

Early in 2000 a demo of a new song, I Disappear, meant for the Mission Impossible Two soundtrack, turned up on the radio. The band traced the leak to Napster, where their entire catalogue could be downloaded for free. On the thirteenth of April they sued. In July, Lars testified before the United States Senate. The band handed over a list of more than three hundred thousand users who had shared their songs, and those users were banned. To many fans, Metallica looked like millionaires attacking their own listeners. At the MTV Video Music Awards that year Lars was booed, and Napster's founder Shawn Fanning wore a Metallica shirt with a joke about borrowing it from a friend. The case was settled in July 2001.[1] [2] [3]

Inside the band, things were falling apart. Jason wanted to release an album with his side project Echobrain, and James refused, comparing a side project to cheating on your wife. After a nine and a half hour band meeting with a new performance coach, Jason quit. The news broke on the seventeenth of January 2001, with Jason citing private and personal reasons and the physical damage he had done to himself playing the music he loved. Years of headbanging had hurt his neck and back. Lars later called him the sacrificial lamb for the band's growth and admitted he was never fully accepted. In 2022 James said the song All Within My Hands was about how tightly he had tried to control Jason.[1] [2]

Rehab, therapy and St. Anger

To hold the band together, their management brought in Phil Towle, a former gang counsellor turned performance coach who had worked with the St. Louis Rams football team. He reportedly cost around forty thousand dollars a month. In April 2001 Metallica set up a studio in old army barracks at the Presidio in San Francisco, with producer Bob Rock playing bass. Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky began filming. They knew the band because Metallica had let them use its music for free in Paradise Lost, their documentary about the West Memphis Three. The original plan was a promotional film. What they captured, over seven hundred and fifteen days, was a band in crisis.[1] [2]

A few weeks in, after an argument with Lars, James walked out. On the nineteenth of July 2001 he entered rehab for alcoholism and other addictions. All work stopped, and nobody knew whether Metallica would survive. During the long wait, Lars met Dave Mustaine on camera, two days after the September eleventh attacks, and Mustaine said he had always felt second best to Metallica. James left rehab on the fourth of December and came back to the studio in April 2002, allowed to work only from noon to four so he could be with his family. The old tension came straight back, with Lars accusing James of trying to control everything, and James tracing that need for control to a childhood fear of abandonment.[1] [2]

The band moved to a new studio in San Rafael and, for the first time, wrote everything together. St. Anger came out on the fifth of June 2003, moved forward five days for fear of leaks. It had no guitar solos, a raw sound, and a snare drum Lars played with the snares switched off, so it rang like a metal pot. Critics were divided and many fans mocked it, yet it debuted at number one in America and the title song won a Grammy. The lyrics grew out of James's time in rehab. The film, Some Kind of Monster, premiered at Sundance in January 2004 and was hailed as one of the most revealing rock portraits ever made. Metallica had bought it back from their label for four point three million dollars.[1] [2] [3]

Before the album was released, they needed a bassist. After three months of auditions they chose Robert Trujillo, born in Santa Monica, of Mexican and Native American descent, who had played with Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne. He had first met the band on tour in 1993, and his finger style playing reminded them of Cliff. He joined on the twenty-fourth of February 2003 and was given a one million dollar advance, a moment caught in the film. In an odd twist, Jason Newsted replaced him in Ozzy's band that summer. In June 2004 Lars suffered an anxiety attack and was rushed to hospital before a Download Festival show. Dave Lombardo of Slayer, Joey Jordison of Slipknot and Lars's drum technician filled in.[1] [2] [3]

Death Magnetic, the Hall of Fame and the Big Four

In 2006 Metallica parted ways with Bob Rock after fifteen years, not long after about fifteen hundred fans signed an online petition against him. Rock said the petition hurt his children's feelings. The new producer, Rick Rubin, sent the band back to its roots, with standard tuning and long guitar solos. Kirk brought a photo of the late Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley, who had died after years of drug use, into the studio, and it helped inspire the title. James said Death Magnetic began as a tribute to rock and roll martyrs. It came out on the twelfth of September 2008 and made Metallica the first band to have five studio albums in a row debut at number one in America. Critics called it a comeback, though many said it was mixed far too loud.[1] [2] [3]

