If you’ve always dreamed of sitting down to a meal with Metallica singer/guitarist James Hetfield you’re in luck. The metal legend is offering up a private dinner for you and up to three of your friends in a charity auction to support the Adaptive Sports Foundation.
The only catch is that it will cost you a pretty penny, as the current bid for the outing stood at $28,500 at press time. According to the listing for the auction, the meal for four with Hetfield in Vail-adjacent Edwards, CO will also feature a guest appearance from an athlete from the Adaptive Sports Foundation — which provides sports and recreational opportunities to children and adults with cognitive and physical disabilities — and an accompanying staff member who will share their success stories with Hetfield and your crew.
Bidding for the auction expires on Aug. 21. The fine print notes that the participant in the 90-120-minute meal has to be 21-years-old or older, that they may take a photo with Hetfield and ask him to sign one small item and the scheduling is subject to a mutual agreement on a date between the singer, the charity and the winner. In addition, the winner is responsible for the total cost of the meal for all participants and travel and accommodations are not included.
Billboard recently compiled a list of the artists whose albums spent the most weeks at No. 1 on the Top Catalog Albums chart, with Metallica’s Grammy-winning self-titled 1991 album logging 45 weeks and representing the only hard rock/metal album on the list. In addition, the LP colloquially known as the Black Album just celebrated a mind-blowing 750 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart, making it only the fourth LP in history to cross that threshold.
It’s hard to think of someone, even tangentially familiar with metal, that hasn’t listened to “Enter Sandman” at least once. The song has transcended the boundaries of rock music to arguably become the biggest metal song of all time. It’s an anthem that has welcomed countless fans into the world of heavy metal and inspired generations of musicians. But what if Hetfield hadn’t been pushed to give it his all?
During a new Masterclass interview James Hetfield recently admitted that he initially thought their mega-hit “Enter Sandman” wasn’t all that great. In a YouTube short released as part of the Masterclass, Hetfield revealed the doubts he had about the song during its early stages. He recalled how drummer Lars Ulrich and producer Bob Rock challenged him to go back and work on it: “I think Lars Ulrich and Bob Rock said, “Go back. I challenge you to go back and work on it. And I did.”
One crucial change that emerged from this collaborative effort was the addition of the famous “catchphrase” line, “We’re off to never, neverland.” Hetfield’s musings on the lyrics, which touch on the universal experience of nightmares, resonate with all of us. “What happens in our sleep? Why do we have nightmares?’ – a lot of people could identify with that. Everyone has nightmares. What do you do with them? Why do they show up?” he adds.
Obviously, the story behind this iconic song doesn’t end there. Last April, during a Metallica appearance on The Howard Stern Show, the band revealed that the song’s genesis involved guitarist Kirk Hammett’s riff, which was later tweaked by Ulrich. Ulrich’s suggestion to repeat the first half of the riff three times before transitioning to the ending chords added the distinctive structure that we all recognize today.
“There’s a thing that we do with riffs where sometimes we’ll structure it where there will be a repeating pattern for three times and then an answering part [a tail]. And, basically, he was just morphing it into a workable form,” Hammett shared.
