Roger Waters has found a new target for his ire in Metallica vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield. The latter’s recent onstage commentary at The Sphere last weekend ruffled some feathers. Taking to the stage in Las Vegas, NV on October 10th, Hetfield addressed the crowd as follows:
“Unless you live in Vegas, you’ve come a long way to spend some time with Metallica. We’re grateful for that — your travels, the money you spend, the time it took, thanks for coming to celebrate with us. And I just gotta say, Metallica is not here, like some other ‘entertainers’, to influence you with their bullshit, OK? We are here — no bullshit — we’re here to forget about all the outside shit, OK? Metallica’s agenda is love, energy and heavy music, baby!”
Hetfield‘s remarks have widely been interpreted as pointed commentary on recent controversies that have spilled over onstage when musicians use their platform for political causes. Especially with the Ed Sheeran / Macklemore controversy and more recently making headlines. However, others have taken issue with the tone of Hetfield‘s comments, inferring that he was belittling artists who do take a stand.
While Metallica have certainly had some politically-oriented lyrical matter in their songs over the years, the band have generally chosen to project a more neutral public stance in modern times. Waters meanwhile, best known for co-founding Pink Floyd, has had a contentious history with other musicians, having a war of words with Ozzy Osbourne‘s family after making disparaging remarks about him in the wake of Ozzy‘s death, while also clashing with Disturbed vocalist David Draiman over the Israel-Gaza war.
A recent appearance on ‘The Katie Halper Show‘ saw host Katie Halper revisit a past interview in which Hetfield somewhat laughed off the usage of Metallica‘s music in torturing Iraqi prisoners in the aughts. That form of torture involved the band’s songs repeatedly being played at loud volumes for Iraqi prisoners.
Hetfield was quoted as stating in that past interview, “If the Iraqis aren’t used to freedom, then I’m glad to be a part of their exposure… We’ve been punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever. Why should the Iraqis be any different?”
Waters went on to say the following of that and Hetfield‘s recent comments at The Sphere [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“He’s just showing that he’s a complete prick. He’s got an IQ of about three, and why we’re talking about him, I honestly don’t know, because he’s a nobody. He may have a few hundred million dollars or whatever, but he’s a prick. And he’s no musician. I told you, I heard them playing acoustic instruments and they couldn’t, it was appalling.
That’s neither here nor there, people like Metallica–I couldn’t care less. And obviously I wish he had grown up with a mama, or a dad, or a friend even, or a cousin, or somebody in the family who’d taken him to one side, you know, when he was little.
It’s a bit like… I mentioned this before, Charlie Mackesy, who’s an artist friend of mine. He draws pictures… he paints paintings of somebody, people playing the piano with angels behind them and stuff. So it’s a bit airy fairy, but he wrote a great book called ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse’. It’s a lovely cartoon book, people [should buy it.]
And on page three, he sent me a copy when he finished it. On page three, the mole and the boy are sitting on a branch on the tree, and the mole says to the boy, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And the boy says, ‘Kind.’ Well, it’s a shame this prick [Hetfield] didn’t have somebody around him to explain that being kind is way more important than all that loud music and bouncing around and whatever.
Being kind, have some empathy for your fellow human beings, because that… We need that to spread through the across the whole world and there are billions of us and it will. It will. It’s going to spread. And Israel is over, right? And the people of Palestine will be home again and you know and it needs to happen in our lifetimes — Well, certainly in all yours. I don’t know about mine — but it’s so, so, so important, you know? So, I don’t know. I don’t care about him. I really don’t.”
