During the recent interview with David Fricke, Metallica frontman James Hetfield explained his thoughts about the bands that faster than Metallica.
He said that ‘they’re faster than us and so what?’, here’s the statement:
“Competitions a great thing. We were fueled by a lot of hatred and a lot of fear that we weren’t good enough. So those two things combined got us to where we needed to be in ‘And Justice For All’.
And I think at the end of the day, we realized ‘what we are doing’, you know… Did you hear this other band, they’re faster than us and so what? So what?
What else do we got? Let’s make it more muscley, let’s make it more powerful. Lets, I don’t know, it helped us change our direction, realizing that was kind of a futile, a goal to be the fastest or the most complex or you know craziest riff on the planet. Those are finite things for us.
We can only go so far someone else will do something else. Let’s be unique, let’s just be ourselves and be honest with ourselves and what do we want to do next.“
During this interview, he also mentioned about Jason Newsted and said:
“I think it had to be extremely bittersweet for him. Like a dream come true, but, ‘I’m stepping into someone’s shoes who can never be filled.’ It must have been very difficult – for him and for us, it was difficult; it just truly was.
And Psych 101 will tell you that all our anger, our grief, and sadness got directed at him – not all of it, but quite a bit of it. He was an easy target. And I think there were a couple of things about Jason, his personality…
He was goofy enough to take it, which was a positive for him. I think he was such a fan, and we hated that – we hated that part. We wanted to ‘unfan’ him and become as hard as we were. So trying to beat the fan out of him. Trying to also get him to play something different like Cliff would.”
You can watch the entire interview from below.
