1. Award-winning director Darren Aronofsky created the music video for ‘The View,’ the only single released from Metallica’s collaboration with Lou Reed.
2. Lars Ulrich is an avid art collector.
In 2008, the drummer sold his Jean-Michel Basquiat painting ‘(Untitled) Boxer’ for $13.5 million.
3. Born in Denmark, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was a tennis prodigy in his youth. It kinda runs in the family: both his dad and his grandad played the sport professionally.
Before moving to Los Angeles at age 16, the keen Oasis fanstruck up a childhood friendship with Neneh Cherry. Sadly, none of his hard-rockin’ ways rubbed off on the notably more mellow Neneh.
4. In August 1992, during a co-headline stadium tour alongside Guns N’ Roses, James Hetfield walked into a 12 foot flame after misjudging a pyrotechnics display.
He suffered third-degree burns. Then-bassist Jason Newsted recalls Hetfield’s skin was “bubbling like on The Toxic Avenger.”
5. Metallica’s 2003 album ‘St Anger’ was so despised by some fans that at least one CD-burning party was held in America.
These days the band rarely play any songs from it live – or indeed many songs from their previous albums ‘Load’ (1996) and ‘Reload’ (1997).
6. Bassist Robert Trujillo was given a £1 million advance when he joined Metallica in 2003.
Prior to joining he played in Suicidal Tendencies, Ozzy Osbourne’s band and a funk-metal side project called Infectious Grooves.
7. James Hetfield was admitted to rehab in July 2001 for alcohol and “other addictions”, one of which was later revealed to be chocolate, accounting for the Metallica frontman’s chunkier appearance around that time.
8. Metallica’s second album, 1984’s ‘Ride The Lightning’, contains the track ‘The Call Of Ktulu’. On early pressings this was mis-printed as ‘The Cat Of Ktulu’.
Copies of the album with this mis-spelling now fetch huge sums on Ebay.
9. Kirk Hammett has admitted to struggles with drug addiction: “I had a bad coke problem on the ‘…And Justice For All’ tour (1988-9).
You hang out with other musicians, and next thing you know, you have five guys crammed into a bathroom stall.”
10. Bassist Jason Newsted joined the band as a replacement for Cliff Burton, who died in 1986. He never quite fitted in.
Indeed, his bass parts for 1988 album ‘…And Justice For All’ were practically erased by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, resulting in the record’s famously tinny sound.