James Hetfield Reveals Metallica Song Inspired by Country Star
James Hetfield shares which Metallica song also inspiring by a country genre music artist. James Hetfield has solid music from specialists after the country genre between the 60s and 70s.
Heavy metal and country western music genres sometimes seemed as being at different ends of the musical spectrum. Since they both rely on narrative and quick shredding. Although country music stays closer to the traditional folk forms of music.
Many country genre musicians have fantastic stories to tell, and the subjects explored by outlaw country musicians have a lot in common with heavy metal. The musical and social elite hated these outcasts because they used drugs and drank and were also addicts.
Waylon Jennings, one of the most recognizable characters in country music, also is a friend of James Hetfield.
According to James Hetfield on the official Metallica website, the two connected when James Hetfield interviewed Waylon Jennings for a radio program.
Country music artist inspires which Metallica song?
Waylon Jennings passed away in 2002, and James Hetfield expressed his grief in public. Later, he recorded “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand” for a tribute album called “I’ve Always Been Crazy: A Tribute to Waylon Jennings“. James Hetfield also performed all the instruments on the song, while Bob Rock handled the production.
Eventually, a conversation between James Hetfield and Waylon Jennings led to the creation of the Metallica song “Wasting My Hate.” Waylon Jennings allegedly related to Hetfield a tale of a time when he visited Jamaica with his family for a holiday. When Jennings observed a Jamaican local gazing at him at a pub, he was there.
Waylon Jennings started to feel his temper rising, even to the point where he began to despise and desire to attack this local man. Jennings would later learn that the man was not specifically staring at him; rather, he was extremely inebriated and was simply looking in his general direction without paying attention to anything in particular.
The experience taught Waylon Jennings a valuable lesson about perspective, and James Hetfield remembered the episode. And turned it into a song that would come on Metallica‘s 1996 album “Load“.
This is Metallica’s sixth studio album, Load, which was released on June 4th, 1996 via Elektra Records.
The album revealed more of Metallica’s hard rock side than its customary thrash metal side. It also includes materials of alternative rock, blues rock, country music, and Southern rock.
James Hetfield and Waylon Jennings connected via their reputations as troublemaking criminals who frequently experimented with drugs. In another fact, Waylon Jennings’ recording session was interrupted by DEA agents who had tracked a package of cocaine to the studio. This real-life event served as the inspiration for the song “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand.”
You can listen to Metallica – “Wasting My Hate” song below!
