The Joe Rogan Experience - #887 - James Hetfield

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

James Hetfield is a musician, singer and songwriter known for being the co-founder, lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and main songwriter for the American heavy metal band Metallica.

I guess I never, I don't know much about moose. They're awesome. So fucking big, such a giant animal. Two, one, live, boom, live with James Hetfield. How are you, sir? Doing awesome. Any friend of Jim Brewer's is a friend of mine. Awesome to hear.

So you're in. Hey man, I listened to your new shit in the gym today, and you know what's amazing about it? You guys still fucking rock hard. You know, you haven't... I love Aerosmith. I was a huge Aerosmith fan when I was a kid, but somewhere along the line, they became a ballad band.

Somewhere along the line, they started doing movies for music that appealed to, like, adolescent teenage girls. You know? Like, something happened. Yeah. I got you. And then other people start writing your songs. That's, I think, the ultimate kind of not giving up, but you've lost your way.

Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about there's a transition that very successful people make. And either they make it or they don't. And the transition is to go from being hungry and filled with all this angst to being like stupid, wealthy and famous, but still keeping your art relevant. Like, how do you do that? We're super competitive people. We're really perfectionists and we hate to let each other down. There's always a better riff coming

there's always a better album uh maybe there's the never satisfied part to us that will keep us going till we die you know there's always the ultimate lyric that's going to connect to everyone in the world or something there is always a better something that we haven't got yet. So it's that mindset. It's that, I guess, in the beginning, you just want to do it, right? You want to be a successful band. You want to make it. You're young.

You're filled with angst. But your music has the same sort of intensity to it. Like today in the gym, I got in there. I hadn't listened to your new album at all. I fucking cranked it up to nine, and I just said's go and i turned it on and right from the jump i was like whoa like there's something about a good fucking hard rock album that just gets you pumped up and you guys 100 a plus succeeded with this one awesome to hear well that's that's why we do it too we write music we write music we record music that we want to hear because we're not hearing it out there sometimes.

And that's how it's been since day one. And, you know, we're pretty honest in our music, too. So I love the fact that from album one to here, we're doing it our way and we're writing songs for ourselves. And there's an honesty that has to be in it. From album one to here, we're doing it our way, and we're writing songs for ourselves. And there's an honesty that has to be in it, or people can see that shit if you're not honest. Yeah, they definitely can, right? Yeah. They're like little animals.

They smell it, right? Don't they? And they smell. Yeah, they smell. They smell it, the whole deal. Yeah, it's refreshing to see a band that's been at it for a long time, that's super successful, that still goes after it. Yeah, the thing that bugs me a lot is when people say,

okay, now that you're sober or now that you're matured, now all this, and you've worked out all your demons and things like that, that your music's going to be all soft and flowery. And I tell you, if I could exercise all those demons, I would have. But it's something you embrace. It's a part of me. And I get to celebrate it in my music. I get to communicate it. I get to use it as a therapy to help my own insanity, and other people do too. So when you get those like-minded people together in a place and play live, music does something to people. Like you in the gym, I get to watch people at our shows transform from,

at our shows transform from, God, I just took my tie off or I still have my frigging briefcase, you know, like handcuffed to me. I want out of this and I get to let loose and I get to see these people transform and watch music do stuff to them. Yeah, transform is the right word, right? Because it's almost like music, I think there's an element to music that doesn't get discussed, that it does have some sort of an effect on the body. Like there's, like when you hear a good song and you're in your car and you're like, fuck yeah, like it's like a drug. I mean, it is, it's like taking a shot of this caveman

nitro or something, more powerful than that, really. Because it's instantaneous. Yeah. I got plenty of speeding tickets. I'm sure. Plenty. Well, that's the best place for Lars and I to listen to the music. When we're putting it together, does it make the car test? Because you're yourself in your car.

If no one else is in there, you get to celebrate and listen and just go frigging nuts in your car. And that's past the car test, you know. That's got to be where most people listen to most of their music these days, with all the commuting people do. Especially here in L.A., man. Especially here. It's a ridiculous place, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Where do you live in these days?

Hopefully we save people from road rage. They get to just headbang instead of shooting people. You're ramping it up. Well, there's not too much shooting people in cars anymore. It was going on for a while in the 90s. That's trendy. Where do you live these days? I live in Vail, Colorado.

Oh, no shit, man. Wow, that's kind of cool. It's very cool. It's quiet. No frigging traffic. And especially now, super quiet. Snow does something to calm you down a little bit i agree with that i remember when i was a kid in boston there was those days

when it would just snow hard you'd go outside and you experience quiet like you never heard it before right it's like everything gets filtered by that snow well i like you know there's a there's a there's a lone wolf part of me that maybe you can relate to. But I like being by myself. But I also like, I need people to connect with as well. But when I get out, you know, living in Vail, moving from California to Colorado was a great thing for me. I feel really, oh, I feel a part of nature there. And you don't want to be inside there.

There's something about it. You just want to be outside all the time. Well, it's so beautiful. Yeah. I'm going to Colorado this weekend. Cool. Yeah, it's fucking stunning up there. There's just something about Colorado.

Those mountains are just the best natural artwork like you could ever look at. Yeah, no doubt. We get to look at the Gore Range right out our mountain. And I've drank plenty of Coors Lights in my life, and that's the one on the can. Like, wow, I'm looking at it. And lots of 14ers there, lots of great snowmobiling, rafting, paddle boarding, you name it. What's a 14er? 14,000 feet,, paddle boarding, you name it. What's a 14er?

14,000 feet, peaks. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, lots of 14,000 feet peaks. Oh, people who are into climbing those crazy peaks? Yeah, or hunting, you know. What made you move out there? Did you go there and visit first, or you just decided you needed to separate from the hive?

Yeah, there's probably a multitude of things that made it happen. My wife grew up there. She was born in Argentina. They moved to Vail. She went to elementary school there. You know, we were going to Tahoe a lot to do skiing and stuff like that. And she said, we got to go to Vail. This is not snow.

We'll go to Vail and feel snow. And we went there a few times and I loved it. I'm not a huge skier, but I can ski and I have fun doing it. My kids love it. Um, and so that my, my wife turns into a kid when we go there, which I kind of like, it's a little more like me, you know, she can be a little, you know, a little too on point and a little, you know, uh, she's, she's, um, she loosens up and she becomes young again there. Um, so there's that kind of got sick of the Bay area, the attitudes of people there a little bit. I was, you know, they talk about how diverse they are and things like that. And, you know, it's fine if you're diverse like

them, you know, but, you know, showing up with a deer on the bumper doesn't fly in Marin County, you know, uh, my, or my, my form of eating organic doesn't vibe with theirs. You know, my form of eating organic doesn't vibe with theirs, you know. Do you have issues with that? Like with the people you lived with up in Marin County? With hunting? Or is it just something you felt? Yeah, you know, it's something I felt. I probably made it up in my head a little bit.

Yeah. Because I'm pretty good at that. I'm pretty creative. And I can start fights with myself in my head all the time you know a lot of people can oh yeah but but there was there was just a i don't know i felt that there was an elitist attitude there that if you weren't their way politically their way uh you know environmentally all of that, you know, you were looked down upon. I think in Colorado, everyone is very natural.

People are not playing some game. They're not posturing. You know, they're very into, oh, you like doing that? Cool. How's that go? How are you doing with that? You know, and they're, they're, they're less, they're less obsessed with stopping what you're doing and more enjoying what they're doing. You know? Hmm. That's interesting. That's an interesting way to look at it. I love the Bay

area, but I've always felt like, I think you nailed it. The Bay area, they love diversity as long as you're diverse the way they're diverse. It's, um, it's so tech oriented. It's so absorbed with one aspect of society, technology and cell phones and the internet and electric cars. And it's so locked into that one sort of like mode of being that I think a guy like you goes out there and shoots an elk or something like that. It's probably like a little creepy to them. Well, I just think I feel more at home in the Midwest or the mountains or something. I mean, I love the ocean and I love the Bay area. I love what it's got to offer, but there's just a, there's an attitude that it was, uh, it, There's just an attitude that it wasn't healthy for me, starting to feel like I was just fighting all the time,

and I just had to get out of my own head. So Colorado does it for me. You were doing that show, The Hunt, that show that was on History Channel or something like that, where it was all about grizzly bear hunting. You were doing the narration for that. Yeah. like that where it was all about a grizzly bear hunting you were doing the narration for that yeah and you i saw this crazy blowback because of that where there was people were they wanted a boycott a music festival that you guys were on and and there was photos of another guy who wasn't you right they were getting circled around they were saying it was you they killed a grizzly bear

and they were you know saying we have to ban this this is hard it was it's killed a grizzly bear and they were, you know, saying we have to ban this. This is hard. It was very strange. Like, what was your reaction to all that? I kind of just took it as, OK, that's, you know, how it's been for me in the Bay Area. You know, people don't understand it. I mean, it's just like with anything. You know, I don't think they understand that someone can be as passionate about something else as, as passionate as they are about what they are passionate about, you know? So if you're as passionate about something, there's someone who's the opposite and that's okay. You can get along. You can talk about it. No one's right. No one's wrong. This is my life. I like living it this way. You like living your life that way. I totally get it,

but we can coexist in this and let's really be diverse. You know, for me, going out, whether it's planting my own vegetables, having, you know, my own beehives, getting our own honey, uh, harvesting my own meat on the ranch. That's what I love doing. I love sustaining my family with as organic as possible. And, uh, you know, I, I, I respect people that don't want the blood. They don't want all that seen. They would rather see their meat or whatever it is show up in a nice cellophane package and it's handed to them. They don't want to know how it got there.

