As we wish, today, American singer and musician, James Hetfield a Happy Birthday, the time has come to playlist the ‘BESTS’ of his band : Metallica
Video Tracklist :
1 . Nothing Else Matters
2 . Enter Sandman
3 . The Unforgiven
4 . One
5 . Whiskey In The Jar
6 . Wherever I May Roam
7 . Hardwired
8 . Welcome home (Sanitarium)
9 . Sad But True
10 . Master Of Puppets
11 . Atlas, Rise!
12 . St. Anger
13 . Turn the Page
14 . The Day That Never Comes
15 . I Disappear
16 . The Memory Remains
17 . Now That We’re Dead
18 . All Nightmare Long
19 . Fuel
20 . Halo On Fire
21 . Murder One
22 . Confusion
23 . Dream No More
24 . Frantic
25 . The Unnamed Feeling
26 . Until It Sleeps
27 . Here Comes Revenge
28 . Some Kind Of Monster
29 . ManUNkind
30 . Lords of Summer
31 . Hero Of The Day
32 . Whiplash
33 . For Whom the Bell
34 . Harvester Of Sorrow
35 . Battery
36 . James Hetfield Talks the Art of Cars
Audio : Enter Sandman . Nothing Else Matters . Master of Puppets . One . The Unforgiven . Sad but True . Fade to Black . Battery . For Whom the Bell Tolls . Wherever I May Roam .
PROLOGUE
James Hetfield — before volume becomes function. Medicine does not enter. It remains outside, even when it would be useful. Inside, Downey, California, provides another form of order, industrial and religious, where faith operates as a practical rule rather than abstract belief, and where absence becomes as structuring as presence. Nothing is explained. Everything is applied.
The Hetfield household is governed by Christian Science, precise enough to exclude medical intervention without preventing material organization. Cynthia Bassett Hetfield teaches music, imposes piano lessons at nine. Virgil Lee Hetfield drives trucks, applies religious principles without adjustment. Consistency takes precedence over adaptation.
School offers no alternative. At Downey High School, he is present mainly to accumulate credits, spending time listening to music. The structure does not filter or protect. It allows noise to pass through.
Music arrives in layers. Piano first, imposed and limited. Drums next, borrowed. Then guitar at fourteen. Aerosmith becomes a reference point for effect rather than technique. Guitar absorbs previous instruments without replacing them.
The family fractures at thirteen. The father leaves, without return. The event is not analyzed. It is recorded. The mother remains, maintaining the same rules, including refusal of medical care as illness progresses. The system persists unchanged.
The mother dies in 1980. Hetfield is sixteen. The death is not narrated as trauma but as logistical break. He leaves home to live with his half-brother. The religious framework disappears, but its effects remain.
School shifts location but not function. At Brea Olinda High School, lunchtime becomes a space for playing loudly. Sound acts as social filter.
Groups form and dissolve. Phantom Lord appears, then disappears. Names persist longer than formations. Temporary structures define activity.
A return to Downey brings new spaces. A house scheduled for demolition becomes rehearsal area. Lack of permanence allows volume without constraint. Music continues.
Leather Charm forms, reorganizing roles. Hetfield focuses on vocals. The group performs available material. It dissolves again. The cycle repeats.
Earlier, Obsession had already existed, introducing collaborators. Groups overlap. Locations remain constant: garages, temporary houses, informal spaces.
The voice adapts. Later training clarifies an earlier pattern: the voice is managed when necessary. It is not left to chance.
Downey does not produce a unified scene. Styles coexist without shared identity. The connection is geographic.
Christian Science reappears as effect. It explains absence of care and later expressions of anger. Songs reference these elements without redefining them.
Hetfield does not articulate a career plan. He describes practical intentions: play, rehearse, find musicians, respond to opportunities. Actions occur without declared meaning.
Institutions are crossed rather than inhabited. Temporary spaces become centers of activity. Religion restricts some actions and permits others through omission. Parental roles diverge: withdrawal and persistence.
Downey remains. Factories, intersections, static structures. Volume becomes a way to sustain presence. Repetition becomes method.
The reader may reconstruct sequence. The text does not. It stops where elements cease to be interchangeable.