His parents were Christian Scientists, and James would talk a lot in interviews about not being able to see a doctor or sit in health class. James Hetfield was born near L.A., and had a rough childhood. Lars played drums, he was born in Denmark, his father was a professional tennis player, Lars himself was a tennis prodigy (that’s what brought the family to L.A.), he was an only child, his godfather was jazz great Dexter Gordon, he traveled widely, bought tons of albums, and talked constantly. Metallica formed in Los Angeles in 1981, which is when Lars Ulrich met James Hetfield. Metallica chasing radio play, doing radio edits, shooting videos for MTV-this was all unthinkable, once. And before we get too bogged down by anything else, “Enter Sandman” is great because of the guitar riff. It’s commercial heavy metal at its finest it’s the King Lear of jock jams. “Enter Sandman,” overexposed as it might be, is still fantastic. I don’t mean sold out as a pejorative, at all. If only every rock band sold out with this much zest. Metallica’s reinventions, the makeovers, the zeitgeist schemes of really the next 20 years or so-it’s all baffling. Nevermind, and the grunge and alternative-rock explosion more broadly, rattled them quite a bit. Metallica’s self-titled fifth album-colloquially referred to as the Black Album-defined heavy music in the ’90s just as surely as Nirvana’s Nevermind did, but Metallica spent the rest of the decade letting the ’90s define them. Below is an excerpt from Episode 12, which explores the history of Metallica and their biggest hit with help from Dave Chang. Follow and listen for free exclusively on Spotify. But what does it say about the era-and why does it still matter? On our new show, 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s, Ringer music writer and ’90s survivor Rob Harvilla embarks on a quest to answer those questions, one track at a time. “Wonderwall.” The music of the ’90s was as exciting as it was diverse.
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