“It's scary when you haven't played for quite a while and can't remember the riff to Seek & Destroy”: James Hetfield reflects on the anxieties he experienced after stepping away from the guitar for too long

The stat sheet of Metallica's self-titled 1991 ‘Black’ album reads like a record executive's wildest fantasy.

It's the best-selling album in the United States in the last 30 years, with over 17 million copies sold, and has spent over 600 weeks in the Top 200 album charts in total. Onstage, in the three years after its release, the band played hundreds of live shows to millions of eager fans. One could go on, but the bottom line is, by 1993, the band had more than earned a break.

It'd be until 1996 before the titans returned with Load, an album that served as a further departure from the brand's frenetic thrash roots. As James Hetfield told Guitar World in an interview around the album's release, the time away from Metallica was both a blessing and a curse.

“I've conditioned myself to need [music] for so long that I can't be away from it for too long,” he said at the time. “It's like, ‘Whoa, I've got to fuckin' pick the guitar up and start playing.’ And it's scary when you haven't played for quite a while and can't remember the riff to Seek & Destroy!

“It's hard to figure out what you want to do when you come off a two-year tour,” he continued. “While you're out on the road, you make up this list of things that you want to do when the tour's over, and then when you get home you end up vegging. It's a strange feeling to be on your own again, not to have the Metallica family around you.”

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Over the years, Hetfield has been open and candid with fans about occasionally feeling unsure in his playing, telling a stadium-sized crowd in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 2022 that backstage he had felt like “an old guy,” and that he “can't play anymore,” doubts he overcame with the support of his bandmates.

Just this year, he admitted on the band's official podcast, The Metallica Report, that he suffered guitar-related nightmares prior to the most recent leg of the band's M72 tour.

“I start to doubt myself, [thinking] ‘We're old, we can’t do this,’” he said. “I was having nightmares about how I’m the only one who cares about what we're doing here: ‘Where is everybody?’

“The guitar neck is made of rubber, and there are only two strings on it. ‘Where's my roadie?’ and the guitar cord won’t let me get to the microphone. Silly stuff like that.”

But, the undisputed master of metal rhythm guitar added at the time, it’s “part of the [touring] cycle; it just is. You have anxiety build up, and don’t let it get the best of you. And as soon as you get up there, it’s all gonna be good.”