In the latest episode of The Metallica Report, James Hetfield talked about the time Metallica spent in Denmark recording ‘Ride the Lightning’ and ‘Master of Puppets’ and even revealed they did ‘a lot of thieving’ to get by.
During the chat, the frontman talked about the days he and Lars Ulrich spent at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen. He admitted that they had to steal some things from other bands, but didn’t refer to it as ‘stealing’:
“[We were] up in the attic, sleeping on the floor and stealing food from other bands that were coming through there, stealing bikes just to get around, stealing empty beer bottles to go turn them in for more beer. There was a lot of thieving.”
He added:
“We didn’t have anything, we didn’t have sh*t. So it wasn’t thieving, we were just borrowing it forever.”
The Advantages Of Living In The Studio
The studio also had a bunch of music the band members could check out. It included sessions from artists like Chet Baker and Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow:
“Lars and I slept in the tape storage upstairs of Sweet Silence and looking through it was like whoa, Richie Blackmore’s stuff and all kinds of different bands that have gone through there doing stuff.”
The Difference Between ‘Ride The Lightning’ And ‘Kill ‘Em All’
A couple of years ago, the owner of the studio Flemming Rasmussen noted that Metallica saw an artistic growth. Rasmussen felt Metallica’s ‘technical abilities were not as advanced as their ambitions’ during ‘Kill ‘Em All.’ However, he also said that ‘Ride the Lightning’ made a noticeable change and their growth could easily be seen between the two albums:
“When we listened back to what we had done, they were blown away, and were so proud. I had never heard that kind of power come through the studio speakers. They had matured quite a bit, and their circumstances were improved – this time they had hotel rooms, rather than sleeping on a friend’s floor – but they were just as likable. Every day they would have dinner with my wife and myself at our house before we started recording at 7pm, and they were always fun to have around.”
You can hear the new episode down below.