James Hetfield considers himself more of a collector of words than a storyteller when it comes to Metallica‘s lyrics.
On the latest episode of The Metallica Report Hetfield said, “Having access to the sources and dictionaries and things like that nowadays is so great. I mean, somebody will send me something and I’ll look at a word and I don’t know what that is. I highlight it, look it up. Hey, great. I got that.”
“I will thumb through books just to see cool words and put ’em in a little pile and figure out where they belong. So it is kind of like building a vehicle, building a whatever, collecting lots of little words. And how do they fit together? What does this really mean? Is this enough for a subject matter?”
James added that he treats his lyrics just like another musical part of their songs. “For me, putting words into the song, it is like another instrument. So if ‘and,’ ‘the,’ ‘if,’, those things get in the way, just get rid of ’em. You just want the meaty words to get in there and get the point across and be vague enough. But I’m not a storyteller. I’m not that.”
REUTERS PHOTO