I respect that. My kids are like that. They don't want to see it going on. But I want to be as close to the earth. I want to be as part of it as possible. I want to be part of every bit of it and respect it. Yeah, I get that sentiment. And I always found it strange how many people get upset at what you do, but meanwhile they're eating meat.

I mean, San Francisco is filled with restaurants that are serving meat everywhere you go. Every single store you pass by has meat in it. And to focus on you for, you know, going out and hunting is always a little weird. Well, I guess I'm more old school. I don't know whatever it is. You know, I think the Bay Area prides itself, and I'm glad there is a place that prides itself on being progressive, very moving forward. Hey, we're creating the future here.

And I love the convenience and stuff of that. But then there's a part of me that just maybe is like frontier style. I just love that. I would rather be simple. Well, I think it's also probably you're performing in front of fucking hundreds of thousands of people all the time. And you're just like, Jesus Christ, you need a balance. I mean, you need some sort of an opposite end of the scale just to weigh things out. Very true. Very true. You know, what about me?

I want me time, you know. Chill time. Quit pulling me all these different ways and stuff. Certainly not complaining. That's what I choose to do. But I also choose this, too. Well, that's where a veil completely makes sense. So how long have've been raising bees

probably only maybe four years how did you get started in that how do you start raising bees start with one i actually start with two really no um they're not like rabbits but they do produce quite quickly you know uh my dad raised bees. I just, we always saw boxes out in the corner of the house. You know, we grew up in LA here and, you know, the weather's so great. So there's, you know, lots of bee activity. That's the bummer about being in Vail now. Not a lot of, not a lot of bee action going on.

It's too high, it's too cold. Right. And, you know, certain vegetables grow there but not a lot but uh in california the ranch love i love it i got a i had a friend who in his backyard he he probably had six hives and he had this one really intense kind of rogue hive where maybe the queen had some kind of strain of uh african. And his wife could not go out in the backyard without being attacked. Whoa. So he says, hey, can I go put my bees on your property so they can cycle this queen out?

They got some breeding and it was just off. Jesus Christ. So he brought it out to the ranch. He pinched the bee and then pinched the queen. Pinched it? What do you mean? Killed it. Oh, Jesus Christ.

That's a nice euphemism. He didn't have to shoot it or nothing. Hold still. So he just grabbed the queen and killed her. Well, he just pinched it because she was reproducing. I mean, they lay like a million eggs in their lives. It's insane. she was reproducing, I mean, they lay like a million eggs in their lives.

It's insane. That, I mean, I, I basically, I could sit here and talk a whole hour about bees because they're so interesting. Let's do it. All right. Well, the listener. I'm not scared. No, they'll listen. They'll listen.

Trust me. It's interesting stuff. So yeah, put it, put a new queen in there and they, they, you know, cycled through all of the other bees. I mean, they only live a month so what is a so a normal reaction when people go in the yard would be they would be just disinterest they wouldn't care about you as long as you're not interrupting the hive exactly but your wife would go out there and they would just get crazy yeah but not with you oh yeah no no this wasn't me this was my friend's wife. Oh, that's right.

I'm sorry. But, yeah. I mean, he's kind of used to it, and she was not. She was out to go swimming or something. So he would go out there, and they would get crazy with him, but he's like, this doesn't bother me. But she was like, fuck this queen. Fuck this hive.

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. And there's certain things. If you're wearing black, they all attack you. Really? Well, they think you're wearing black they all attack you you know almost they think you're a bear you know what yeah uh if you've like just eaten bananas there's some

there's some i don't know a smell or something in it that is similar to their attack pheromone that they set off so there's a few things i've learned over the years don't eat bananas and don't wear black. Exactly. That's all you got to do. But I learned this stuff being in the bee club. You're in a bee club? I was in the bee club. Yeah, in the Bay Area.

Yeah, we'd meet down at the American Legion's hall and have a monthly meeting. Wow. What are those dorks like? People are super into bees. Oh, my God. We would just sit there and kind of laugh about them. But we're sitting there. I mean, we're here to learn some stuff. But there were people up there that, okay, we inseminated the queen with this.

And, you know, they were counting bees. You know, we put little numbers on every bee and we've caught their flight pattern. And how many were reproducing this. And I mean, it's all, you know, it's all like they're, they're, they're doing research on how to make the bee stronger because the bees are, you know, going away. Right. But you know, it's this mite, this little Varroa mite that's killing a lot of them too, along with the pesticides and herbicides. But you know, people that are so into it

and we're just kind of sitting there going, oh, man, what have we gotten ourselves into? But it's kind of, you know, it's funny in a certain way, but I'm glad that it's happening. But, you know, I get, you know, at the end of the season, you've got like 500 pounds of honey. Whoa. And you're handing them out to your friends

and everyone's loving it. 500 pounds of honey and you're handing them out to your friends and everyone's loving it. 500 pounds of honey. That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, we're bottling it up. My kids are filtering it. We're, you know, bottling it up and it's dude, it's just straight from the hive into a bottle.

I mean, after you filtered it and it, it really helps with allergies. It helps with, uh, you with, you know, the whatever, getting the pollens and the nectars from the area. So when you take that in and it helps build your immune system. Yeah, I've heard that. So you've experienced that personally? Absolutely. And I think being stung by bees helps you too.

It helps with something, getting your immune system built up to the... It's supposed to be really good for arthritis. They take people, like literally take bees, people that have serious arthritis in their hands, and they sting their hands with it on purpose. Right. I think there's some people that do it for their lips here in L.A.

Ah! I think you need people that are so deep, deep, deep into the bee world because you're not going to do it and I'm not going to do it, but if someone's just so far gone, they're measuring all their bees and monitoring their flight patterns and checking their DNA. I'm just fascinated that there was a clear differentiation between a normal bee and the way these bees were behaving. You could tell that the queen was kind of a freak.

But I tell you, those freak bees, the Africanized or whatever, now there's a zombie bee, and we can get into that too. But they are aggressive and an aggressive, you know, like any society, they do well. They produce a lot of honey, and they're very, very prolific in what they do you know yeah I've had killer bee honey they make killer be like what sounded on it I don't know even though it's any better if it's killer bee honey is better than regular honey but just pretty dope to have killer bee honey around your house

well yeah you know that and the, what's this stuff called? I mean, there's lots of really cool healing properties in, like, even the kind of glue that they use to plug up holes. And, you know, the royal jelly, which is, you know, comes from their, like, the brain. And that's how they produce a queen. I mean, there's some. That's what royal jelly is? Yeah. Yeah. It's from their brain? It's brain juice produce a queen. I mean, there's some- That's what royal jelly is? Yeah. Yeah.

It's from their brain? It's brain juice, man. Holy shit. How does it come out? Does it come out of a hole somewhere? Or do they have to scoop it out of their fucking heads? I haven't seen it that close, but they inject it into the queen cell or there's a cell that they make when a new queen is being made.

So all the bees that are flying around that you see out here, they're all females. It's all female society. So the drones that are in there, which are the males, they're there just to reproduce, and then they get kicked out in the wintertime. And they die. And they all die. Whoa. Yeah, man.

It's hard out there. It's brutal. Brutal for us men in the bee world. So if they all die, how. Yeah, man. It's hard out there. It's brutal. Brutal for us men in the bee world. So if they all die, how do they continue to reproduce? Well, there's some, I guess, that... Couples stay around? No, the queen makes more. Wow.

So those guys are just dead. The queen makes more, and the new ones take over, the new boys. Yeah, yeah. And they're just doing work. They're just fertilizing. That's what they're doing. They're just there to fuck, and then everybody else is they're just doing work. They're just fertilizing. That's what they're doing. They're just there to fuck, and then everybody else is doing all the real work. You fuck and go die.

Wow. That's what you get to do. What a brutal world. What a fucking crazy world. Yeah. And then the queen goes around the hive and finds the females, other potential queens, and stabs them while they're in the hive. Pretty much.

Yeah. Well, they're all females. They're all females except for those drones. And then if they're making, you know, she knows she's going to die or they're kind of pissed off with her, she's not reproducing as much as she should, she will take off with like half the hive. And that's where you see a swarm.

So she'll go and form a new hive, and then these ones have a little queen cell that they've laid eggs and start to make a new queen. So that's how they reproduce. And if there's three or four queen cells in there, the first queen that's born, she comes out, and she kills all the other queens so she can rule. Game of Thrones type shit.

That's fascinating. You're going to get bees, I can tell. Right now, I'm looking in my head. I'm just looking at websites in my head. I'm trying to find out where to get the bees. Yeah, that sounds like an amazing way to get honey. I mean, it just sounds like a really cool thing to do, too. It tastes so good.

And we have a place in Hawaii, so we've got Hawaiian flavored, Hawaiian flavored. Well, there's stuff, you know, that they, they get the nectar and pollen from over there. And, you know, Hawaii is nonstop, you know, so you're getting honey year round. What island? Maui. Oh man, I love Maui. That's a beautiful spot. So when you're, how do you know that a bee is Africanized? Because that was the big thing that everybody was worried about. You remember it was like the early 90s. Everybody was like, they found an African killer bee in New Mexico or something.

It was like, it's coming up. It's going to swarm. They're going to take over the country inside of a few years. Right. There was a big hysteria about that, right? Yeah. And there are states where there are more prevalent than others, and they're just more aggressive.

They're more aggressive, and they're very protective. So you'll get stung if you're messing with them. So that's all it is. I think so. But there was a big concern that they were going to take over and that it was going to be that these bees were just going to come here and outbreed the regular bees. And you're laughing. It's possible.

