James Hetfield’s New Tattoo Means Whenever He Flips Someone Off, Lemmy’s Doing It Too

When legendary rock icon and the planet’s final true bad motherfucker Lemmy Kilmister passed away back in 2015, one of his final wishes was to have some of his cremated remains put into bullets and given to his dearest friends. One of those friends was Metallica frontman James Hetfield, who recently paid tribute to Lemmy by using those ashes in an extremely fitting way — by having some of those ashes tattooed onto one of his middle fingers.

During the wee hours this morning, a picture of Hetfield showing off his new ink popped up on the official Metallica Instagram page with the following caption:

“With the steady hand of friend and tattoo artist @coreymillertattoo, this tattoo. A salute to my friend and inspiration Mr. Lemmy Kilmister. Without him, there would be NO Metallica.

“Black ink mixed with a pinch of his cremation ashes that were so graciously given to me.

“So now, he is still able to fly the bird at the world.”

As you can see above, the new tattoo in question is a playing card spade inside an Iron Cross located on Hetfield’s right middle finger. Since you’re reading about this on MetalSucks, I probably don’t have to explain why those two things are significant when it comes to Lemmy, right?

Though it’s a sick new tat, Hetfield isn’t the first person to get Lemmy’s remains permanently embedded into their flesh. Back in 2021, Motörhead tour manager Eddie Rocha and production assistant Emma Cederblad — both long-time members of Lemmy’s road crew — got commemorative tattoos with the ashes.

Still, it’s pretty badass that not only does the tattoo reside on Hetfield’s insanely dominant picking hand, but now it means if you piss him off enough, you might just get the finger from the frontmen of both Motörhead and Metallica.