James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich Stopped Speaking for a Week While Making Metallica’s Hardwired

If you think all those therapy sessions with not-at-all-licensed “therapist” Phil Towle made everything hunky-dory in Metallica forever and all time, think again: in a new interview with Metal Hammer, James Hetfield reveals that he and Lars Ulrich butted heads pretty hard during the making of the band’s new album, Hardwired… to Self-Destruct.

“We were in the studio and it was like, ‘Hey, I’m the guitar player, I like this guitar part, I wanna play it.’ He’d be like, ‘This part is better,’ and I was like, ‘Since when are you the Riff Police?’ So at that point it was, ‘Okay, I’m done for now, I have to leave.’ But a week later we were talking again.”

Obviously, this is quite different from when Hetfield stormed out during the St. Anger sessions… in that instance, he went to rehab and didn’t come back for months and months and months. Honestly, this sounds like the kind of squabble band dudes have all the time. Remember, being in a band is like being in a relationship. There’s no such thing as a couple that never fights, and there’s no such thing as a band that never fights. So the question here isn’t “Should Metallica fans be worried that Lars and James still get each other’s goat sometimes?”, it’s “Why didn’t James just come back with, ‘Oh yeah? Well your drum part is STOCK! HA!’?”

In semi-related news, holy crap do I ever wanna join the Riff Police. Now there’s a law enforcement agency I can get behind. Anyone know if they’re recruiting?

[via Rock Feed]