Metallica is arguably the biggest metal band on the planet, so it might come as a surprise that frontman James Hetfield is sometimes filled with self-doubt. Hetfield has opened up previously in the past about his struggles with mental health.
A few years back, the singer admitted on stage to a Brazilian crowd that he was struggling to perform the show. “So, I gotta tell you, I wasn’t feeling very good before I came out here,” Hetfield said. “(I was) Feeling a little bit insecure. ‘I’m an old guy. I can’t play anymore.’ All this bullsh*t that I tell myself in my head.” Hetfield then motioned to his bandmates. “So, I talked to these guys, and they helped me. Simple as that. They gave me a hug. Said, ‘Hey, if you’re struggling on stage, we got your back.’ And I’ll tell you, that means the world to me.”
A visibly emotional Hetfield then embraced the rest of the band to massive applause from the crowd. “And seeing you out there, I am not alone,” Hetfield added. “And neither are you.”
On a recent episode of The Metallica Report podcast, Hetfield again addressed facing self-doubt when it comes to performing. “I start to doubt myself,” Hetfield confessed. “We’re old, we can’t do this. — all that bullsh*t everyone tells themselves before they go into something they care about.”
“So, having the nightmares about how I’m the only one who cares about what we’re doing here. ‘Where is everybody?’ I show up at the gig, everyone’s goofing off, or there’s 200 people backstage and thinking, ‘Where’s my stuff? Where’s the setlist? What songs are we doing?’ And then, typical things 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, and I don’t freak out over it. All you do is you practice, and then you build that comes back pretty quickly.”
Hetfield went on to say that he’s learned to manage his anxiety. “It’s part of the cycle; it just is,” he explained. “You have anxiety build up, and don’t let it get the best of ya because you have that balance of anxiety and faith. And as soon as you get up there, it’s all gonna be good.”
The frontman did admit, however, that his anxiety was at an all-time high prior to the band’s current M72 Tour. “The anxiety level was off the charts at the beginning of the ‘M72 Tour’. Like, how are we going to cover this stage? And, of course, my ego saying, ‘Well, the other guys don’t have to sing. They don’t have to run over there, they don’t have to do all this. Ah, no one knows the woes I have and all the worries…'”
He continued: “But as soon as I share them with the other guys, they’re like, ‘Yeah, but I got this, and I got that.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, okay. I want mine back (laughs).’ So, it’s a known … We know what we’re up against. And we know what shape we need to be in. And now, it’s just fun. We’ve broken that stage in, it’s well-trodden on, and it’s worked fantastically. And so, we just get to step back into it, and do what we do best.”