On the fourth of April 2009 Metallica were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Jason Newsted came back for the night, and for the first time two bassists shared a Metallica stage, with Jason and Robert Trujillo both playing on Master of Puppets and Enter Sandman. Cliff's father Ray accepted the honour for his son, and told the room that Cliff's mother had been the band's biggest fan. Lars became the first Dane in the Hall. Only members who had played on an album were inducted, which left out Dave Mustaine and Ron McGovney. The band invited Mustaine to the ceremony anyway, but he was on tour in Europe.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the sixteenth of June 2010, at an airfield near Warsaw, the so called big four of thrash, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, played on the same bill for the first time. At a dinner the night before, Robert Trujillo greeted Dave Mustaine with a hug. The shows travelled around Europe and ended at Yankee Stadium in New York in September 2011. That December the band marked thirty years with four fan club shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco, with tickets priced at six dollars. Old faces came home. Lloyd Grant, Ron McGovney, Dave Mustaine and Jason Newsted all played with them, alongside heroes like Ozzy Osbourne, King Diamond and members of Diamond Head.[1] [2] [3]

2011 also brought the strangest record of their career. Lulu, a collaboration with Lou Reed based on two plays by the German writer Frank Wedekind, came out on the thirty-first of October. Reed mostly spoke his words over Metallica's music. Tempers flared, and Lars said Reed once challenged him to a street fight. Fans and critics savaged it, and Reed claimed some Metallica fans had threatened to shoot him. When Reed died in October 2013, Lars wrote that the record sounded more alive than ever, and Reed's widow later said David Bowie had called it Reed's greatest work. In November 2012 Metallica left Warner and launched their own label, Blackened Recordings, taking ownership of all their studio albums.[1] [2] [3]

Seven continents, Hardwired and a relapse

In 2013 the band starred in Metallica Through the Never, a 3D concert film wrapped around a thriller about a roadie played by Dane DeHaan. It lost money. That December they did something no band had ever done. On the eighth of December 2013 they played for about one hundred and twenty scientists and contest winners in a dome at the Carlini research base in Antarctica. To protect the environment there were no loud speakers, and the audience listened through headphones. The show, called Freeze 'Em All, made Metallica the first band to play on all seven continents. In 2014 they headlined Glastonbury, with Lars admitting they had one shot and might never be invited back.[1] [2] [3]

The next album took eight years, the longest gap of their career. Along the way Kirk lost his phone, which held about two hundred and fifty riff ideas he had never backed up, and he ended up with no writing credits on the record. When Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead died in December 2015, the band wrote Murder One for him, named after his favourite amplifier. Hardwired to Self-Destruct came out on the eighteenth of November 2016 on their own label and debuted at number one, their sixth in a row. They made a music video for every song. In 2017 they launched the All Within My Hands Foundation, which supports food banks and trade school scholarships.[1] [2] [3]

In September 2019 the band opened San Francisco's new Chase Center with S and M2, a twentieth anniversary reunion with the San Francisco Symphony that became the biggest rock event ever screened in cinemas. Weeks later came bad news. On the twenty-seventh of September the band announced that James had gone back into rehab. In a note signed by Lars, Kirk and Robert, they said their brother had been struggling with addiction on and off for many years, and they postponed the Australia and New Zealand tour with full refunds. Then the pandemic shut down touring altogether. The band streamed old concerts every Monday and recorded a show at a winery in Sonoma for drive-in cinemas.[1] [2]

In 2021 the Black Album turned thirty, and more than fifty artists, from Miley Cyrus to Elton John and Yo-Yo Ma, recorded songs for The Metallica Blacklist, with the profits going to charity. The next year a new generation discovered Master of Puppets. In the fourth season finale of Stranger Things, in July 2022, the character Eddie Munson plays it in the Upside Down to draw away monsters, and streams of the song jumped by more than six hundred and fifty percent. There was loss too. Jon Zazula, the man who risked his mortgage on Kill 'Em All, died on the first of February 2022 at sixty-nine. His wife and business partner Marsha had died the year before.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

72 Seasons and the road to 2026

The eleventh album, 72 Seasons, came out on the fourteenth of April 2023. James explained that the title meant the first eighteen years of life, the years that shape who we become. The lyrics dug deep into his childhood, and the cover showed burnt objects, including a crib, a switchblade and pill packets, against bright yellow. It debuted at number two in America, ending their run of six number ones, but the title track won the Grammy for best metal performance in 2024, the band's tenth Grammy. That April James showed off a new tattoo, an ace of spades on his middle finger, inked with some of Lemmy's ashes mixed in. Without Lemmy, he wrote, there would be no Metallica.[1] [2] [3]

