METALLICA's HETFIELD On His Past With The Piano

May 8, 2009

METALLICA guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield recently spoke to U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine about his earliest musical experience. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

Metal Hammer: You first studied piano at the age of nine, then later got interested in your brother’s drums. Were the piano lessons in classical music?

James Hetfield: "Yeah. My mom had seen me over at a friend's house just kind of start bashing on the piano, and she thought, 'Oh, he's gonna be a musician, OK, we'll sign him up for piano.' I did that for a couple of years and it was really a bit of a turn-off because it was learning classical pieces, stuff that I wasn't listening to on the radio, you know?

"I remember it was an older woman's house and the cookies at the end was the big deal. But I am so glad it was somewhat forced upon me, because the act of left and right hand doing different things, and also singing at the same time, it gave me some inkling of what I do now. Singing and playing are somewhat easier than it probably could have been if I hadn't have had piano."

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