Metallica frontman James Hetfield opened up recently about some of the things that still keep him up at night as he gets ready to hit the road once again.
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Back at the end of May, Hetfield sat down with The Metallica Report at the Metallica HQ just as rehearsals for the European leg of their M72 Tour were about to get underway, filling listeners in on, among other things, the anxieties he faces when preparing to hit the road and how he manages to keep things running smooth after 40 years with the group.
“I start to doubt myself,” Hetfield admits, saying thoughts of, “‘We're old, we can’t do this,’” tend to creep in. “All that bulls*** everyone tells themselves before they go into something they care about.” The Metal veteran says that apprehension actually caused him to suffer from nightmares before starting the tour, “about how I’m the only one who cares about what we're doing here,” he says. “I show up at the gig, everyone’s goofing off, or there’s 200 people backstage and I’m thinking, ‘Where’s my stuff? Where’s the setlist? What songs are we doing?’”
Hetfield adds his dreams even went into the surreal, “like the guitar neck is made of rubber, and there are only two strings on it. And, ‘Where's my roadie?’ and the guitar cord won’t let me get to the microphone. Silly stuff like that.”
“That has to happen,” he believes, as part of processing the enormity of his, and his entire teams' responsibilities ahead. Now, “I don’t freak out over it,” he says. “It’s part of the cycle; it just is… You have anxiety build up, and don’t let it get the best of you because you have that balance of anxiety and faith. And as soon as you get up there, it’s all gonna be good.”
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