METALLICA recently sat down with U.K.’s Metal Hammer magazine and about what it was like seeing frontman James Hetfield re-enter a treatment program for substance abuse.
Hetfield checked himself back in to rehab last September, which forced METALLICA to postpone their tour of Australia and New Zealand.
In the brand new issue of Metal Hammer, which is on sale from today, Kirk Hammett, Robert Trujillo and Lars Ulrich discussed Hetfield’s addiction issues and how it affected the rest of the group.
Trujillo said: “We really didn’t see it coming. James seemed like he was fine, but then you look back and you try to analyze the situation over time and see where there were red flags.
“Being on the road can be very challenging, and I would imagine for James, to get up there in front of all those people and have to be ‘on,’ meanwhile your family’s not with you and all these things are going on, it builds up.”
Hammett added: “Whenever something happens to a bandmember like this, it’s so deeply unsettling. It comes as a shock. You have to do a bit of scrambling just to cover some ground.”
Hetfield’s issues with addiction and alcoholism were detailed in the 2004 documentary “Some Kind Of Monster”.
Metal Hammer image credit: Future