Oh, yeah, for sure. There's some great movies about that, too. The killer bees. But there's no way to tell by looking at them. I don't know. I don't think so. I'm somewhat into it, but I haven't investigated that part yet. I haven't investigated that part yet.

So these bees that came over from the perhaps Africanized bees that when they killed the queen and then introduced those bees to the rest of the bees, did everybody chill out? Yeah. So it's just that one crazy bitch. Well, yeah. She's laying the eggs. She's passing on the whatever, DNA. passing on the whatever, DNA. But those, the forager bees, the ones that you see out and about, they only live a month.

So they will die out. And how long does she live? She could live between one to five years. Oh, wow. Mm-hmm. What a bizarre culture. Strange society. It's really, really cool. What a bizarre culture.

Strange society. It's really, really cool. And without them, I mean, there's lots of, you know, orange, almonds, all kinds of stuff, especially here in California, you know, in the center of California, all that farming. If there's no bees, there's no fruit. Yeah, what a bizarre sort of symbiotic relationship that we have with one weird insect. Pollination. I mean, you would have thought that that would have been taken care of some other way. Right.

And it wouldn't be that a bee has to do it. Well, there are others that do it. What other animals do it? Butterflies. Really? I'll tell you, not just honeybees, but there's probably over 3,000 different kinds of bees. but there's probably over 3,000 different kinds of bees. They don't have a hive society like the honeybees do,

but all these other bees are like loners. They live in the ground or something, and they just get enough pollen for themselves. So they're kind of lone wolves out there, but the honeybees are the ones that have more of a society i raise chickens and um this the chicken thing with us happened we just got a couple chickens and next thing you know we got this giant fucking chicken house with 23 chickens and they're running around my yard is that the same way with you just kind of like slowly step into this then get deeper and deeper yeah i mean just like getting your

first tattoos like yeah wow that's cool i want more right and uh yeah you just start to appreciate it i think when i come off tour it's like my head is just like ricocheting around in there i i go and i'll sit and watch the bees just watch them go in and out in and out there's like this freaking landing strip that they come in and they look so busy it relaxes me you know it's like wow okay i'm not that busy just cool chill yeah just chill no is there a way do you have like a glass wall in any way where you can see into the hive you ever seen those hives where they make them do you have it like that we can look in there yeah i've got one of the hive? You ever seen those hives where they make them? Do you have it like that where you can look in there? Yeah, I've got one of the, yeah, well, that's like a display one where you bring into schools

and stuff and you can see. I don't have one of those, but I got a couple different kinds of hives and it's fun to see. Sometimes you have the frames that are already kind of pre-built and then they just deposit their stuff in it or you watch them grow their own comb from nothing and it's pretty amazing yeah how do you get them to stay there though like how does it work like i see those boxes and i know that bees do have hives in those boxes but how does it initially start well it's the queen wherever the queen is that's where they go so she decides to be in that so how do you get her to stay in that box?

You have a place for her to lay eggs. I mean, that's pretty much it. Yeah. And she will stay. And if she's there, you know, when they go off to, they swarm to go find a new hive, if you've ever seen a swarm up in a tree, just like a giant, like football size or even bigger, a shape of just bees, that queen is right in the middle and they're all just around her and then they send off the the scouts to find a new spot they come back say hey it's over here they do their little wiggle dance and that shows them how to get there

and they all go there we had an incident once on fear factor where we covered these people with bees there was like a beekeeper there and he had his hive. And a local hive came over and a group of bees came over and met with these bees. And we had to clear the area out. And they had to have a conversation. It's literally what happened. They were in the air just floating around. And then they worked it out.

And then our bees came back and they went back to the hive. And their bees went about their business. They were just like, what the fuck's going on? You guys moving in here? Like, what are you doing? Territorial. Somehow or another, they worked it out, though. There was no bee death.

There was no bee fucking Braveheart war. It's just they figured it out. They had a good negotiator. I wonder what, do they communicate with any, I mean, are they using pheromones? Like, how are they expressing? Yeah, smells and dances is how they using pheromones? Like how are they? Yeah. Smells, smells and dances.

That's how they do it. Yeah. Yeah. Some bee will find it like a good, Hey man, I found like a garden somewhere and they'll come back and they'll see him do the little wiggle thing. It's like how many wiggles this way? And then they turn left and then turn that way. That's,

that's like a half a mile this way. And then that way. And then they all learn it and then they go or, Hey found some water here's a place to go so they literally can tell them where something is by their movements yeah holy shit that's crazy so it's almost like a like a body language pretty much yep and they all know it somehow yeah instinctively yep wow yeah it's pretty bizarre there's a lot a lot. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty bizarre. There's a lot to learn about those things. That's really bizarre.

Yeah. I didn't know that. They could tell each other where something is just by wiggling. Like they have like, this means a mile. That means go left. Wow. Man, I'm going to get deep in bees, man. What the fuck have you done?

All right. Yeah. And I'm sure there's probably a feel of like wow i'm i'm there's a whole society right here in my yard and i'm i'm overseeing it you know there's probably a sense of importance uh but you know i i lay off them i mean there are people that are you know checking them all the time and this and that. And, oh, you got to put the certain pads in there to kill the mites. And you got to do this and that. It's like, ah, they're natural, man. They've been around longer than we have.

So just let them go. They know what they're doing. Who's to say I know what I'm doing with them? Do they need specific types of plants around them in order to survive? Yeah. Well, something that they can pollinate and, you know, it's from, uh, it's good to plant, you know, what I've planted, I've planted stuff that, you know, okay. It blooms in the spring and then there's other stuff that blooms in the summer. And then there's other stuff that blooms, you know, like in the late summer. So they've always got something going on,

but they hibernate, they hibernate in the winter. No kidding. It's like bears. Yep. So when you're in Vail and you, uh, you have obviously really cold weather in the winter, what do they do? They just shut down and stay in the hive and don't move? Well, uh, I don't have bees in Vail yet, and I'm going to try and figure out how to do that. But they, I mean, just like cattle, you know, you winter them down in the lowlands. So I haven't found a place to have bees go where there's less snow. But I'll figure something out because it's something I love doing. That sounds amazing. So in California, you have a whole ranch?

Like you have like, you're totally like a prepper almost. You're sustainable. Are you sustainable out there? Well water the whole deal you bet yeah that's a dream of mine it is awesome i'll tell you and that's a place i could just go up and disappear i love it man and just get lost just get lost in the anything get lost in detail i got lots of fun stuff up there, you know, quads and I've got my welder and whatever. I just get lost in things and I love it.

You know, hunting deer, turkey, stuff that we eat. You hunt it all up in the ranch. That's such a beautiful thing, man. I remember hearing about Neil Young's place. He's got some giant ranch up there and Neil Young just goes and chills out. And apparently he has speakers set up around a lake where he can be on a boat and push the boat out into the middle of the lake, and the speakers will broadcast.

It's perfectly set up because, you know, he's a serious audiophile. Absolutely. Did you ever see his MP3 thing that he created? Mm-hmm. It didn't really catch on. Yeah. It didn't really catch on for some reason because people are just so attached to listen to music on their phones now but it's an amazing little device and it just to to really put that much effort and intention into

something that's you know not really necessary in the modern world just shows you what a serious audiophile that guy is yeah he loves it he it. He loves music. He loves nature as well. And I've been up to his ranch. It's really cool. We played the Neil Young Bridge School Benefit like three times. And he invites people out there to the ranch. It's beautiful. He has buffalo out there.

Wow. How many acres does he have out there? A lot. A lot. It's like 10,000 or something, I remember. Something like that, yeah. Wow. But yeah, beautiful, you know?

Yeah, I mean, for a guy like you that is, I mean, I think you've found like this really amazing and enviable balance between the arena shows and all the fucking craziness of rock and then chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp. You know, like you've kind of like ouch ouch fucker slap i mean it's it's really kind of cool man like you've i mean and also like being sober like you've kind of like found this interesting piece yeah yeah slowly i'm not there yet but you know it but more will be revealed. It's a journey.

And once I realize that it's just a journey, I'm okay with it. Someone on another interview was just asking me, hey, back in the early days, you guys released an album almost every year. You've got five albums in six years or something. And what happened? It was eight years since the last one it's like dude there's a lot more life to do you know there's a lot you know vacations with families watching my kids grow up um uh you know touring a lot longer than it used to be you know back in those days we had this many songs and this is how many gigs we can do. And then we're back in the studio. So a lot is happening in life. And

everyone in the band is on the same page, which is really a great thing. We've all got kids and we've all got other lives, but we can't live without Metallica, man. It's just something that joins us. You know, we're these frigging four married guys that know more about each other than anyone knows about us. Maybe our wives. But, you know, the fact, you know, Lars and I have known each other for 35 years. Wow. Even maybe 36.

But I tell you, there's nobody else I've known longer except for maybe family and Lars. So it's a brother. He's a brother. I hate him. I love him. I want to kill him. I want to hug him. All that stuff, man.

Well, it's also you. I mean, I got to imagine that you you guys have to realize what an unbelievably fortunate and amazing experience you guys are on. I mean, how many people have a dream when they're kids of being a fucking rock star? How many people get to be in Metallica? It's crazy, dude. I wake up every day and think, I'm freaking blessed. I mean, this is unbelievable. If I complain once today, punch me in the face, you know? Because it's stupid, you know? Exactly. This is stupid that I would complain about something.

But I tell you, it is hard at times, being on the road, doing stuff. And when you don't want to do stuff, you do it. But then you find something, you find someone, you find a thing. And it's usually someone in the crowd that's just, you know, I see myself right there. It's like, I'm that kid right there at the Motorhead concert looking up at Lemmy going, this is fucking awesome. Motorhead concert, looking up at Lemmy going, this is fucking awesome. And so I just sucked that energy and go, all right, this is all I need. This is all I need right now.

