Last September, Metallica were forced to postpone the Australian leg of their WorldWired tour after vocalist James Hetfield re-entered addiction rehabilitation.
“As most of you probably know, our brother James has been struggling with addiction on and off for many years. He has now, unfortunately, had to re-enter a treatment program to work on his recovery again,” the band shared in a statement.
In a recent interview with Metal Hammer, the other members of Metalica were asked about the experience of learning that Hetfield was struggling with addiction.
“We really didn’t see it coming,” revealed bassist Robert Trujillo. “James seemed like he was fine, but then you look back and you try to analyze the situation over time and see where there were red flags.
“Being on the road can be very challenging, and I would imagine for James, to get up there in front of all those people and have to be ‘on,’ meanwhile your family’s not with you and all these things are going on, it builds up.”
Kirk Hammett added, “Whenever something happens to a bandmember like this, it’s so deeply unsettling. It comes as a shock. You have to do a bit of scrambling just to cover some ground.”
Hetfield had previously undergone a stint in rehab back in 2001 — which was documented in the film Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). In a 2017 interview with Joe Rogan, Hetfield went into detail on why he went to rehab.
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“Fear was a big motivator in that for me,” Hetfield said. “Losing my family, that was the thing that scared me so much. That was the bottom I hit, that my family is going to go away because of my behaviors that I brought home from the road. I got kicked out of my house by my wife; I was living on my own somewhere.
“I did not want that. Maybe as part of my upbringing, my family kind of disintegrated when I was a kid. Father left, mother passed away, had to live with my brother, and then kind of just, where did my stuff go? It just kind of floated away, and I do not want that happening. No matter what’s going on, we’re going to talk this stuff out and make it work.”
He continued: “[My wife] did the right thing — she kicked my ass right out of the house and that scared the shit out of me. She said, ‘Hey, you’re not just going to the therapist now and talking about this.
“You’ve got to go somewhere and sort this shit out.’ So that’s what I did… What worked for me was seven weeks someplace — like, basically tearing you down to bones, ripping your life apart. Anything you thought about yourself or what it was, anything you thought you had, your family, your career, anything, gone. Strip you down to just — you’re born. Here’s how you were when you were born — you were okay. You were a good person. Let’s get back to that again. Then they slowly rebuild you.”
Check out Metallica performing ‘All Within My Hands’ Live on the Howard Stern Show:
