Metallica songs used on terrorism suspects? Allegations of plagiarism? And a stadium riot
after pyrotechnics go horribly wrong? The most popular metal band in the
world isn't immune to controversy. These are the scandals that rocked Metallica.
There's a lot of debate about exactly when Metallica went from heavy metal darling to
world-renowned franchise. Many fans point to the mind-blowing sales of their self-titled album,
while others suggest it was the use of their song "I Disappear" in 2000's "Mission: Impossible 2."
In reality, it was their fight against Napster over the legalities of P2P
file sharing that brought Metallica to the forefront of international
news — and got them labeled as sellouts by many longtime fans.
According to The Washington Post, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and his lawyers appeared
at Napster's offices in May 2000 with the names of over 335,000 individuals who had used the service
to download the band's music. Napster settled the landmark dispute with the group in 2001,
but the scandal has hung like a black cloud over Metallica ever since.
In a 2013 interview with Huffpost, Ulrich acknowledged that the Napster debacle was
the biggest incident that the band has become notorious for. He elaborated,
"It'll be in the first five sentences of my obituary,
and I sort of accept that for better or worse."
Ulrich went on to assert that he had no regrets over the situation — despite being
parodied by the likes of "Weird Al" Yankovic and "South Park."
"We're gonna sit here and protest with you until free downloading stops, yeah."
Dave Mustaine is an absolute beast on the guitar, known for his iconic riffs in songs like
"Holy Wars… The Punishment Due" and "Symphony of Destruction."
He's so talented, in fact, that he was awarded the number one spot in music journalist Joel
McIver's book "The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists" in 2008. The accolade meant a lot to Mustaine, who
revealed to Classic Rock that he was particularly happy to finish above both of his former Metallica
bandmates, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett. While Mustaine claims to be on better terms
with the members of Metallica nowadays, he's still known to fire off the occasional potshot.
Mustaine's firing from the band on April 11, 1983 is still a sore point of contention for
both him and his fans. Reportedly, Metallica found Mustaine's alcohol abuse to be too extreme
and parted ways with him in an abrupt manner. The band packed his bags,
woke him up, and gave him a one-way bus ticket out of town. It also didn't help
matters much that Metallica had already lined up Hammett as his replacement 10 days earlier.
After his bitter departure, Mustaine went on to form the successful thrash outfit Megadeth,
which stands alongside Metallica as one of the "big four" American thrash metal bands.
There's nothing quite as disappointing as trying to find tickets for a show
and seeing they're all sold out. What's even worse is discovering a scalper pushing
for ridiculous prices because they know there's a desperate audience.
"This is James from Metallica. Survey says: you need cash."
Many artists agree with fans that ticket scalping
can do serious harm to the music and live entertainment industries.
Unfortunately, Metallica didn't seem to think so: a 2019 report from Billboard
revealed that they were actually getting in on the action alongside several other musical acts.
The scandalous discovery found that Live Nation allowed artists to sell
tickets on scalping sites for larger profit margins. A recorded phone call featured
Tony DiCioccio — an associate of Metallica's — asking Live Nation's Bob Roux for help selling
88,000 Metallica tickets on scalping sites. It wasn't a good look for anyone involved,
but the band members themselves claimed that they were unaware any of it was taking place.
Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery — but when music is concerned,
it can be grounds for a lengthy lawsuit. In the case of Metallica, they received some serious
bad press in 2016 because of a letter their lawyer sent to another band…a cover band, to be precise.
The Canadian band called Sandman — clearly named after Metallica's song "Enter
Sandman" — received a cease-and-desist letter from Metallica's attorney,
demanding they stop using anything related to the name of Metallica in their personal
branding as a group. Vocalist Joe Di Taranto posted the letter on Facebook,
where it received a lot of attention from both fans and the music community. Eventually, the
incident came to the attention of the band itself, which gave a statement to Rolling Stone saying:
"Sandman should file the letter in the trash. Keep doing what you're doing. We totally support you."
Metallica also hinted in their statement that the
lawyer who'd sent the letter in question had since been fired.
On August 8, 1992, Metallica and Guns N' Roses were deep into their co-headlining tour.
There had been a few hiccups along the way, including Axl Rose's constant lateness.
On this fateful evening at Montreal's Olympic Stadium,
Metallica played first, but their set ended much sooner than anticipated. During a performance of
"Fade to Black," Hetfield accidentally found himself trapped in a shower of pyrotechnics,
causing second- and third-degree burns on his arm that required immediate medical attention.
"The back of the hand is where it was, it was the worst. I mean, right here was okay,
that's where my wristband was, so, heh heh, I'm alright here, heh heh."
Instead of Guns N' Roses doing Metallica and the audience a solid by playing a longer set,
the band showed up late onstage, and Rose cut short his band's performance after less than a
hour due to alleged voice issues. This apparently incensed the audience, per The New York Times,
as many of the 53,000 fans rioted and rampaged, causing significant damage to the venue.
Needless to say, this isn't a moment that's fondly remembered in either band's careers.
Metallica has never been afraid to cite their influences — their album consisting entirely
of cover songs called "Garage, Inc." is solid proof. The band proudly salutes those who have
had a helping hand in shaping their sound, with inspirations ranging from Black Sabbath to Queen.