That's beautiful. That was a hard one, right, when Lemmy died? Yeah. Lemmy went hard to the end. No doubt. He really did. He fucking wore the brakes out, wore the tires out, fucking screeched right into the rocks. Boom!

Oh, my God. Yeah. And he didn't want anyone to know that he was really that sick. And he just kept going. And, God, that's what he knew, and it's what he loved, and it's what he was. And, you know, for me, I thought the man was immortal, you know? You know, for me, I thought the man was immortal. You know, he was just this icon of a figure. You know, he was the godfather of heavy music for us.

Without him, there certainly wouldn't be a Metallica. Certainly wouldn't. He was the catalyst for Lars and I, you know, getting together. You know, that ad in the paper, you know, we like bands like Motorhead. It's like, Hey, somebody else likes Motorhead. All right. Ads in the paper. Isn't that crazy? When you stop and think about that, that's how you got back. That's how you guys got together back then. That's how you found band members ads in the paper, looking for a drummer. Yeah. Do motorhead straight to the h section you know all the the you know the the uh uh the the classifieds you know pass up all the stuff just get right to

h where it said heavy metal like well there's my ad and there's his we should meet there's only two of us well you guys have been through such a fascinating change in music, too, because, I mean, obviously Lars was a huge figure in the controversy surrounding MP3s. Yeah. And that was like during the Napster days. That was the time where everybody realized, like, holy shit, something just happened. You know, and I don't think we realized it back then. like holy shit something just happened you know and I don't think we realized it back then I think Lars in a lot of ways was one of the first people sounding the horn he was one of the first people going hey all this selling

record shit is gonna go away like do you understand what's going on here people are just taking things and putting them online and this was a totally new thing absolutely and that poor guy still you you know, he's taking bullets. He's taking hits for it still. Still? Really? Where? Oh, everyone who's got a beef with any other thing than, you know, Napster. It just gravitates towards that all the time. That poor guy, yeah, he got beat up by that.

And we all stood behind him, obviously obviously he was the spokesman for it he he chose he chose to do that management said hey this is coming this is coming let's be the ones that stand up for artists and he took that he grabbed the flag and said, I'm going. And there were lots of other musicians and people that were on board as well, but they weren't as vocal or taking the hits like he did. There was something about even like a Dr. Dre. He was on board with it. But for some reason in the rap world, it's like, well, it's all about money anyway. So, so what, you know, for heavy metal, there was some kind of stigma around, you know, you're,

you're an asshole if you're rich or if you've been successful or something, it's like, we got to pull you down into hell with us. You know, don't, don't be getting good now, you know? Yeah. So there was that stigma, but there were other artists that would show up at shows saying, hey, man, I'm really glad you're doing what you're doing. It's like, come on, you know, join us. Oh, no, I can't. Oh, no, my career would be over. It's like, you fuck, you know?

It's so frustrating. It's like, dude, do you believe in it? Yeah. Then stand up. It's like, yeah, but no, it's so frustrating. It's like, dude, do you believe in it? Yeah. Then stand up. It's like, yeah, but no, it will fall apart. Something will happen. My fans, blah, blah, blah. So they were concerned about their own careers and not the big picture of artists.

And obviously these days you can see there's no copyright laws. There's no nothing, man. You can rip this and that and whatever and do whatever you want with it. There's a beauty to that and a lot of creativity comes out of it, but it gets watered down. It gets, you know, I don't know. We, we acknowledge that. Yeah, there's an inspiration somewhere for everything, but blatantly taking that and using it is, wear for everything but blatantly taking that and using it is it's pretty frustrating to me um and we're we're we were at that point where we were we had uh such a following we had such a strength in metallica that we survived all of that stuff um but there was a lot of bands that didn't

you know uh they couldn't sustain themselves couldn't feed their families because of what happened and i think the frustrating part was no one really understood that music is our life you know if you take that if you take our like the way we want to present our music is part of the art. Like in an album, meaning like one song leads to the next song. Well, like releasing an album. Here's how we'd like to release it. We don't want it leaked over here.

We don't want this happening. We don't, you know, a presentation is part of the art. Like when you walk into an art studio, the artist has been in there putting it together. Like, okay, I want you to see this first and then that. And then you go here and you get bam, you know. There's a passion behind that. And when someone just throws it out there, it kind of loses an impact. So, if I'm complaining, punch me in the face.

But we have survived and we feel good about it and we've adapted. But the record companies certainly did not. No, they took a hard hit. But also, you know, when you look at the record deals, the deals that record companies make with artists, and you see, like, what are record companies selling? Well, they're only selling your work. Without your work, without your creativity, without your creations, there's nothing to sell. That's all they sell. But then you look at these insanely one-sided deals that they cut with artists, especially emerging artists. They might

be a little bit more desperate, don't realize the potential, especially the potential for income that they might have in the future. I mean, I've seen some of those. I don't know. There was that one that somebody said that Courtney Love didn't really write it, that it was ghostwritten. I don't know who the fuck wrote it, but Courtney Love put it out saying that she wrote it. But it was a breakdown of how artists make money from the creation of an album to having it sold in record stores to where the money gets extracted and how much is left for the actual artist. It's pretty fucking disturbing. Yeah. Even a couple of years ago, we got the rights to our catalog, our music from Kill Em All up till now.

We own it finally finally which is weird i tell my kids hey you know let's go celebrate we've got we got the master recordings we own it finally and they were just looking at me like what the hell are you talking about you wrote it why isn't it yours right okay well i had a little talk about how it was back then. You know, you would somewhat sell a little bit of your soul to get a bigger something. You know, it was basically the record company was a bank and a marketing tool to get you where you wanted to be. So, you know, it was a necessary thing at that time. But it's great to have our stuff back and be able to you know we own our own record press how cool is that whoa in germany uh one of our management people found uh a place that had some machines that were for sale and we we bought one and so we press our own vinyl man wow and we could kind of do whatever we want what color vinyl today today, you know, or what crazy things you can do, you know. You guys can kind of do whatever the fuck you want now, right?

Pretty much. You don't need a record company. You can do anything. Well, it depends. We have a record company. We own our own in America or North America. The rest of the world's a little tougher. You know, there's a lot of countries out there, especially in Europe,

and there's no way we can deal with the distribution in each different country. So we've cut really good deals with other record companies that have a vision and have a love for Metallica and understand that this is powerful stuff and people love it and we want to be part of the family. But having your own record press is a pretty darn cool thing. It was really inspired by Jack White, who, you know, White Stripes fame, you know, Reconteers. He's done a lot of stuff, but he loves that stuff. He's pressing his own stuff he's coming

up with different ways of doing vinyls and colors and hidden tracks and cool stuff like that and it's it's just another way to get creative in in your career is vinyl what's selling more than anything now when it comes to actual physical hard copies of things? I don't know the numbers and they probably vary all over the place, but vinyl has never gone away. And it's, it's, I don't know if it's coming back, but it's more popular than it was. I think there's just something tactile about it. There's something great that people are finally understanding that you can look at artwork, you can feel it. And then the, the, the ritualization of opening up the player, taking it out and blowing on it, cleaning it, putting it down, setting the needle down. And it's, that's something really cool. I just, I came down to LA a few

months ago and hung out with some high school buddies. It's like, Hey, what do you want to do? I was listening to some songs and he takes out the Kansas, you know, album,

puts it on and carry on. Exactly. I was like, dude, this sounds so great. Wow. Yeah. And we were actually listening to music, dude, this sounds so great. Wow. Yeah. And we were actually listening to music, sitting down, listening to it.

My kids got into vinyl. They got a, you know, like an Urban Outfitter. You buy the little, the setup now. And that's where you can get vinyl. There are some record stores out there, but that's where they gravitate towards. Got them this little player. And they just picked out some album covers. They didn't even know who they were. record stores out there but that's where they gravitate towards got him this little player and uh they just picked out some album covers they didn't even know who they were it's like this this cover looks cool this speaks to me i'm buying this i remember doing that kind of thing

cool cover yep that's how i discovered tons of bands so they go into the room and you know i leave them alone for a while and they come back they They haven't come out. It's like, what's going on? I look in there. They're, you know, the record players on the floor, covers and stuff strewn out all over the place. And they're laying on the floor listening to it. It's like, that is what, that was me, you know? And my daughter comes out. She said, Dad, you'll never guess what?

Like, what? There's songs on the other side. Like, oh my God. Yeah, it's not a CD, you'll never guess what. Like, what? There's songs on the other side. Like, oh, my God. Yeah, it's not a CD, you know? She was like, she discovered some huge thing, you know? Wow. Well, that was one of the things that was not, what is this? Vinyl sales outperformed digital downloads for the first time.

Nice. Wow. Wow. Shows a significant shift in how people are consuming music. That's really interesting, man. I tell you, that's just cool. Uh, uh, in general, uh, the more ways you can get music to people, uh, the better. Well, I think the other thing that you were saying, it's, it's like, it's a whole presentation, the album cover, you open it up, the inside, the artwork, all that represents your vision of what you guys are trying to

put out. And that was one of the things that kind of went away with digital. Like all of a sudden, there were no album covers, so the CD was that big. So you couldn't really, there wasn't, you know, it's like a tiny little piece of art. And if you're downloading it, you're not even getting that. You're just getting the music itself. That's it. Well, you would get, you know, downloadable artwork, but you're not really looking at the artwork while you're listening to it on your mobile device.