The M72 World Tour began in Amsterdam on the twenty-seventh of April 2023, with the stage in the middle of the stadium and the famous Snake Pit at its centre. In most cities the band plays two nights with no song repeated. On the seventh of May 2025 they played Virginia Tech's football stadium, where Enter Sandman has been the team's entrance music for twenty-five years. When they finally played it, the jumping crowd registered on the university's seismic observatory like a small earthquake. As of 2026 the tour has grossed well over six hundred million dollars, won Pollstar's rock tour of the year more than once, and is scheduled to run until June 2027.[1] [2]

The oldest story in Metallica's history found a kind of ending. In 2025 Dave Mustaine announced that the next Megadeth album would be their last, and revealed that he has Dupuytren's contracture, a condition affecting his hand. That final album, released on the twenty-third of January 2026, closes with Megadeth's own version of Ride the Lightning, a song Mustaine co-wrote before he was fired in 1983. He said he wanted to close the circle, and spoke warmly of James and Lars, saying he loved them and that they fought so much because he missed them. After more than forty years of feuds and truces, it was the closest thing yet to a peace offering.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2026 the band kept touring Europe's stadiums. In Dublin on the nineteenth of June, Kirk's foot went through a fabric stage cover during Seek and Destroy and he tumbled into the crowd. Fans helped him up, he finished the show, and he later joked online about Slip and Destroy. That summer brought sad news from the Burton family. Cliff's sister Connie, his last surviving sibling, who spent years sharing her brother's story with fans, died on the nineteenth of August 2026. Next comes a residency called Life Burns Faster at the Sphere in Las Vegas, twenty-four shows scheduled to open on the first of October 2026 and run until March 2027.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The people around Metallica

James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. They met through a newspaper ad in 1981 and have written almost every Metallica song together since. James is the shy lyricist and riff machine, Lars the relentless organiser and spokesman. Their power struggle exploded on camera in Some Kind of Monster, when Lars accused James of controlling everything. They survived it. In 2023 Lars joked that James writes more riffs while tuning his guitar than most people do in a lifetime.[1] [2] [3]

Metallica and Dave Mustaine. Fired in 1983, Mustaine formed Megadeth and spent years attacking his old band in the press. Truces came and went. Megadeth opened for Metallica in 1993, the big four shows reunited them in 2010, and he played their thirtieth anniversary shows. A plan to reissue the No Life til Leather demo together collapsed in a dispute over credits. In 2026 Megadeth's final album closed with Ride the Lightning.[1] [2] [3]

Kirk Hammett and Dave Mustaine. Mustaine long said Kirk stole his job, and many of Kirk's early solos began with bars Mustaine had written. Kirk said Mustaine approached him before a concert in 1989 and apologised. The rivalry never quite vanished. When a 2009 book ranked Mustaine the greatest metal guitarist and put Kirk and James below him, Mustaine told Classic Rock his reaction was simple. I win.[1] [2] [3]

Metallica and Jason Newsted. Jason joined weeks after Cliff's death and was hazed, credited as Master J Newkid and buried in the Justice mix. He got only three writing credits in fourteen years. He left in 2001 after James blocked his side project. Yet he returned for the Hall of Fame in 2009 and the thirtieth anniversary shows in 2011, and says he is on good terms with them all.[1] [2]

Metallica and The Burton family. Cliff's parents, Ray and Jan, blessed the band carrying on and were at Jason Newsted's audition. Jan died in 1993. Ray accepted Cliff's Hall of Fame honour in 2009 and helped launch a replica of Cliff's bass in 2013, before his death in 2020. For years the Burtons gave Cliff's royalties to a music scholarship at his old high school. His sister Connie died in August 2026.[1] [2]

Metallica and Bob Rock. Hired for the Black Album after the band admired his work with Mötley Crüe, Rock clashed with them so badly he briefly swore never to work with them again. He stayed fifteen years, producing Load, Reload, Garage Inc. and St. Anger, and even played bass on St. Anger. A fan petition helped end the partnership in 2006, but Rock rejoined them on stage for their thirtieth anniversary in 2011.[1] [2] [3]

Metallica and Jon Zazula. The New Jersey record store owner known as Jonny Z heard the No Life til Leather demo, founded Megaforce Records to release Kill 'Em All and nearly went broke doing it. The band left him in 1984, unhappy with the promotion of Ride the Lightning, but he remained the man who gave them their start. He died in February 2022, a year after his wife and partner Marsha.[1] [2] [3]

Metallica and Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch. The founders of Q Prime took over the band's management in 1984, steered them to Elektra and have stayed with them ever since. They brought in therapist Phil Towle during the band's worst crisis, negotiated the return of Metallica's master recordings in 2012, and in 2023 arranged the band's purchase of a vinyl pressing plant in Virginia.[1] [2]

