Metallica

• 1. Introduction

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  Near Dorarp, Sweden, at around sunrise on the 27th of September 1986, a tour bus skidded off the road and overturned several times. James Hetfield later described what he saw. "I saw the bus lying right on him. I saw his legs sticking out. I freaked." The man under the bus was Cliff Burton, the bassist of Metallica, and he did not survive. This was the same band that began with a newspaper advertisement in Los Angeles in 1981. A Danish drummer named Lars Ulrich wanted other metal musicians to jam with. A guitarist named James Hetfield answered. How does a group born from a classified ad become one of the most commercially successful bands of all time, with more than 163 million albums sold worldwide? What did it cost the people inside it? And why would a heavy metal band one day take a file-sharing service to court, perform with a symphony orchestra, and play a concert in Antarctica?

• 2. A Drummer's Advertisement

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  Lars Ulrich placed his ad in a Los Angeles newspaper called The Recycler, asking for metal musicians who liked Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, and Iron Maiden. James Hetfield and Hugh Tanner of Leather Charm answered. The band was officially formed on the 28th of October 1981, five months after Ulrich and Hetfield first met. The name came from Ulrich's friend Ron Quintana. Quintana was weighing names for a fanzine, considering MetalMania or Metallica. Ulrich wanted the second one for his band, so he told Quintana to use MetalMania instead. Even before he had a band, Ulrich had asked Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel if he could record a song for a compilation called Metal Massacre. Slagel agreed. When Metal Massacre I was released on the 14th of June 1982, early pressings spelled the band "Mettallica", which angered them. The early lineup churned through players. Dave Mustaine joined on lead guitar after Ulrich and Hetfield saw his expensive guitar equipment. A bassist named Ron McGovney played the first gig in March 1982 at Radio City in Anaheim. By a show in May 1982, Hetfield was playing guitar live for the first time, having become the de facto guitarist on top of singing.

• 3. The Move North

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  In late 1982, Ulrich and Hetfield went to the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood and watched a bassist named Cliff Burton play in a band called Trauma. They were blown away by his use of a wah-wah pedal and asked him to join. Burton accepted on one condition. The band had to move to El Cerrito in the San Francisco Bay Area. That demand pulled Metallica away from Los Angeles for good. The band's first live performance with Burton came at a nightclub called The Stone in March 1983. Just before recording its debut, Metallica ejected Dave Mustaine on the 11th of April 1983, citing his drug and alcohol abuse and violent behavior. Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett replaced him the same afternoon. Mustaine went on to form Megadeth and later said Hammett "stole" his job. The debut record was meant to be called Metal Up Your Ass, but distributors refused to release an album with that title, so it became Kill 'Em All. Jonathan Zazula, a concert promoter who had heard the demo No Life 'til Leather, borrowed money to cover the recording budget and signed the band to his own Megaforce Records. In February 1984 the band supported Venom and played to 7,000 people at the Aardschok Festival in Zwolle, Netherlands.

• 4. Master Of Puppets

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  Master of Puppets, recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen and released on the 3rd of March 1986, reached number 29 on the Billboard 200 and spent 72 weeks on the chart. Steve Huey of AllMusic called it "the band's greatest achievement". The album explored religious and military leaders, rage, insanity, monsters, and drugs. It was the band's first to be certified Gold, on the 4th of November 1986. The record arrived after Ride the Lightning, recorded in Copenhagen from February to March 1984 and released on the 27th of July that year. A French printing press mistakenly produced green covers for Ride the Lightning, now treated as collector's items. The band's growing pull was visible on stage. At the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park, England, on the 17th of August 1985, Metallica played to 70,000 people alongside Bon Jovi and Ratt. While touring behind Master of Puppets in support of Ozzy Osbourne, Hetfield broke his wrist skateboarding and kept performing vocals while guitar technician John Marshall played rhythm guitar. Burton's death that September left the band's future in doubt.