So the event of sitting down and disappearing into the music, being a real music listener. I mean, while you're driving, I get it. It's keeping you from killing people on the road. But when you go home and you sit and you just get lost in stuff, even, um, like those, the cheap frigging headphones, man, the little earbuds, my kids were listening to stuff on that. It's like, you guys haven't experienced music, like good sound here. Try these headphones on. They're like, Whoa, I hear stuff I didn't hear before. And, uh, but just seeing my kids get excited about going to a live concert, you know, they go there and they absorb it in like every sense. You're not just having your ears hear

something. And that will never be, I don't know know maybe the friggin goggles or some kind of uh audio visual stuff will reproduce live shows but there's something about being next to a sweaty fucker at a gig and you know them pushing you or uh you, seeing someone headbang wildly or getting thrown over the top of you. And there's just so much smells, things like that, that just can't be recreated. So live music, my daughter just like, I can't believe that guy just pressed a button on his computer and he's singing over his own music. That's not performing. You know, she discovered that on her own. That's not performing, you know. She discovered that on her own. Hey, these guys are actually playing their instruments.

And they fucked up. They fucked up a song. It was so cool, you know. I saw something that I wouldn't have, you know. Really cool like that. Yeah, the lip syncing thing, man. When you go to see a concert and you find out that people are lip syncing, that's so disturbing.

It's just, what have you done? What is the point of this? It is disappointing. What is live performance? Live performance is supposed to be you're experiencing this thing actually happening. You're watching this person express themselves. They're not pretending. You're not supposed to be pretending.

Right. Are you pretending you're you? Whoa. You should be able to get your fucking money back because you're not that's not that's not that's pretending that's not singing i've gone to see plenty of shows with my kids and you can tell it's like all right it the mic's way over here and they're still singing and it's like well they have to have the backing tracks got their there's they're dancing and they're out of breath like we'll fucking stop dancing and do the song i mean are you a dancer or are you a musician or singer whatever your fucking cardio you know start running hills it can be done there you go come to veil and run up the 14er exactly it can be done but i've seen shows where

there's that going on and and then they'll get real. You know, like sit down on a couch, plug in an acoustic, and sing out a key, and really try and struggle with the song, or sing it, you know. It's like that's natural. That feels good. Who would not gravitate towards that than listening to the album? I can listen to the album at home. Yeah. That's why it's cool to just see an acoustic set sometimes from people.

You know, just like it's as minimal as possible. You're breaking it down to the bare bones, just a guitar and two people singing or something, you know? Yeah, that is pretty intimidating. I tell you, when we do like that Neil Young benefit where it's, you know, acoustic only, and you're frigging naked up there, dude. Every note is like,

you know, and every fuck up on the vocal. It's, it's great. I mean, it's like when, uh, you know, you go or you're going to be on a TV thing and they put makeup on you.

It's like, why are you doing that? Right. Exactly. Uh, so when people see me in person, they think, damn, you're one ugly fucker man it's like no i want to be as ugly as possible to everyone so when they see me they go hey it's you

you know exactly exactly right yeah you're not airbrushed yeah you see a photoshop yourself and it's like you know they smoothed out all your lines and you're like what the fuck are you doing sometimes sometimes you gotta do it or like you know if you're in a band like i am and the three guys get the stuff put on and then i show up dude oh my god i you're shiny exactly it's like people are gonna go but fuck this band that dude's sweating yeah right right when it comes to the Napster thing and what would happen with Lars I feel like there's two different things there's something there's what's really happening and this is how people look at it and what's really happening was like all of a sudden this door got opened up or this Pandora's box got open right and you guys were

looking at it going well this is uh we're gonna lose our record sales like you understand that like people have been consuming Music in a certain way you've been paying for music and that paying for music is supported all these people that are a part of this Industry that makes albums. There's this gigantic thing behind it This is all gonna go away because you just put a hole in the bottom of it and all the money's gonna get dropped out But then the way it looks is look at this rich motherfucker you know he doesn't he doesn't appreciate his fans hey man i can't afford your album right now is it okay if i just download it for free and a lot of people thought well hey people who can afford it will still be downloading it and then they'll buy it when they can but that wasn't

really the case was it no i don't know i you know i'm all for convenience in the technology moving forward getting music out to people is the important part but just make sure the artist gets what they deserve from it because without, it's going to become a hobby. No one wants, you know, I don't want to see the paramedic show up at my house and it's like a hobby for him. Hey, you know, I'm not really getting paid for what I think I should get paid for, my creation, but I guess I'll save your life, you know, maybe. but I guess I'll save your life, you know, maybe.

People didn't relate that to their career or something equivalent. Well, I think because the money wasn't equivalent. They looked at you guys like, you guys are already so rich, what do you give a shit? There's no way you're going to be broke. You guys made millions and millions and millions of dollars. You tour all over the world. And it became the touring thing was the way artists made money then, right? Touring and merchandise.

And that's now how record companies are structuring their deals. You know, hey, we get a piece of your merch and touring. See, that's bizarre, though. The record company is getting a piece of your touring, to me, is very strange. And I've seen not just a piece, but an exorbitant amount. And that disturbs me

Well, it's the only way they can survive now They shouldn't be around then well because then you become a parasite because you don't deserve it I mean, especially now where bands can literally become gigantic because of YouTube I mean didn't Justin Bieber become huge just entirely because of YouTube Jamie knows look at him. It's a fucking Justin Bieber fan. He hides it Hey me too First I heard him sing I thought it was a girl. I didn't He hides it. Hey, me too. First I heard him sing, I thought it was a girl. I didn't even know it was a, I didn't know. Well, I tell you the whole, you know, would you go up to the artist and take that out of his pocket?

Would you go into a record store and just lift that, steal it, run out the door with it. You know, would you do that with, you know, okay, there's, you know, there's, there's big corporations that are rich and would you go walk in and just steal their stuff? I mean, there's software companies that are massive. Would you go in there and just rip their stuff? I don't get that mentality. I don't, call me old school, but you need to earn what you get. And if it gets stolen from you, it doesn't make any sense. It's hard to fathom. And what it seems like to me, and I could be talking out my ass,

but the record companies dropped the ball and the new record companies became iTunes. They control it all. here's how much we're charging for your music and here's how much you're gonna get everyone's even it's like some communist approach you know and i i don't understand i don't understand that if we're an artist and we make a lot of money that's up to us if we give all our money away to charity or we throw it back into a movie that bombs which happened um that's our choice we're the fucking artist we get to do what we want it's our party you're invited and we can destroy this thing if we want i don't want you to destroy it yeah the

itunes distribution model is a very bizarre one it's very strange how they've they don't know what they're doing no one knows what they're doing and you know there was a system that worked and i'm up for bucking the system and making it better but it didn't it didn't get better it's like the like you said the cat got out of the bag and you can't put it back in man you just can't um so what do you do oh you got spotify or you got something else where streaming is going to help get the artists their money. And it's, it's, um, you know, companies like that are losing money a lot. Spotify. I don't, I don't, I don't know the exact workings and I'm not going to speak for them at all, but it's hasn't been figured out yet is what I'm saying. It hasn't been figured out how to make a music model work.

And there's no one way. Maybe there will never be one way again. And that's fine. But it's still unbalanced. Well, this technology continues to evolve and change. It's sort of in a lot of ways like Twitter. Like how many millions and hundreds of millions of people use Twitter, but they can't figure out a way to make money with it. It's a very strange thing where people just want to use stuff.

They don't want to give you any money. So you have to figure out some way to extract money from all these people using stuff. And if you have a streaming service, you know, and it's free, it's a free streaming service. And I see some of the fees that they pay artists for music that's been played millions of times. Like, what was that one song? I forget who it was. The most played song on Spotify, and then they have the numbers that the guy got for that actual song.

And you're like, well, where the fuck is the money going then? Right. Well, we're talking a lot about money here. There it is. Pharrell made right to oh these fucking ads this is what's wrong with America looks like you're using an ad blocker yeah I'm using an ad blocker to stop this you fuck Jesus Christ how to display here goes Pharrell made only two million seven hundred thousand dollars

in songwriting royalties from 43 million plays of his song that I can't look at the ad because it's a fucking ad block. Is that Business Insider? Yeah. Hey, fuck you, Business Insider. God damn it. You can't have ads just pop up, you cunt. Those are gross. It's frustrating.

That's another thing, but that's another thing. But that's how they're making money. They're trying to figure out a way, because nobody wants to buy magazines anymore. Right, well, that's how they're making money, not Pharrell. 43 million plays of Happy. 2,000 bucks. Yikes. That's fucking crazy. That's a plane ticket.

For 43 million, I mean, it's nuts. We talk a lot about money, but it's not, I mean, it's not about the money, and it doesn't, it shouldn't be anybody's freaking business how much you money, but it's not, I mean, it's not about the money and it doesn't, it shouldn't be anybody's frigging business. How much you make, how much he makes. I mean, if you want to reveal it fine, but why is there such a stigma around being successful? I don't understand that people will just want to rip you, rip you for it. Well, there's a disingenuous idea that or the disingenuous

Approach to art if you're just doing art to make money And that's what people hate people like one of the things that I loved about your new album is it's totally clear 100% that this is a real metallic album. This isn't just some man. We need to make some money Let's slap together some shitty ideas and make a Metallica album out of it, and we know how to do it. No, it's a fucking Metallica album. And that's because you're creating your art. You're not necessarily doing it saying,

hey, if we do this, we should be able to make money. I think when people think that someone's just trying to make money, it drives them crazy. Because people know in their head that that's not how great art is created. That the money might be a consequence of great art, but you don't say, let's make a movie that makes $100 million. This is going to be awesome. No, the fuck it's not. That's going to be a bunch of shitty CGI and explosions and a hot girl and the guy and the girl kiss at the end.