However, there was one incident in the early '90s where a Californian thrash band called
Excel noticed that the hook in "Enter Sandman" sounded eerily
similar to the one in their 1989 track "Tapping Into the Emotional Void."
Excel decided to not drag the matter in front of the courts at the time, though.
Excel's manager, Jane Hoffman, told The LA Times:
"A lawsuit, unfortunately, sucks everything else out of your life.
Every day you're dealing with it. Instead of dealing with positives,
you're dealing with negatives, and nothing is proceeding."
Metallica's co-manager Cliff Burnstein admitted that he was aware of Excel as a musical outfit,
but claimed that he'd never heard the song in question.
The 1986 passing of Metallica's original bassist Cliff Burton in a tragic bus accident devastated
the other members of the band. While Burton has never been forgotten by his bandmates,
the show had to go on, and a replacement was sorely needed. Metallica auditioned over 40
bassists before settling on Jason Newsted. Newsted's run with the band was a solid one,
as he served as part of the fearsome quartet for 15 years before finally departing in 2001.
Newsted left Metallica after feeling frustrated over his lack of creative input,
and also to recover from neck and back injuries he'd sustained. Lars Ulrich
admitted in an interview with Apple Music that Metallica didn't handle his exit well, saying:
"Jason is the only member of Metallica who has ever left willingly,
and that in itself is a statistic. And the resentment from James and I was just so...
You can't do that. You can only leave if we want you to leave.
And then we weren't equipped at the time to do a deep dive into why he was leaving."
While there was animosity between the parties for quite a while,
it was all resolved by the time Metallica — Newsted included — was inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. Newsted told Rolling Stone about receiving the call about the induction:
"I talked to Lars, and it's all good. I was happy to hear from him.
I hadn’t talked to him for a long time, so it was nice to hear his voice."
It can be tough being a musician. No artist walks into the studio with the intention
of creating a mediocre single or album, but they'll often suffer the wrath of critics and
fans if they don't deliver what was expected of them. Some will take criticism in stride,
while others tend to get vocal about their detractors. Whichever way they go,
most artists typically don't do what Metallica did during the run up to their album "Death Magnetic."
In 2008, Metallica invited a few journalists to an early listening session of the album in London,
England. The journalists were not asked to sign non-disclosure agreements,
so a few writers presumed it was fair game and published their thoughts on the album afterwards.
Not too long after the reviews appeared online, Metallica's team asked for the publications to
take them down, claiming what they'd heard was an early mix of the album and not the final product.
"I bought this when it came out. I was horrified when I listened to it,
I threw it off a bridge and watched a truck smash it."
There's no shortage of songs that music fans consider the worst ever. Some might even be so bad
that listening to them feels like pure torture. And it turns out that's exactly what the military
did when it wanted to break down prisoners during the War on Terror, as it pumped up the volume and
let the music do the job. While some of us might have expected something truly grating
like Crazy Frog or Tiny Tim to be blaring over the speakers, it was often Metallica's "Enter Sandman"
being blasted at Guantánamo Bay and another detention camp at the border of Iraq and Syria.
After being informed that his band's music was the torture device of choice, Hetfield joked,
"We've been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music for ever.
Why should the Iraqis be any different?"
However, it does seem like Metallica wasn't too ecstatic with all the publicity
the situation brought them. Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill told Esquire that the band
specifically requested for the military to stop using their music in this way.
After "St. Anger" failed to capture the critics' thumbs-up and the fans' cash,
Metallica took some time out to plan their next effort — five years,
to be exact. Without a shadow of a doubt, 2008's "Death Magnetic" was better received
than its predecessor — but that didn't stop around 16,000 fans from signing a
petition to demand that the album be remixed because of a perceived poor sound quality.
In an interview with Blender,
Lars Ulrich addressed the criticisms of the album's sound, explaining:
"There's nothing up with the audio quality. It's 2008, and that's how we make records. [Producer]
Rick Rubin's whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud,
to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. [...] The Internet
gives everybody a voice, and the Internet has a tendency to give the complainers a louder voice."
Despite the initial complaints, "Death Magnetic" was certified double platinum in 2010,
having sold over two million copies.
"How do you do it, man?"
"Mm, I play, man. I play."
How do you make a metalhead angry? Just cut their hair. While it might sound like a cheesy joke,
ask Metallica and they'll tell you it's true. Despite "The Black Album" sitting as the number
one album on the Billboard 200 for four weeks straight, a new genre climbed out of the gutters
of Seattle and exploded onto the music scene in the early '90s. Grunge music brought with it a
new sound and aesthetic: gone were the long hair and sleeveless band shirts of the past,
making way for musicians who often had shorter hairstyles and an unhealthy obsession with plaid.
In the lead-up to 1996's "Load,"
Metallica underwent a grunge-approved makeover. When they reappeared in the public eye,
the group looked more like Sugar Ray than Slayer. Kirk Hammett told Deseret News,
"We didn't think it was that big of a deal. And it really surprised us
that everyone else made such a fuss. But it's cool, because we like controversy."
The band's style continued to evolve over the years, but nothing was ever
quite as drastic or controversial as the infamous look from the '90s.