Song Exploder - Metallica - Moth into Flame

Episode Date: January 6, 2017

Metallica formed in 1981. They were teenagers. Since then, they’ve gone on to become one of the most successful bands of all time, selling over 110 million records worldwide. In November 2016, they released their tenth album, Hardwired…to Self-Destruct. In this episode, the song “Moth into Flame" gets taken apart by singer and guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. songexploder.net/metallica

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hurway. Metallica formed in 1981. They were teenagers. Since then, they've gone on to become one of the most successful bands of all time, selling over 110 million records worldwide. In November 2016, they released their 10th album, Hard Wired to Self-Distruct. In this episode, the song Moth Into Flame gets taken apart by singer and guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. I'm letting you want a lot of trade secrets here. I've never really talked about this stuff and this detail.

It's Metallica on Song Exploder. I am Lars Ulrich and I am the drummer of Metallica. James here? Singer, rhythm guitar player, Metallica. About two summers ago in 2014, I was given an iPod by our on-the-road engineer that has about 1,500 ideas on it, accumulated from sound checks.

Just warming up on the guitar, or even just rehearsing, or it's just, I get an idea and I just humming the riff into the tape, you know, when-na-na-na-na-na. There's nothing that happens in this band these days that's not recorded. And then I kind of step back at that point. I've written the riff. I've done my part with that. I need some fresh ears to hear what's got potential and what doesn't.

And so over that summer, I spent a lot of time listening to that iPod, and I presented James with my first pass at what I thought were potential main riffs for the next record. I have a trust in Lars because he's got a really good musical ear, and he's a drummer. He hears the riff differently than I do. He's pretty good at picking out some of the best stuff.

There may have been 20 or 30 that I'd flagged, and one of them was called plow. Why it was Cole Plow? I think it had that feeling of just it could push through anything. It was like, okay, nothing's going to stop this riff. Every single song we do starts with just that, a riff. We have a fairly traditional view of songwriting.

We always try to build what we call a cycle. So a main riff, a verse, bridge, and a chorus. That's a cycle. A lot of what we do in our songwriting is kind of taking riffs, basically like a puzzle, just trying to connect. There's a busier one, one that sort of moves around and has kind of more notes. And then the simpler one where the emphasis is kind of more on the right hand, on the downpicking. So there were two of these riffs that sort of lived together, the busier one and the simpler one.

And so we were kind of jamming on these two riffs, and it just felt like there was kind of the cornerstone of a Metallica song. He had spent the better part of a couple decades kind of running away from what we were doing. But Rick Rubin, eight, nine, ten years ago, when we started doing stuff with him, he encouraged us to feel okay with referencing ourselves. And Rick encouraged us to embrace what we've been doing in the past and feel good about it. So putting the song together, we're thinking old school. Old school as, like, I think disposable heroes. That's a song for back in the day.

That was just a reference. Like, how did we arrange that song? What did we do? What makes that song work so good? In Disposable Heroes, before the chorus, there's a guitar melody that comes in and plays kind of by itself to break up. So it's not just continuous vocals. So we thought maybe that kind of an idea that would be applicable in this song. So in the pre-chorus, there's that kind of melody that Kirk plays based loosely on the similar thing in Disposable Heroes.

You'll hear that Cycle 3 has a different sound because I felt that it just, should maybe get a little more electric or a little crazier. So we re-recorded that melody in the third cycle with his solo sound. You try to keep, as you go along in a song, to keep having an additional dynamic, an additional thing, something that takes it to a different place, even if it's the same part. We're all living in the Bay Area. And we made the decision that we wanted to make this record, start to finish at home. HQ as a rehearsal space in the Bay Area that we used to rehearse at all the time.

When we would go show up and rehearse there, you know, Journey was on the other side of the wall rehearsing something and people selling pot over there. There was people squatting upstairs. It was kind of a hang. And around 2001, we decided that that was a place that we wanted to purchase. It's not a beautiful space. It's very warehouse. district. But when you walk inside, it's just a really comfortable, safe sanctuary for all of us.

So we all feel good there. And we're able to feel really creative. We drop the kids at school 815, 830, down at the studio at 845, and then we'll work till 2 o'clock, so we've got to go pick the kids up and start driving them around to all their afternoon activities and all that stuff. The time is too precious, and we spend enough time touring and traveling and we just want to be there to see the kids grow up and all that stuff. So it's like we have to be home. And the two tracking rooms at HQ are really big. So it gives you the options of many different sort of micing approaches.

It's like, okay, here's some close mics. Here's some overheads. Here's some ambient mics in a different time zone. But on this record, we wanted the drums to be a little bit bigger. My good buddy Braun, who's the drummer on Mastodon, they toured with us for years on Death Magnetic, and I would sit and watch and play all these crazy drum fills. I'd call him like the Mastodon drum fills.

Occasionally, I get an urge to try to at least step in his direction. It doesn't happen often. But once in a while, I have fun with doing that. One take. So I've got this riff in my head, and it plays over and over. and all of a sudden, a vocal line comes up. When he starts getting the vocals, first there's a melody. There's the vocal melody.

The last thing that happens is lyrics. My voice is a percussive instrument, and then I put meaning to it. Blacked out, pop queen, and better mean the screams crashed in the silence. At first it was like the anti-rockstar song, shunning fame. Like, it's an evil drug, you know. It's something I need to be absent from. Light it up, oh, light it up. Another hit wreaks it all the pain.

You know, we've seen lots of friends just go because of the excesses out there, the escapes. You know, it takes lives that shouldn't have been taken that could still be extremely talented and creative people. Anyone who's in the spotlight or in the public eye has potential. to go down a dark, ugly, lonesome path at the end. I've grown up being in the spotlight, basically, from like 18 on. I don't know what it's like to go hang out in a festival just in the middle of it all and just enjoy it.

And I got lost in drink and the other accesses of the road. You can get lost in that and forget why you're doing stuff. It's a complete loss of reality. Decadence. Death of the Innocence, the path we stop. There's no doubt I'm daily saved by music and also daily challenged by the effects of music. Same rides that fall, who cares at all? Seduced by fame.

I'm off into the flame. This saves my life daily. This is therapy for me. We're writing these songs because we need them. We need them to express our songs. We need them to hear to make ourselves feel better. You know, and when I write lyrics out and other people enjoy them, that gives a sense of okay.

It's, I'm okay, I'm gonna be all right. And now here's Moth Into Flame by Metallica in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net slash Metallica for more info on the band and a link to buy this song and to watch the music video for Moth Into Flame. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years. about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name,

Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music

and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. they're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now.

You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, Rishi-kash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's song-exploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is produced by me and Christian Coons, and is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by the Knight Foundation and by Mailchimp.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. Next time on Song Exploder, Solange breaks down her song, cranes in the sky. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder, and you can find all the past and future episodes of the show at SongExploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi Keshireway.

Thanks for listening.