James Hetfield Calls Metallica's "St. Anger" "A Purge"

Metallica frontman James Hetfield says he now regards 2003's St. Anger as "more of a statement than Metallica music that [the band enjoys] playing live," adding, "It was more of a purge, just getting that shit out of me, as a catalyst for the next chapter of Metallica." So we can assume the making of the group's forthcoming LP is totally different? Definitely. "With St. Anger, it became so open-minded that it became unfocused. This time around, there's a lot of 'Sorry, it's not good enough.' We're aiming for excellence." Drummer Lars Ulrich expressed similar sentiments recently when discussing the new record's sound. The album is expected to drop early next year.

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter