How Social, Cultural, Historical, Political and Economic factors have affected the music of James Hetfield .
In May 1981, James Hetfield would reply to an advert in the "recycler" magazine and begin a band that ultimately changed the face of Heavy Metal. .
They were much more than angry teenagers, they had a totally different taste than their peers and would soon become the taste. .
James Hetfield, born August 3rd 1963 to an opera singer mother and truck driving father took up music at an early age, first learning to play piano, then drums and finally settling on guitar. .
Somehow, with his mothers musical influences and fathers masculine, rugged attributes, James found his taste in music to be a rare minority on the L.A. scene at this time. He was a big fan of the NWOBHM (new wave of British heavy metal) which included bands like Diamond head, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Motorhead . With this and Lars Ulrich's (Metallica's drummer) ad in the Recycler, he created something that wasn't known at that time. .
James was interested in music practice when he was in school and started some bands called Phantom Lord (Track 7 on Kill "em All was named Phantom Lord) and Leather Charm, amongst others. .
In Leather Charm, James met a bassist called Ron McGovney. He would go on to be the first bassist in Metallica. Ron was in the early stages of learning bass, so James taught him and wrote the bass lines for the songs. While writing and teaching, James got to analyse the genre the were going into, and it wasn't anything like any L.A. bands. This was good to James, he was playing what he wanted, and knew he would turn some heads. .
James managed to combine the speed of early punk rock with the darkness of Venom, Black Sabbath and Diamond head. .
The most prominent music on the L.A. scene at the time was Glam Rock. This involved bands like Motley Crue and Aerosmith. MetallicA despised these type of bands. They were nothing more than make up wearing posers to them.