James Hetfield poetically describes his relationship with the guitar

James Hetfield established itself, primarily, as the voice of the Metallica. He is also one of the band’s main composers alongside the drummer. Lars Ulrich. Such skills make many forget about his talent on the guitar as well.

The history of Hetfield In music he started as a guitarist. In 1981, when Ulrich published an ad in the newspaper’s classifieds The Recycler “looking for musicians to play songs from Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head and Iron Maiden”, James performed on the instrument, not as a singer — and alongside another guitarist, Hugh Tanner. He took over the vocals because there was no better option available, although they considered bringing in John Bush (Armored Saint, Anthrax).

Therefore, it is not surprising that Hetfield have a special relationship with the guitar. And it got to the point that such a connection inspired a new book, “Messenger: The Guitars of James Hetfield”where the musician shares his personal collection of instruments and reveals the story of each of them in his career.

In a statement to the podcast “The Metallica Report”(via Blabbermouth), James he reflected on how the guitar shaped his life and commented on his collection. Initially, on the last mentioned topic, he stated:

“I wrote a book about cars [‘Reclaimed Rust’], so doing a guitar book was the next thing. And I already had that in mind when we were doing the car book and the way we photographed cars. I thought, ‘I have all this stuff stored in my garage, why can’t I share it with the world or have it in a book that I can look at and leaf through without having to open the garage doors or guitar cases?’ .”

An almost poetic reflection on the relationship with the musical instrument followed, after he explained the reason for the title “Messengers” (“messengers”).

“It just made sense. My guitars are like the channel of my higher power through my body, through my digestion, my brain, my fingers on the guitar, through an amplifier in your ears. It’s a link. It’s a kind of messenger. And all the guitars I’ve collected over the years, especially all the early, first 10 years of guitars (OGV, So What, So Fucking What and Eet Fuk), all these guitars have names. The same goes for all cars.”

James Hetfield, guitarist “pianist”

Something that many fans of Metallica may not know is that the relationship between James Hetfield with another instrument made him develop his guitar skills. The group’s frontman, even as a child, took piano lessons. He told the Metal Hammer (via website Igor Miranda) in 2009 that the idea came from his mother, Cynthia.

“My mother had seen me at a friend’s house starting to play the piano and thought: ‘ah, he’s going to be a musician… ok, let’s take him to piano lessons’. I took classes for a few years and it was kind of a pain, because he was learning those classical pieces, things that I didn’t hear on the radio, you know?”

Over the years, these classes proved to be decisive for his distinctive technique. Hetfield He is recognized as one of the great rhythm guitarists in metal, due to his precision with his right hand when playing rhythm, in addition to being able to play complex lines while singing.

“I’m glad I was forced to do that, because having my left and right hands doing different things besides singing at the same time kind of planted a seed for what I do now. Singing and playing is easier than it would be if I hadn’t taken piano lessons.”