When Blind Dead Tom Met Old Grey James

You know it’s a little weird when you meet one of your old heroes who you’ve kind of fallen out of favour with (ref: Some Kind Of Monster). You immediately drop all grievances you may have had with said person and you’re that 14 year old kid again jumping around your bedroom to ‘Fight Fire With Fire’. This is exactly what happened when I met James Hetfield.

I started listening to Metallica when I was 14. My first exposure to the band was ‘Ride The Lightening’. This still remains my favourite Metallica album to date but due to a rise in my school of knives, weed smoking, baggy jeans and the Wu-Tang I lost track of Metallica in a haze of urban marketing. It was only when I managed to steal a copy of ‘Re-Load’ from my mate Dino (Dino if you are reading this, even though it’s shit, you are NEVER getting that CD back....). It was shit. Too shit for Metallica. I could have sworn that Metallica were better than this so I went back and referenced ‘Master Of Puppets’, ‘Kill ‘Em All’ and even some of the second ‘Garage Inc’ disc and all of a sudden they were back. Those fucking hairs standing up on the back of my neck!

I remember being so into Metallica that after school was spent standing at the bus stop on the north circular with my friend Kye trying to do impressions of James Hetfield. Chuffing down on cheap ciggie after cheap ciggie trying to get the harsh, raspy sound of Hetfield’s voice on the earlier records and almost throwing up in the process. Good times.

I managed to keep my cool with Hetfield. Completely the opposite of when I met Slayer’s Kerry King when I almost pissed myself with excitement and couldn’t stop saying “Dude, you rule!” and “fuck Kerrang! Magazine!” in regard to their ‘3K’ review of Slayers live performance. I bumped into him in the now defunct Virgin Megastore in the magazine section reading reviews of his show at the Reading festival. I still stand by my comments by the way. Fuck Kerrang! Magazine but I digress....

I’d finished work early to work on a script and to work on my drinking with my friend Hardeep. We’d been drinking for a while whilst writing and recording before Hardeep mention that he wanted to The Great Frog jewellers on Ganton Street to buy himself a ring. I was reluctant at first. I was too pre-occupied with my beer but I’m glad Hardeep twisted my arm to go. After all we did have a date with metal destiny.

It was only when we got there and I saw my flatmate G (who works out of there) with Metallica book by photographer Ross Halfin and my ‘Death Magnetic’ CD under his arm. It was then that he told me that James fuckin’ Hetfield was downstairs in the basement with Reino designing some custom, platinum tour jewellery for the band.

The man was cool to talk to. I think there was an element of automated response. If you play in the biggest metal band in the history I’m sure you have to train yourself in dealing with fans but after Hardeep cracked him with a few questions and he was eventually really cool to talk to. He had fantastic memory of all the gigs I’d been to down to the set list and everything. After a handshake and a picture he was off to Knebworth to play at the horrifically named Sonispshere festival.

Whatever your views on Metallica or to anybody who has ever been a fan of any Metallica album, I dare you not to be 100% stoked after meeting anybody in the metal world as epic and significant as James Hetfield.

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