Metallica and Lou Reed. They first shared a bill in 1997 and bonded at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's anniversary concert in 2009. Their 2011 album Lulu was savaged, and Reed once challenged Lars to a street fight in the studio. Reed died in 2013, and Lars wrote that the record would age well and that in some ways it was cooler that the masses never embraced it.[1]

James Hetfield and Lemmy Kilmister. Motörhead were one of Metallica's founding influences. The band played a set of Motörhead covers at Lemmy's fiftieth birthday party in 1995, and wrote Murder One for him after he died in 2015. In 2024 James had an ace of spades tattooed on his middle finger with some of Lemmy's ashes in the ink, saying that without Lemmy there would be no Metallica.[1] [2] [3]

Lars Ulrich and Nikki Sixx. In the early Los Angeles days Metallica sneered at the city's glam bands, and Lars and Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx reportedly clashed before a show in 1982. Yet Metallica hired Crüe's producer Bob Rock. The feud flared again in 1997 when Lars accused Crüe of using a backing track, and in 2015 Tommy Lee mocked Lars online. By 2017 James was a guest on Sixx's radio show.[1]

Rare facts about Metallica

• The first pressings of Metallica's first ever release misspelled the band's name as Mettallica. Hit the Lights appeared on the 1982 compilation Metal Massacre, but early copies printed the name with an extra t. The band was angry about it.[1]
• Lars Ulrich's godfather was the jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Lars grew up in a tennis family in Denmark, son of the player Torben Ulrich. The jazz great Dexter Gordon was his godfather, and the singer Neneh Cherry was a childhood friend.[1]
• James Hetfield has warmed up his voice with the same cassette tape since the early 1990s. After straining his voice singing So What on the Black Album tour, James took vocal lessons for the first time. His coach gave him a cassette of piano warm ups, and he still uses that same tape before shows and recordings.[1]
• James Hetfield's contract once banned him from skateboarding while Metallica was on tour. James broke his arm skateboarding more than once, forcing others to play his guitar parts on stage. The band's management, Q Prime, responded by adding a clause to his contract forbidding him to skate on tour.[1]
• James Hetfield secretly sang a song in the South Park movie. The song Hell Isn't Good in South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was long thought to be sung by Trey Parker. In 2000 James admitted it was him, which fans had already guessed from the growl.[1]
• A French printing mistake gave some copies of Ride the Lightning a green cover. A French pressing plant mistakenly printed the electric chair cover in green. Those copies are now collector's items.[1]
• Cliff Burton carried a hammer everywhere and inspired the bloody hammer on Kill 'Em All. Kirk Hammett said Cliff always had a hammer in his luggage and would sometimes take it out and start destroying things. Cliff suggested the bloodied hammer for the album cover.[1]
• Every issue of Kill 'Em All carries the phrase Bang That Head That Doesn't Bang, dedicated to one fan. The line was a tribute to Rich Burch, a San Francisco fan famous for his headbanging at the band's early shows.[1]
• Dave Mustaine wrote a future Megadeth lyric on a cake wrapper on the bus home after being fired. On the four day Greyhound ride from New York to Los Angeles in 1983, Mustaine read a political leaflet and scribbled ideas on the back of a Sno Balls cake wrapper. They became Megadeth's Set the World Afire.[1]
• The song Master of Puppets was recorded slower and lower, then sped up on tape. Flemming Rasmussen ran the tapes faster to bring the song up to standard pitch and make the playing sound tighter. Lars later said he feels the album version is too tight.[1]
• The snare drum on Master of Puppets was borrowed from Def Leppard's Rick Allen. Lars used a rare Ludwig Black Beauty snare lent to him by Def Leppard's drummer for the 1985 Copenhagen sessions.[1]
• Master of Puppets carried a mock parental advisory warning written by the band. Mocking the warning stickers pushed by the Parents Music Resource Center, the band printed a joke notice saying only Damage, Inc. might offend, then listed all the swear words that do not appear on the record.[1]
• Jason Newsted's first Metallica credit named him Master J Newkid. On the 1987 covers EP Garage Days Re-Revisited, recorded partly to test Jason and cope with grief over Cliff Burton, the new bassist was credited under a teasing nickname.[1] [2]
• After losing a Grammy to Jethro Tull, Metallica stickered their album Grammy Award Losers. The 1989 upset was so notorious that Entertainment Weekly later ranked it among the ten biggest in Grammy history. The Academy split the category the next year, and Metallica won the new metal award for One.[1]