And fuck you, I saw it all coming. It's been done before. Yeah. It's been done before. Yeah, it's been done before, because you're just slapping together a formula, and that stuff drives people nuts, when you know that someone is doing something just for money. So whenever money gets discussed, people automatically get that sort of weird distaste,

like, oh, it's money. That fucking money's ruining everything. They're going to be doing ballads on some teenage angst fucking movie next. Right. Right. Well, that's not hardwired. That's for sure. No, no, we're still, we're still, man, we're still searching for it. Still doing it. Still searching for the right, the best, the ultimate riff. Yeah. You're still doing it. That's, that's what's most important. You're still doing it and it can be done. I think when we were kids, there you're still doing it. That's what's most important. You're still doing it, and it can be done.

I think when we were kids, there weren't old rockers. You know? I'm 49. How old are you? 53. When we were kids, who the fuck was an old rocker? You know Jerry Lee Lewis is pretty old. He's still out there doing it. Chuck Berry's still touring. Holy shit, you know?

But now, you got fucking Mick Jagger's going crazy on stage. He's fucking 70. He's still ripped. He just had a kid. now you got fucking Mick Jagger's going crazy on stage. He's fucking 70. He's still ripped. He just had a kid. He had a fucking kid. How is that possible? The last sperm, the fucking last survivor with a one-eyed sperm

with a fucking axe wound across his face, marches through the battlefield and punches through that egg. I made it. Yeah, man. Goddamn pirate cum. I mean, that guy's still out there smashing it right like i've seen him right his fucking concerts are rocking he's got energy not only him but one person we get compared to the stones like how long are you gonna do this is the question right right right i don't know i don't when it's If it's still fun, we're going to do it.

When it's not fun, then we'll let you know. Yeah. But, yeah, Mick Jagger, the Stones, Mick Jagger for sure. He's out there. He's doing his thing. He's all over the place. You know, the Stones, music-wise, and the rest of the band, you know, they're doing what they've always done,

but it's not the physicality like say metallica has so right you know you know uh you know charlie watts is not lars ulrich you know like you know right at some point your body's saying oh boy we can't do this for this long anymore let's take a break uh so keeping yourself healthy and in a physical mental and spiritual sense you got to do all that for sanity's sake and other bands that are out there that are doing it that angus young is probably the guy where i definitely take my hat off for that dude is insane and i don't know He must sweat gallons every show. And he's, you know, he's like the size, you know, he's like a little dude. He is an elf.

And he's out. Where's that water coming from? How can you sweat your body weight, you know? And he's out there headbanging and rocking. I mean, and he's up there in age, too. And he's out there headbanging and rocking. I mean, and he's up there in age two. So that's the person we're kind of, I guess, seeing how long can this guy go?

He's the canary in the coal mine. He is, man. Yeah, but also, how does he not have fucking brain damage from all that headbanging? Like, soccer players are getting brain damage. He might, but he might not give a fuck. Like, that's the price you pay. Take some vitamins. Get back out there, bitch. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you, out of the big four, if you know the big four, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax, these four bands that are still going, and unbelievably, after 35 years, myself, Dave Mustaine, and Tom Araya have all had neck surgery from all of this headbanging. You had neck surgery? Yeah. What kind of neck surgery? It was a partial discectomy in, like, C6. Okay, so you had a bulging disc.

It was a depression on your nerve? Pressed on my nerve going down my arm. I couldn't pick my arm up. The ulnar nerve, so it was, like, making your hands numb? Yeah. Well, I couldn't pick my arm up. Did you ever do decompression? Spinal decompression? a spinal decompression compression chamber no spinal decompression like you they put a harness on

your neck and they stretch your neck out did they do that yeah do you have one of those at home i don't you need to get one of those it's gigantic it's so simple it's just a harness that you put on it straps velcro around it it connects to a door at the top of a. And you just sit down on a chair and it's like you're hanging yourself. You pull it, click, click like this. And it just stretches. It like carries your weight a little bit on your neck. You're still sitting. You could totally, that's it right there.

See it up in that screen. I have one of those in my house. It's fucking invaluable. It's so giant because it's the only way to like legitimately stretch your neck. And a lot of spinal decompression, a lot of bulging discs and the pain and discomfort associated with it. You can mitigate a lot of that with one of those things. It's big.

I don't have to wear that shirt, right? No, you can wear whatever you want. You can go naked. I got another thing I'm going to show you that's called the iron neck that'll strengthen your neck up. We were looking at that. Yeah. I'll show you how to do it.

This guy just brought it in last week. I'm obsessed with it. It's fucking amazing. And it's also good I'll show you how to do it. This guy just brought it in last week. I'm obsessed with it. It's fucking amazing. And it's also good. It's not, like, difficult to do. It's pretty easy to do. But it's also good for not just strengthening your neck, but increasing your range of motion. Hey, great.

But I can imagine that all that fucking... Yeah, after a while, man. Yeah, not just that, but just the posture of your guitar. Right. You're playing really low, and you're down, and you're back. There's posture stuff, but I agree that making it straight, making your back straight is harder now than it was. Leaning against the wall and thinking, wow,

I don't want to be that old dude who's hunched over. The middle of his back is like the hunchback of Notre Dame or something. It creeps in on you. You don't even realize it's happening until it's too late, and then you can't straighten it back up again. Do you exercise? Yeah. What do you do?

I got a physical trainer in Vail. Basically keeping range of motion going, core, lots of hiking, treadmill, stuff like that. Not so much power bulking up or anything, but just trying to stay mobile. I've got, and I'm sure everyone at my age has some of it, it's a spinal stenosis where there's calcium and kind of arthritic buildup around your spinal cord. So keeping that mobile, keeping things moving. I go to a, like, holistic healer, too, who's breaking up calcium on fingers and toes and stuff. And I'm doing all I can, doing all I can to get up there and be Angus Young still.

Yeah, well, if you're experiencing issues with stenosis too, that machine can help that a lot, strengthen your whole spinal cord. And I got another thing in the back I want to show you. It's called the Reverse Hyper. It actually, this is it right here, it actually helps decompress your body. It decompresses your spinal column and strengthens it at the same time. It's created by that, see that guy with the black shirt? That guy's a fucking psychopath. His name's

Louie Simmons. Great guy. We interviewed him for the podcast. He's completely out of his fucking mind. He's been on steroids straight since 1976. He's never gone off of them. Well, he's pointing at that lady like something's happening. He's just explaining what it does to your back.

But that machine, man, anybody with back issues, any back issue at all, because what that machine does is it allows your back to actively decompress from the lower back all the way up to your neck area. And it strengthens everything and decompresses it. So it lengthens your spine. It strengthens everything and decompresses it. So it lengthens your spine. It stretches all that tissue out and pulls all the fascia and all that stuff out.

You can see him demonstrating it here. When this woman gets up there, see, as it goes down, it's actually pulling your back. And that's like the only exercise that I've ever seen that decompresses and then on the lift up strengthens all those muscles. And then on the way down, it pulls pulls them down i have a bunch of different things in the back because i've had some disc issues myself but i took care of all of them without surgery right on but it wasn't the doctors are trying to cut me like that's their immediate thing like up you're gonna need surgery get in there we'll probably eventually gonna have to have your discs uh fused i was like what like wait a minute i'm moving around fine. Like, how come you guarantee that it's going to get worse?

Like, why is it that when you're at one state, they never think, well, you can improve this with physical therapy and it can get better? Their immediate reaction is it's going to get worse, so count on getting surgery. Oh, that's what they know. And that's what they're schooled on. And I love the fact that you're giving them the finger and say, hey, no, I don't have to go down that path. I'm going to try it this way. And there are lots of different ways to do that. And unfortunately, mine was it was touching the nerve and I couldn't lift my arm and there was atrophy happening. And so something had to happen. But my back, yeah, I've gone on tour. I've had ruptured discs, broken ribs, gone on tour.

Singing with two broken ribs, not fun. But yeah, the back, man, when it hurts, you turn into a fucking baby, man. I just like... I know, right? You can have a torn calf calf muscle you limp around but you seem to be okay but your back you're like i can't do anything my life's over yeah uh but all right we'll go see your your torture chamber or your your racks do you do yoga at all no no that's you gotta do you gotta get involved yeah it involved. Yeah. It seems like everything wrong, like housewife bullshit, maybe gay. Dude, I don't care about any of that crap.

If it's going to help me, I'm into it. I think anybody over 40 in particular, yoga is gigantic, especially. Yeah, cool. Well, I mean, I've done things where, you know, okay, we're going to ask your body some questions. And here, put this statement against your chest. Or here, wear these colored glasses. And, you know, here's tuning forks on your body. You know, things like that. You know, I'm totally, I'm an explorer.

I'd like to, and if it works, cool. If it doesn't work, hey, I tried it. What was the question you had to ask your body? You wrote it down on a piece of paper and put it to your chest? Yeah, what was the question? Am I retarded? Never go full retard. Look at Sean Penn, full retard.

No, didn't work. Right, I don't know what the question was. Like, why am I doing this? Yeah, why am I writing a piece of paper and putting it on my chest? Something like, you know, am I willing to get healthy? Something like that. I'd like to be friends with my body instead of abusing it, you know. Stuff like that.

