Birth School Metallica Death - Vol I Read Free Page B

when you’d put your headphones on and sit in the dark and get scared to death. Then the Devil’s riff comes in, and it got you!’
    For Hetfield the
Black Sabbath
album served as a portal into an alternative universe. Each forbidden excavation into his half-brother’s record stacks brought forth new delights – Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult, Alice Cooper, the Amboy Dukes – a succession of lank-haired libertines channelling the raw, ragged howl of the blues into monolithic proto-metal. When Hetfieldplaced his headphones over his ears and twisted the volume control on David’s record player hard right, the world outside his bedroom seemed to fade away.
    ‘Music was a way to get away from my screwed-up family,’ he explained. ‘I liked being alone, I liked being able to close off the world and music helped with that a lot. I’d put on the headphones and just listen … Music would speak my voice and, man, it connected on so many levels.’
    Perhaps if he had been a little less immersed in his elder sibling’s vinyl treasure trove, James might have been a little more aware of the escalating rumble of domestic discord at home. As it was, he remembers nothing special about the day in 1976 on which his father walked out on his family. There were no cross words exchanged that morning, no lingering hugs on the doorstep; no tear-moistened note of farewell was found resting on the mantelpiece as Virgil hit the road. In point of fact, months would pass before Cynthia Hetfield gathered James and Deanna to her side and informed them that this time their father would not be coming home from his travels. The children were hurt, angry and confused, scarcely able to comprehend their mother’s words. When Cynthia told James that he must be strong, that with David and Christopher now living their own lives under their own roofs, he was now the man of the house, the teenager was terrified. He withdrew further into himself, raging against his father for his selfishness, despising him for not even saying goodbye. ‘It devastated me,’ he admitted.
    To block out the constant hiss of white noise in his head, James attempted to drown himself in sound. Pocket money previously spent on candy and Topps trading cards was now deflected towards the acquisition of a record collection of his own, with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ single and Aerosmith’s
Toys in the Attic
album the teenager’s first two purchases. Inspired by a poster of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry adorning his bedroomwall, he began picking out chords and melodies on Christopher’s guitar, slowing down his favourite songs on David’s turntable from 45 rpm to 33 rpm so that he could play along.
    ‘My ear was developed quite a bit from the piano playing so I knew what was in tune, what was not in tune, what sounded right and what didn’t,’ he says. ‘I was always into the big, fat riffs. I was drawn to the rhythm and percussion bit because I had messed around on drums as well. The rhythm style came from percussion as well, hitting the guitar as hard as you would a drum.’
    In September 1977 Hetfield enrolled as a freshman at Downey High School on Brookshire Avenue. He instantly hated the place, with its cliques and clubs and insider codes. When he trialled for the school football team, the Vikings, Coach Cummings informed him that he had a choice to make: he could lose his long hair and join the team, or keep his locks and forfeit his shot at gridiron glory. Despite nurturing pipe dreams of a starting position with the Oakland Raiders, Hetfield turned on his heels, knowing full well that he was condemning himself to pariah status within the school echelons.
    ‘I was a misfit,’ he says. ‘Didn’t fit in, didn’t want to fit in. I hid as much as possible in my music … I did not feel like I identified with anyone … Basically, instead of hanging out at school, I went home and practised guitar.’
    By the school lockers one morning Hetfield ran