I went to see Metallica in August 2022 at Highmark Stadium in Buffalo, New York. They roared onto the stage around 10:00 p.m. and ripped into Whiplash, Creeping Death, and Enter Sandman. After the last note of Sandman faded away James Hetfield looked out and said, “They’ve played all their good songs, so what are they going to do now?”
That’s just how the group has thrived over the past 40 years—with a little sarcasm and a little bit of nasty. Heavy Metal has always existed on the fringes of the music world, but this band changed that. It became bigger than life, maybe the most successful hard rock band in post-Beatles music history.
Metallica Starts in a Newspaper Ad
The band formed on October 28, 1981, in San Francisco when drummer Lars Ulrich put an ad in the newspaper asking for people to jam with. That was back in the Stone Age of tech when newspapers were delivered to your house every morning!
The band’s name came from Ulrich’s friend Ron Quintana. He wanted to start a new fanzine and was considering the names MetalMania or Metallica. After hearing the two names, Ulrich wanted to take Metallica for his band, so he suggested Quintana use MetalMania.
Did Band Members Steal a U-Haul Truck?
The band got its first record deal with Megaforce Records in 1983 in New York. The band claims to have driven to New York in a stolen U-Haul to record their first album. The original members were Ulrich, singer, and guitarist James Hetfield who answered the ad, Ron McGovney on bass, and Dave Mustaine on guitar.
Metallica Loses Its Original Bassist in Awful Crash
One night in Sweden would change the band forever. In 1986 their tour bus rolled over on an icy road outside of Stockholm, Sweden. Bassist Cliff Burton was killed instantly. The crash devastated the band.
“I heard everyone screaming except for Cliff, and I thought: ‘Oh my God, something’s wrong’,” Hammett remembered in a VH1 documentary. “I turned around and saw Cliff’s legs sticking out from underneath the bus.”
Burton studied music theory at Chabot College in nearby Castro Valley, California. He loved classical music and is credited with writing some of Metallica’s greatest songs, Fade to Black, Creeping Death, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Master of Puppets.
One Song Changes the Band Forever
The band was a giant heavy metal success without radio airplay or top 40 hits. It sold 150 million albums but had zero number-one hits. It had just one song make it to the top 10 on Billboard charts which puts them with the Grateful Dead in becoming huge stars without radio.
One song on one album changed all that. Enter Sandman was released from the monster Black Album in the summer of 1991. The album sold 30 million copies, becoming, and still, the band’s most popular album. Sandman was so popular radio stations could no longer ignore heavy metal.
The band had a new sound, and it came from new producer Bob Rock. The band says he gave the band a fuller sound with simpler arrangements. The popularity had the band circling the world for three years and more than 300 shows. It also featured the famous joint-headline stadium tour with Guns N’ Roses and gave fans the first-ever official live album.
Still Singing in the 21st Century
Metallica continued paving new roads in heavy metal collaborating with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra for an album in 1999. It’s called S&M (for Symphony and Metallica) and features arrangements of some of the band’s biggest hits performed with the orchestra.
The group isn’t slowing down. The original band members have all reached the age of 60 and have nearly 30 tour dates in Europe through the end of September 2024. According to HeavyCronicle.com, Metallica is estimated to have earned $1 billion over its 40-year career and still makes between $6 and $9 million for each concert it plays.
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