Well, the intensity of your performances. I mean, I just can only imagine the physical strain that it puts on your body. That's why I wanted to ask you about fitness. Like you kind of have to be in shape to do Metallica concerts at 30. Forget about it. 53. Yeah. Well, we have, we have PT on the road, a therapist who will stretch us out, do, you know, we're all different, you know, my back, my neck, Robert's calves, you you know he's this freaking yeah it's like uh it's like uh he's he's freaking tarzan that guy he gets way down you know his surfer calves and finger or his forearms from playing you know with his fingers they cramp up so uh and then

lars's shoulder or this one, you know, high hat. Right. So we've all got our thing, Kirk's wrists, and this guy's out there helping us, and, you know, he'll give us things to try and work on. And, you know, we all have to have our regiments out here. It's like you take a part of home on the road. You know, it's not like I need my hotel room decorated like my house you know bring my bed on tour and all not that but it's

people that can help me out on the road some people do go crazy like that right they do some rock stars yeah i want you to recreate that and i've heard stories and it's kind of funny maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. I don't want to continue a rumor, but just hearing that. Yeah. Some of the guys in the stones will have their decorator come in and, and they've decorated their hotel room,

like their home or something, put their favorite things in there and all that. And then they're there for a night and then they go off to the next place, you know, and the decorator meets them in advance and sets it up at the next spot, too Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess if you're fucking Mick Jagger, whatever do whatever the hell you want You're 90,000 years old. You're still getting chicks pregnant. Hey, what kind of reality is that guy living who might say it's wrong man You know, yeah, you do what you want and and feel good about it when you go to bed and wake up and go, okay, I'm all right.

You know, that's the main thing. You know, if I've gone to bed and say, man, that was stupid. Or actually, yeah, the other day I did something pretty stupid. I got to call this guy and tell him. But we were doing this, what was it, the guy Billy on the Street. You know that? Billy on the Street. What's that?

Billy Eichel, I think his name is. And he just, you know, he's on the street just running up to people. Oh, okay. Like a show? Yeah, like quiz shows. What's the name of Adele's album? No, you suck. And then run off to the next person.

You know, really manic, kind of crazy stuff. We did that in a store with him the other day. We went shopping at a supermarket in a shopping cart. Metallica's pushing his shopping cart around. He's running up to people going, hey, what are you buying today? Oh, you're making a salad?

Hey, do you want to get pumped up while you're shopping? We got Metallica here to pump you up. So we pressed the play button and Sandman's playing and we're like, yeah, come on. At the supermarket. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're filling up their cart with stuff they don't need. Ah, fuck.

And this one guy was at the salad bar, and he looked like he just took a break from work. It was on his lunch break. And I start filling up his salad with peas and all kinds of stuff and we're throwing salad all over the place and uh uh i turned around to grab some more stuff lars had put dressing on a salad i didn't know that so at the end when we took off i just i wanted to just throw it in his face like it was a dry salad and i'm like oh god and the dressing went all over him he's like you fuckers like oops that backfired okay we've gone a little too far you know i'm 18 again in trashing the hotel room okay we're at the supermarket chill out james all right who organized this

fucking thing oh uh it was uh it's just part of our promo tour thing, you know. And we're trying to do funny, cool, different stuff. You know, some of these shows, they get wacky. And I don't know if you saw the Metallica playing with the Roots on Jimmy Fallon playing Sandman on the little. No, I didn't see that. You know, it got little, like, recorders and, you know, little, you know, like, little drum sets. You know, little kids' instruments. That was a lot of fun.

So we're getting to, you know, getting to have some fun and kind of not be too serious about all of this, you know? Well, that's a cool thing to see, someone who's as big as you are in a band that's just a goddamn gigantic monolith epic band. But you guys are silly. You guys are pretty goddamn epic. All right.

You know? I mean, I think you know that. Well, the fact that we can... Here it is. Give me some volume. What's the matter? I'll put it in. Little Juan, don't forget my son.

The Roots are good, man. They are a great band. Jimmy Fallon is such a silly guy, too. Jimmy Fallon is such a silly guy, too. We were having some fun. Definitely having some fun there. Well, that's also a cool thing to see from a fucking hard band, too. I mean, you guys don't necessarily take... I mean, you obviously take yourself seriously. You're obviously serious about what you do, but you don't take yourself too seriously.

We're serious about your art, our art. When we write a song, there's an, it's, we're serious about this, but when we go out, when we play live, I mean, we're, you know, we're not, we're not the best musicians separately, I would say. Um someone might disagree, but when you put us together, something happens, and we create something really cool. There's an energy. And I think back from the very beginning,

like when someone fucked up the song, we just stopped. It's like, oh man, let's try it again. We can do this better. And people said, you're not supposed to do that. it's like oh man let's try it again we can do this better you know and people say what the you're not supposed to do that dude they're not very professional like yeah but that's what happened i mean we're honest we want to do it better and we know we can so we're going to stop it and do it again you know uh or i mean just like the other day i had like this freaking brain

fart on stage where we're up there and they play the one the intro to one which is like this army hit you know all the war going on and then i start this thing and i started the wrong song i started to fade to black instead of a different song i'm standing there going um what, what do I do now? And like this wave of shame comes over you like, you're a bad man, you know? And I'm looking over my roadie and they're going, not that song. And I look at it, it's like, okay, I'll stop it. And then I went to the other song and, and then I'm able later to go up and say, hey, you want to hear Faded Black again?

later to go up and say hey you want to hear faded black again you know you got to joke about it or else you you it's it's like you become it's like you got to expose your vulnerable parts people people make will make fun of that and they'll take advantage of it sometimes but most of the times people will relate to it like ah he, he's human. He fucked up. Okay. You know? So trusting that there's more, there's more lifeguards than sharks out there most of the time. Yeah.

I think also there's a, people differentiate the big difference between a mistake and someone who's careless or doesn't give a fuck. Very true. Very true. And that's just, you guys are obviously very serious about what you do but everybody occasionally has a brain fart there's just no getting around it i've been in the middle of a ufc broadcast and i fucking forget someone's name and i i've called their fights a hundred times and i can't remember why i can't remember the name and then for whatever reason i have to

look down at my notes and there it is and i'm just angry at myself but just sometimes it just doesn't work and there's no rhyme or reason to why your brain doesn't work right sometimes. So you're tough on yourself? Oh yeah. I'm horrible at myself. You say things to yourself that you wouldn't even say to your worst enemy. Yeah I don't

there's no words. I don't just feelings. Just ugh. You asshole. You suck. I can have a show where I'll kill but i fuck up one word and one joke and that's all i can think of that's just no way if you care about what you do that's just part of the program absolutely and that's a there's a healthy part to that and then like moving on from it is it's easier now than it used to be it would just like it would live in me for a while like oh dude you forgot the words to that song and then it becomes a mental block yeah you get up there and you go oh shit like a you know like a kicker or something you know a guy going to kick

a field goal it's like oh i missed that one i can't believe i did then the next one oh my god now it's a thing you know oh so getting. Oh. So getting over those mental blocks. When fighters lose a fight and then they come back, and then you can see the discomfort. You can see the confusion and the fear. That's one of the hard, I think psychological issues are some of the hardest issues that people ever overcome. And it's just literally like a pattern of thought in your mind. Right.

But if you just decide that you're not as good as you used to be, you can manifest that. Even though physically you can do all the same things. That is so crazy. The power of thought, the power of my mind, it's pretty dangerous at times. And being creative, I make up all kinds of crap. Like, Lars is doing that just to fuck with me i know it

and then you talk with him later it's like what are you talking about he has no idea what yeah that's that's pretty that's it's it's a curse and a gift that creativity you know how hard was it for you to get sober uh fear was a big motivator in that for me, you know, losing my family was, that was, that was the thing that scared me so much. That was the bottom I hit that my family's going to go away because of my behaviors that I brought home from the road. I got kicked out of the house by my wife. I was living on my own somewhere. And I, you know, I did not want that. And maybe as part of my upbringing, you know, my family kind of disintegrated when I was a kid. You know, father left, mother passed away.

I lived with my brother. And then kind of just all like the family, you know, where'd my stuff go? Where, where, it just kind of floated away. And I do not want that happening. You know, no matter what's going on, we're going to talk this stuff out and make it work. You know, and my wife's of the same, uh, same idea, same thought that, you know, her, her family, she was the invisible kid too, you know, so we relate a lot. So there's no way we're going to let, you know, any argument get in the way or just,

you know, we're survivors, we're survivors and we're gonna, we're gonna talk through it no matter how much. And, you know, she, she did the right thing. She kicked my ass right the hell out of the house, you know, and, um, that scared the shit out of me. So, and she said, Hey, you're not just going to the therapist now, you're not just going to the therapist now. You're not just talking about this. You got to go somewhere and sort this shit out. So that's what I did. So rehab did, rehab really worked for me.

How long did you have to go for? Well, what worked for me was seven weeks someplace. seven weeks someplace, like basically tearing you down to bones, ripping your life apart. Anything you thought about yourself or what it was, anything you thought you had, your family, your career, your anything, gone. Strip you down to just, okay, you're born. Here's how you were when you were born. You were okay. You're a good, good person. Let's get back to that again. And then they slowly rebuild you. And then I went to, uh, uh, another, they call them aftercare places. I went there, uh, to a couple of different ones and they fine tune stuff and get you integrated back into life. Cause when you're in this cocoon and you're frigging raw.