• 5. Carrying On

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  Roughly 40 people auditioned to replace Cliff Burton, including Les Claypool of Primus and Jason Newsted, formerly of Flotsam and Jetsam. Newsted learned the entire setlist, won the spot, and was initiated by the band tricking him into eating a ball of wasabi. The three surviving members had decided Burton would want them to continue, and they moved forward with the Burton family's blessing. Newsted's arrival reshaped where the band lived and what it released next. After he joined, Metallica left the El Cerrito practice house nicknamed "the Metalli-mansion" and eventually settled in San Rafael, north of San Francisco. They put out an all-covers EP, The $5.98 E.P. - Garage Days Re-Revisited, on the 21st of August 1987, partly to test Newsted and to relieve grief after Burton's death. The album ...And Justice for All, released in September 1988, reached number 6 on the Billboard 200 and became the band's first to enter the top 10. It drew complaints about its production, with critics noting the lack of audible bass. The album earned Metallica its first Grammy Award nomination, in the new Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category. Metallica was the favorite, but the award went to Jethro Tull for Crest of a Knave, an upset later named on one magazine's list of the biggest Grammy upsets.

• 6. The Black Album

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  Producer Bob Rock, who had worked with Aerosmith, the Cult, Bon Jovi, and Motley Crue, was hired in October 1990 to record the band's next album. The self-titled record, known as The Black Album, was remixed three times, cost one million US dollars, and ended Hammett and Ulrich's marriages. It debuted at number one in 10 countries and sold 650,000 units in the U.S. in its first week. The album moved Metallica away from thrash toward a mainstream sound and has sold more than 16 million copies in the United States, making it the best-selling album of the SoundScan era. The years around it brought scale and danger. In September 1991, 1.6 million fans gathered in Moscow for the first open-air rock concert held in the Soviet Union. On the 8th of August 1992, during a co-headlining tour with Guns N' Roses at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Hetfield walked into a 12-foot flame during "Fade to Black" and suffered second and third-degree burns. Newsted said Hetfield's skin was "bubbling like on The Toxic Avenger". The band returned to the stage seventeen days later, with John Marshall again covering guitar while Hetfield sang. The Black Album marked the start of a new musical phase that would test the loyalty of longtime fans.

• 7. Reinvention And Backlash

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  Load, released in 1996, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and brought haircuts, a revamped logo, and a new image that polarized the fanbase. Its cover art, called Blood and Semen III, was made by Andres Serrano, who pressed a mixture of his own semen and blood between sheets of plexiglass. The follow-up, Reload, used cover art Serrano made from blood and urine. David Fricke of Rolling Stone called Load the heaviest record of 1996. The band kept widening its range across these years. In 1998 it released Garage Inc., a double album of cover songs that entered the Billboard 200 at number two. On the 21st and the 22nd of April 1999, Metallica recorded two performances with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Kamen, who had pitched the orchestral idea in 1991. Those concerts became the album and film S&M. Then came a fight over technology. In 2000, Metallica found a demo of "I Disappear" circulating on the Napster file-sharing network, along with its entire catalogue. The band filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and other violations, and Ulrich testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the 11th of July 2000. A settlement followed, and on the 3rd of June 2002 Napster filed for bankruptcy. Jason Newsted left the band on the 17th of January 2001, citing private and personal reasons and the physical damage he had done to himself over the years.

• 8. Therapy And Endurance

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  In April 2001, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky began following Metallica and recorded more than 1,000 hours of footage over two years. On the 19th of July 2001, Hetfield entered rehab to treat his alcoholism and other addictions, putting the band's future in doubt. He left rehab on the 4th of December 2001 and returned to the studio limited to four hours a day, between noon and 4 pm. The footage became Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004. The album made under that strain, St. Anger, debuted at number one in June 2003 and drew mixed reactions, with critics targeting Ulrich's snare drum and the absence of guitar solos. Its title track won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance and served as the theme for a wrestling event. After auditions that included Pepper Keenan and Jeordie White, Robert Trujillo, formerly of Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne's band, became the new bassist. The band kept finding new firsts. Death Magnetic, released in 2008, returned to a thrash sound and made Metallica the first band to have five consecutive studio albums debut at number one on the Billboard 200. On the 4th of April 2009, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Ray Burton accepted the honor on behalf of his late son Cliff. The induction itself pointed back to the band's whole arc, from a Los Angeles classified ad to the M72 World Tour set to conclude in London on the 5th of July 2026.