“He goes, ‘F**king great playing, but those songs are s**t, bro’”: Tracii Guns recalls encounter with a drunken James Hetfield
Tracii Guns may have once been on the receiving end of a drunken rant from James Hetfield, but decades later, the L.A. Guns guitarist says he has more respect for the Metallica frontman than ever before.
During a recent appearance on the Talk Louder podcast, Guns recounts a late-night run-in with Hetfield back in the early ‘90s, just as Metallica’s Black Album record was taking the world by storm.
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“Somehow, we ended up alone at the Scrap Bar in New York,” Guns says [via Blabbermouth]. “It was like a Tuesday night, and there was nothing else to do. We were both there doing press; he was doing press for his album. And I came in, and he was the only person in there, and the bartender. So I went, ‘Hey, man.’ He goes, ‘Tracii Guns.’ And right away, I knew he was wasted. I knew he was gone. I knew he was off his tree.”
“And I go, ‘I have a cassette of your new album.’ He’s, like, ‘You don’t like Metallica.’ I go, ‘Yeah, I do. This is a fucking great record.’ He goes, ‘Well, I got the Contraband record [a 1990s supergroup featuring Guns]. He goes, ‘Fucking great playing, but those songs are shit, bro.’ I’m, like, ‘Yeah. Cool, man. Whatever.’”
“And he just started getting kind of amped up, and I’m, like, I’m gonna talk to you later,’” Guns continues. “‘Where are you going?’ ‘I’m not gonna sit here and just listen to you be mad at me.’ He goes, ‘I’m not mad at you.’ ‘You sure sound like you’re mad at me.’ He goes, ‘Whatever.’ He was just drunk. I left.”
Despite the rocky exchange, Guns says he always maintained a “cool kind of vibe” with the Metallica camp over the years, seeing Hetfield and Kirk Hammett occasionally at festivals. But what really changed his perception came much later – when he saw Hetfield open up publicly about his struggles.
“I saw that he opened up his heart in public. And he started talking about the demons that he has dealt with and how long,” says the guitarist. “You go play stadiums and you go to the grocery store in your neighborhood. So it’s a big shift. And how he used to deal with things.”
“It is very difficult for a man to talk about those things with his friends, let alone talk about that sincerely in public, especially being the singer of fucking Metallica. So I have even more respect for James now than ever. I just think he’s so bold and so brave. And although I think it’s a shame what happened to his relationship, relationships don’t last forever. But I really gotta give him massive kudos, man. Just, like, way to go, dude. And that healing process.”
“A lot of people are, like, ‘Oh, he’s a millionaire. Who feels sorry for a millionaire?’ It’s, like, dude, what does that got to do with…? Money doesn’t solve everything internally… And he got sober. That’s tough. That’s hard shit to do, man. And on top of it, he wrote all that great music and those songs. I don’t say this very often, but God bless that fucking dude. What a badass.”
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