Nothing Else Matters: The Love Song Hetfield Almost Kept to Himself
James Hetfield wrote Metallica's biggest ballad for himself on a lonely tour and nearly hid it from the band. Lars Ulrich had other plans.
Photo: Kreepin Deth · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Metallica's biggest ballad began as something James Hetfield never planned to share. In the late 1980s the band sold itself as a gang of tough guys, and a tender song about missing your girlfriend did not fit. Hetfield wrote it anyway, kept it to himself, and it took Lars Ulrich to get it onto the Black Album.
But that song was for me. It’s about being on the road, missing someone at home.
James Hetfield
Homesick, With a Phone in One Hand
On tour and missing home, Hetfield was absent-mindedly plucking his guitar during a phone call with his girlfriend at the time. The figure he found became the song's famous opening. It is built on open strings, which is handy when your other hand is holding a phone.
It’s a huge sign of weakness. You’re in Metallica. This is hardcore.
James Hetfield
"That song was just me and my guitar on the road," he told Rolling Stone in 1991. The words came from the same place: being far away from someone you love.
Showing it to the band was a different story. Hetfield later told Classic Rock that writing a love song felt like "a huge sign of weakness" for a member of Metallica.
The Tape He Played for Lars
The song did not leak out by accident. Hetfield played his rough recording for Ulrich, who thought it was pretty cool. On Howard Stern's show in 2021, Lars said he had never heard that side of James before and instantly knew the band had to show people there was more to them. Hetfield admitted he was shocked when Lars and producer Bob Rock both called it beautiful.
4songs
on the band's August 13, 1990 demo, this one included
Bob Rock, an Orchestra and No Kirk
Rock, fresh from Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood, suggested an orchestral layer, and composer Michael Kamen wrote the arrangement. Suddenly the thrash band had strings.
Metallica
Metallica · 1991
Now the trivia that wins bar bets: Kirk Hammett does not play on the studio recording. Hetfield recorded the acoustic intro and the solo himself. Kirk only learned the song properly once the tour was underway. "We kept putting it in the set and taking it out until we were certain we were actually able to play it," he told the Village Voice in 2014.
From Stadiums to First Dances
The album Metallica came out in 1991, and Nothing Else Matters followed as its third single on April 20, 1992. It reached No. 6 in the UK, No. 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 in Ulrich's home country, Denmark.
1 billionviews
on YouTube by August 2021, a first for a Metallica video
In April 1999 Kamen conducted the San Francisco Symphony alongside the band in Berkeley, and the song landed on the live album S&M. In August 2021 its video became Metallica's first to pass one billion views on YouTube. About a month later Elton John, who played piano on Miley Cyrus's cover for The Metallica Blacklist, told Howard Stern it was "one of the best songs ever written," and Hetfield could barely hold back tears.
Couples now pick it for their first dance at weddings. Not bad for a song its writer once thought was too soft to show his own band.
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// Quick quiz
Which Metallica member does not play on the studio recording of Nothing Else Matters?
James Hetfield recorded the intro and the solo himself, so Kirk Hammett is not on the studio track.
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