Roger Waters has launched a scathing personal attack on Metallica frontman James Hetfield after Hetfield told a Las Vegas crowd that his band does not use its concerts to push political messages.
Speaking on The Katie Halper Show, the Pink Floyd co-founder did not hold back. “He’s just showing that he’s a complete prick,” Waters said. “He’s got an IQ of about three, and why we’re talking about him, I don’t even know, because he’s a nobody. He may have a few hundred million dollars or whatever, but he’s a prick.”
The comments came in response to Hetfield’s remarks during a recent Metallica show at the Sphere in Las Vegas. The singer thanked fans for travelling to see the band before drawing a line between Metallica and other performers.
“Unless you live in Vegas, you’ve come a long way to spend some time with Metallica,” Hetfield told the audience. “We’re grateful for that – your travels, the money you spend, the time it took. Thanks for coming to celebrate with us.”
He then made his stance explicit. “And I just gotta say, Metallica is not here, like some other entertainers, to influence you with their bullshit, OK? We are here, no bullshit. We’re here to forget about all the outside shit, OK?”
The exchange has landed in the middle of a long-running debate about whether musicians should bring politics to the stage. Waters has built a reputation as one of rock’s most outspoken political voices, while Hetfield has spent years arguing the opposite case – that a Metallica show should be an escape rather than a rally. That divide is what makes the two men’s clash more than a passing war of words.
Hetfield’s position is not a recent conversion. The singer said in a 2016 BBC interview that Metallica deliberately keeps political and religious messaging out of its concerts.
“We stay away from politics [and] from religion. That just seems to polarize people even more,” Hetfield said at the time, adding: “I hate politics… I don’t want to talk about politics. That separates people, and I want to connect them with music.”
Those comments set the tone for the band’s approach a decade later. Hetfield used the Las Vegas Sphere residency to draw an explicit contrast between Metallica’s shows and performers who promote outside causes from the stage.
“Metallica’s agenda is love, energy and heavy music, baby!” he told the crowd, framing the night as a break from everything waiting outside the venue.
Hetfield has also argued that writing about political subjects is not the same as taking a political side. He has said the band’s song “Don’t Tread on Me” was widely misread as a pro-war statement, and he rejected the idea that the track represented a political position.
“All we’re doing is writing songs, we’re not standing politically on any side,” Hetfield said. Metallica’s catalogue nonetheless includes politically charged material such as “…And Justice for All” and “One”, which deal with corruption and the horrors of war.
That contradiction sits at the heart of the Waters dispute. One of rock’s loudest activists has attacked one of metal’s biggest names for declining to use his platform, while Hetfield continues to argue that keeping the stage free of politics is exactly what his audience came for.