• Metallica bought the rights to the film Johnny Got His Gun for their first music video. The video for One used scenes from the 1971 anti-war film. Rather than keep paying royalty fees to show it, the band bought the film rights outright.[1] [2]
• The child reciting the bedtime prayer in Enter Sandman is producer Bob Rock's son. In the song's breakdown, a child's voice says the prayer Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. That voice belongs to the son of producer Bob Rock.[1]
• Kirk Hammett does not play on the studio recording of Nothing Else Matters. James played the solo himself on the song he wrote about a girlfriend while homesick on tour. Kirk said he did not even learn it until well into the tour. The video passed one billion YouTube views in August 2021.[1]
• The Black Album's cover was teased as a copy of Spinal Tap's Smell the Glove. Members of Spinal Tap asked the band about it in their documentary. Lars said the real inspiration was Status Quo's all black Hello album.[1]
• Load runs seventy-eight minutes and fifty-nine seconds, the maximum a single CD could hold. To fit, The Outlaw Torn lost a minute. The full version later appeared on a single under the title Unencumbered by Manufacturing Restrictions Version.[1]
• On their 1998 covers tour, Metallica's opening act was a Metallica tribute band. For five club shows promoting Garage Inc., Metallica played only cover songs, while a tribute band called Battery opened by playing Metallica's own songs.[1]
• By 2025 Kirk Hammett said he had 767 riff ideas saved for the next album. Years after losing a phone holding about two hundred and fifty unbacked riffs, Kirk told Rolling Stone in 2025 that he had 767 new ideas and that sorting through them was a nightmare.[1] [2]
• James Hetfield turned an F tattoo for his wife's name into the word Forgiven. James had an F on his left hand for his wife Francesca. It has since been reworked into the word Forgiven.[1]
• Lars Ulrich was knighted by the Queen of Denmark in 2017. On the twenty-sixth of May 2017 Queen Margrethe the Second awarded him the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog. He lives in San Francisco but holds only Danish citizenship.[1]
• Lars Ulrich sold a Basquiat painting for about three times its estimate. In 2002 he sold Jean-Michel Basquiat's Self Portrait at Christie's. It was estimated at five million dollars and sold for triple that.[1]
• Cliff Burton's parents gave his royalties to a scholarship for young musicians. In 2017 it emerged that Ray and Jan Burton had been donating Cliff's posthumous royalties to a music scholarship at Castro Valley High School, his old school.[1]
• Alameda County declared the tenth of February 2018 Cliff Burton Day. After a fan petition, the county board proclaimed the day in honour of what would have been Cliff's fifty-sixth birthday.[1]
• Metallica's music was reportedly used on Iraqi prisoners, and James Hetfield was not offended. In 2008 James said he was glad to be part of their exposure to freedom. The British band Chumbawamba answered with a song called Torturing James Hetfield.[1]
• James Hetfield wrote the Seek and Destroy riff in his truck outside a sticker factory. Before Metallica made money, James worked at a sticker factory in Los Angeles. He came up with the riff sitting in his truck outside. It became a permanent live singalong.[1]
• The so called live tracks on the 1984 Jump in the Fire single were studio recordings with fake crowd noise. The single promoted a UK tour with Venom. Phantom Lord and Seek and Destroy were billed as live, but crowd noise had been dubbed over studio takes.[1]
• Part of the spoken passage credited to Cliff Burton actually comes from a film and a fantasy novel. In To Live Is to Die, the first line comes from the film Excalibur and the second from Stephen R. Donaldson's novel Lord Foul's Bane. Only the closing lines were written by Cliff.[1]
• Lars Ulrich plays without a ride cymbal because he dislikes its ding. Unlike most drummers, Lars favours the louder, washier China cymbal. On the M72 tour a ride cymbal is added for Until It Sleeps and removed straight afterwards.[1] [2]
• In 2023 Metallica bought a vinyl record pressing plant in Virginia. Q Prime arranged the band's purchase of Furnace Record Pressing in Alexandria, Virginia, in March 2023, the year after Stranger Things sent Master of Puppets back into the charts.[1]
• Kirk Hammett's Ouija board guitar contains two spelling mistakes. The graphic was meant to read William Fuld Talking Board Set, but it says William Fued Talking Baard Set. He now tours with a white version too.[1]
• Robert Trujillo was credited as Stymee on his first Suicidal Tendencies album. When he joined the crossover band in 1989, the album Controlled by Hatred billed him under the nickname. Decades later his son Tye would play bass in Suicidal Tendencies too.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.