ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 26, 1997 TAG: 9702260022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
James Hetfield's girlfriend has another name for his living room: the dead room.
"She hates it," said Metallica's lead singer, also billed as "The Angriest Man in America." The room, in his San Francisco home, is a memorial to all the critters he's shot or speared during various hunting expeditions.
"There's a six-point mule deer I got in Colorado. There's a 101/2-inch [beard] tom turkey I got up in Mendocino County. An antelope from Wyoming. Oh, and the meanest, ugliest-looking pig. There are ducks everywhere."
The room is a tribute, as well, to leisure time. The band's four members took a year off in 1995. It was their first chunk of free time since they were teen-agers, grinding out their brand of fast, heavy metal in California and across the country.
If it feels like these guys have been around forever "it's because we have been," Hetfield said by telephone on a tour stop in "Winnipeg, as in Canada, as in 30 below."
Metallica's first album came out 14 years ago; Hetfield is now 33. "Metallica keeps us young, no doubt about it," he said, not sounding the least bit angry. (He channels most of his angst into his lyrics now, he explained.) But the band also is constantly touring, leaving its members - Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammet and Jason Newsted - no time to think about anything but the band.
"We had to get our home life together," said Hetfield, who will perform with Metallica tonight at the Roanoke Civic Center. "We had to buy a place to live to store all the stuff we got on tour. We needed to spend time with our family and friends. Now when we're out there, instead of this gang mentality, it's four individuals and we're a little more confident about ourselves. We have home lives now, and we're not just dealing with Metallica only."
They have hobbies, too, like snowboarding. ``We go during our time off," Hetfield said. "Snowboarding is awesome. I love that freedom.''
And hunting.
Hetfield's Nebraska-born father hunted long before the family settled in Los Angeles. Hetfield left L.A. after high school because of a lame, "glam rock" metal scene and moved to free-spirited San Francisco, which has been the band's base ever since.
Unlike Southwest Virginia, L.A. is sadly lacking in hunting locales. "There are a lot of drive-bys, but it's not quite the same," Hetfield said. "I'd go out every once in a while to the skeet range [with my dad] when I was a kid. I remember every year or two he'd come home and a [two-point buck] would be hanging up in the garage and he and his buddies would be skinning it."
His parents divorced, and Hetfield didn't see his father for a few years. Meanwhile, his own interest in hunting developed - duck hunting in particular.
When he reconnected with his father, they found they had some things in common. They started hunting together, too, and took many excursions in Arkansas before his father died, during the production of "Load."
* * *
Even before Metallica released "Load" last year, the band members found they were reaching a new audience. Want proof? They headlined Lollapalooza last summer.
With a year off and down-time between releases, the group has never faded from the rock 'n' roll spotlight. The band's name, at least, was ever-present on MTV, if not in videos, then on Beavis' black T-shirt on "Beavis and Butt-Head."
"Beavis, heh heh," Hetfield said. His Butthead imitation was dead-on. ``When [the show] first came out, it was so funny and cool and I really dug it," he said. "Then it got old and then I got back into it again. It's funny, being in the industry especially, and knowing a lot of these bands. A lot of that dry-yet-sarcastic humor is so spot-on."
But what would Beavis say about Metallica these days?
At the least, the group's new album is a departure (or ``progression,'' Hetfield says) from the head-banging music of "The Puppet Master" or "And Justice For All." The songs are less frenzied, more melodic. Some critics have given the group a new label - alternative - which prompts a groan from Hetfield.
"People want to put you in categories," he said. "We can do whatever we want. We've got carte blanche. We've done instrumentals and speed stuff, music that's slow and heavy, countryish, simple rock."
Five years passed between the group's last album, "Metallica," better known as "The Black Album," and the recent release of "Load."
"Five years is a long time, and you hopefully grow in five years. That's what we've done. I think we've matured."
At any rate, Beavis is still wearing the T-shirt, and the concert promises a good mix of songs that span the band's albums and years; the stage show usually lasts more than two hours. Hetfield promises it will rock.
Fear not, his handlebar moustache is still there, even if he and the rest of the group cut their long locks before the tour - a move more than a few of his fans took personally.
"What, I can't headbang because I have short hair?" Hetfield asked. "I was in trouble for having long hair all my youth - with my mom, my teachers, my coach. Now that I'm older, I'm getting s--- for having short hair. It's strange. But it's fun being the rebel again."
Another sign the band has matured (Hetfield prefers ``matured'' to ``mellowed'' - ``mellowed'' tends to make his fans freak): Their drink of choice on this tour is the martini.
"Every tour, there's the drink du jour. We had the vodka tour, the Jagermeister tour, which was horrible, I would not wish that drink on anyone. On our time off, it was martinis and cigars, so this is the martini tour. And of course, beers, but never before the show - only on our time off."
Between snowboarding and hunting, of course.
But always, even during time off, the group is about music. They already have the material for their next album, "but we're still writing stuff," Hetfield said. "It's impossible to turn off the creative light, which is great."
A case in point: Two falls ago, Hetfield took a pack-mule trip on a hunting expedition in a remote area of Wyoming, "the most remote area in the lower 48, 35 miles from any road or trail.
"So we're up there, in the middle of nowhere, and I'm thinking of lyrics. I had some paper but no pen, and I was writing with the lead from a bullet. Really. It works. A pencil is lead, a bullet is lead."
The song is on "Load." It's called "Bleeding Me."
How to catch a shuttle bus
Shuttle buses will run tonight from the Williamson Road parking garage for the Metallica concert at the Roanoke Civic Center.
The buses will begin running at 6 p.m. and will resume immediately after the event.
The shuttle service and the parking garage are free.
The civic center will provide a quiet room during the concert for those who must stay on site but who are not attending the show. There will be light refreshments as well as a television set. The room will be in the Exhibit Hall. Use the Exhibit Hall's main entrance.
Tickets to the concert are $25.50 and are still available. Call 981-1201.
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Metallica, in concert tonight at the Roanoke Civicby CNBCenter with Corrosion of Conformity, is (from left): James Hetfield,
Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and Jason Newsted. color.