What does it take to write a Metallica song?
On a recent episode of “The Metallica Report,” singer James Hetfield discussed the thought he puts into lyrics and cited artists like Tom Waits as inspiration.
“For me, not studying literature much at all — ever, really — all the books you’re supposed to read as a kid, I didn’t, but I will pick up a book and thumb through it,” he said. “Mostly I see words that are interesting, and that’s out of curiosity. And me, I would say that coming from a graphics background, the way a word looks is almost more important. Like ‘Lux Æterna’ — how cool is that? There’s an X in it, and then the A [and] E together. How cool. It’s almost how it looks.”
“As far as Tom Waits just being a master craftsman at lyrics, painting a picture in one sentence, it interests me, and it takes work,” he went on. “I saw Tom kind of live it. It was his vocabulary as well. He could sit and speak like that. I can’t.
“For me, putting words into the song, it is like another instrument,” Hetfield added. “So if ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘if”, those things get in the way, just get rid of ’em. You just want the meaty words to get in there and get the point across and be vague enough. But I’m not a storyteller. I’m not that.