I mean, I was raw meat when I came out. And you can see it in that Some Kind of Monster movie. I was pretty raw still. I didn't know what I could or what I should or shouldn't do, you know. So the last place we went to was a place that helps relationships. So they got me and my wife together, and we'd see people separately and then come together and talk about what we did. And communication frigging saved my life, saved our family,

and working through that stuff. So very grateful for my wife. She's the one that didn't ask for this shit. She walked through fire with me and we walked out together stronger, way stronger than we ever would have been before. And, you know, my kids know my story. My kids know my struggles and they respect that. They respect me in a different way. they respect that. They respect me in a different way. I don't have to tell them what to do all the time or just be like, I'm this, I can say, sorry, I can tell them, Hey, here's what happened when I

did that. And you know, I don't need to preach to them. They got their own stuff, but now they, now they goof with me. I ruined my trust with my family. And now, by some miracle, they are goofing with me. It's like, Dad, shut up. I'm like, come on. You're overblowing this. You're way out of proportion. Dad, you're taking up way too much space here, okay? So they help me.

And I realize that there is help in a loving way. How long have you been sober now? 15, 15 years. Did it start out when you, when you first started doing it, did it feel like as you broke through and you, you, you know, you went to therapy and you got out of rehab and you, you're going through this whole thing. Was there a, like a shaky leg period where you're like, man, I mean, do I know who i am anymore oh absolutely that was it that was that is you know the power of the mind and how how you know here's how my life works and to actually just completely throw that away and start over it's like well wait a minute who

am i without this i'm a i can't talk to people i'm i'm. I'm shy. I'm all of the stuff that I thought booze was helping me with or, you know, booze, drugs, women, shopping, eating, gambling. You know, there's so many things that can manifest out there that it all goes back to one core thing. It's like, I don't, I don't really know who I am. So it took years and years and years to figure out, okay, I like that. That's part of me. And this is part of me, the anger, the, the, the, the, you know, the, the quirkiness, the dork part of me, all these little things that make me, I got to hug him. I got to accept him, you know, and quit running from him and pretending like I am some immovable object on stage that's tough and, you know, nothing can do, you know, nothing can hurt me.

But inside, you know, it's kind of a cliche saying, you know, the harder that external shield, the softer the inside and the more vulnerable and balancing that. Almost like you're concentrating so much on the hard outside that you ignore the inside. Totally, totally. And then forget what I really want. And then you lose yourself in that other person. And yeah, being in a band certainly accelerated that.

There was drink and drug and all kinds of stuff just thrown at you all the time. And it starts off as a fun little thing, and then it turns into an escape. And then all of a sudden, you don't remember why you're out there doing stuff. I went on tour just so I could go to the strip club. Hey, we're going to this place, you know, or we're going to drink here and, you know, knew all that stuff. But the actual playing on stage, it kind of got forgotten about a little bit, you know. We get caught up in the rock star stuff,

and there's a song on this album called Moth Into Flame that directly talks about how fame can be this crazy drug, and it can completely take you over if you let it. You're searching for that thing that's going to save you, and it's you. It's in you. It's already there. You just got to find it and accept it.

Well, you're a very down-to-earth guy, which is very unusual for someone who's as famous as you are, and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this is because it seems like right now you're you. You can be you. But it seems like for someone who's as famous as that, who gets on stage and thousands of people just going fucking crazy and you're up there. I mean, that has got to be intoxicating and confusing. And oftentimes I feel like people are a prisoner to whatever image that either they projected initially or it becomes how the public perceives them because of all their success. And because of the fact they go on stage and 100,000 people go fucking ape shit.

What is that like trying to like find yourself while you're also kind of worshipped? Right. Well, Joe, you hit it. I mean, it's the transitions from road to home are always somewhat difficult. It's like, there's a, there's a PTSD that goes along with it. You know, you are, like you said, worshiped, you know, there's a lot of, you know, where do I get my validation? Really? That's where I have to step back and say, okay, am I who these people say I am or think I am? They have their own vision or version of me,

just like I had my own version of Lemmy. You know, this thing that it was strong. And, you know, these people expect me to be a certain way. And when they meet you in normal life, you're sitting with your family eating or you're frigging in the supermarket, you know, throwing salad on some guy. People want you to do the thing you do. You know, hey, headbang, jump up on the salad bar and rock out or something.

Dude, music does that to me. Playing music with these guys does that to me. But when I'm not doing that, I'm just a dude, you know, and they don't want that. It hurts them. It scares them. Like, wait a minute. I need you to be this certain way. It makes me feel secure.

So when you're not that, I, you know, I don't want to sign stuff. I don't want to take pictures, selfies with people. I want to shake your hand. And I want to talk your hand and I want to talk with you. I want to, Hey, who are you? What do you do? Here's what I do. You know, people think they know me because of the music and all the interviews and all the stuff. I get that, but I don't know you. So when you come up and say, dude, you know, I want to know you because we're at a disadvantage here. But if you get swamped by people and they all want to take pictures, how do you handle that?

Oh, I got to leave. I mean, there's an anger part of me that I still wrestle with and things get stupid. And it's like it's a fight or flight thing, man. It's like I'm being attacked. Wait a minute. You just get overwhelmed by all the people. Yeah, yeah. It's just so weird. like it's a fight or flight thing man it's like i'm being attacked wait a minute you know just get overwhelmed by all the people yeah yeah it's it's just so weird it's so weird we're we played in front of half a million people and half a million people yeah where was that this was in

russia this was uh in the airfield oh my god so we've done. What the fuck was that like? It was a sea of Russian people. I mean, that's what it was. That's insane to even see that many people. 1991 when the curtain came down and all of that. And Time Warner had a, they wanted to basically get their foot in the door. And so they created a free concert. It was ACDC, us, Pantera, and I think maybe a local band or some other bands. I'm sorry if I can't remember.

But they flew us in there. We landed in this airfield. Oh, Motley Crue was on it. Landed in this airfield. And as far as i could see it was a free concert and it was just people and we get on stage and do what we do but there were it was military you know military in the front jesus christ look at that photo holy shit holy shit jamie go full screen with that.

Just go with that one. What in the fuck? Oh, my God. That's insane. Is that it? Is that the one? That might be something else. It looks a little newer, but it says here it's from 91 Moscow.

Wow. Yeah, pretty remarkable. And there were, dude, imagine a sea of people like that. And see, there's a helicopter. Helicopter flying over people. Oh, my God. What if that thing goes down, man? They could be chopping up all kinds of folks.

Go right up there, that one, on stage, facing those people. Oh, my God. That is fucking insane. And that helicopter would come down close, and they were yelling at people, like, stop. People were moshing or going crazy. They didn't know what that was. Oh, wow. They thought it was like a fight.

They're freaking communist country, man. And it was like, wait a minute. People are getting out of order. This is chaos. They didn't have the internet then either. No way. They didn't know what to expect of that. So there're people throwing

you know hitting people from the from the helicopter and down on the front there there were guys in uniforms you know there was you know police military same thing you know so they're standing there in their uniforms and after like three or four songs they're like fuck this and they took off their stuff and they're out there headbanging and having a good time. So we saw the transformation of, you know, a closed down society to freedom right before us individually in people. It was awesome. Wow. What does it feel like to stand in front of 500,000 people?

What does this sound like? What is the sound of their roars like? Pretty massive, obviously. I lost count at, I don't know, 300 and something thousand. But I tell you, and they don't speak your language. That's just such a, that's the power of music, man. That's a language in its own. It connects people. it is so cool so yeah we went to a place that no one spoke english or people were telling us

you know i learned english from your lyrics like oh shit man i failed english just so you know i didn't do so well in school but wow it's pretty bizarre yeah that's intense yeah that is intense that's uh that's an experience that almost no one's prepared for i don't think i don't think there's a a single human being that can do that and not be somewhat affected by it or at least need a lot of decompression a lot of downtime to sort of sort that out, which hence Vale. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you go out into the mountains. Nature doesn't give a shit who you are. Mother Nature will kick your ass, you know, and leave you frozen and, you know, lost.

When did you start hunting? Well, I think it started out my dad was a hunter. I remember him, you know, skinning deers in the garage in Southern California here. Skeet shooting, probably started with that, skeet and trap. And then went duck hunting with my buddy up in Colusa in San Francisco area. And then, hey, we're going on a pig hunt. Let's go. And then, so slowly the animal got bigger and bigger and, uh, really, really enjoyed it and enjoyed the, the, you know, the guy hang, you know, just get away and, uh, and just, you know, get scared together. Yeah. The guy hangs a big part of it. It's awesome. It is so cool. Yeah, making fun of each other and, you know, all the stuff that you don't get to do, you know. You just go and hang. And, yeah, I like getting scared.

I like getting scared out there. It's like, wait a minute. You know, I got this, you know, 60-pound backpack on, and I just came from sea level, and I'm up here at 11,000 feet, and I don't feel very good, guys. How the fuck am I going to get off this mountain? I can't do it. They're like, yeah, you can. Come on. And we'll carry you off if that's what it takes.

It's like, okay. Yeah, but the truck is, you know, it's like a three-hour hike to the spike camp. And then another two hours to the base camp. You know, you can do it. And stuff like that, you know, pushing you to limits that you didn't know you could go to. Yeah, I saw you had a guitar that had a kuyu camo on it oh yeah this dude's deep it's awesome you're deep dude i love the kuyu stuff yeah yeah i got turned on to it by those guys and yeah you know it can get pretty cold and scary up there and it's it's

fun well kuyu represents to me this really interesting sort of uh integration of technology and uh almost like gadget geek mindset applied to hunting to make the very best stuff yeah so as soon as i saw that you you got a kuyu pattern on your guitar i'm like oh he's in deep yeah we we contacted him it's like hey can we borrow your pattern you know that's pretty fucking cool oh yeah i love it how often you get out well yeah you know at least uh probably you know a couple weeks every year is what i get to do uh and obviously if it's you know elk season in colorado um and then there's deer season in california and turkey season so so do you get to hunt near vale where you live oh yeah yeah yeah a lot of elk up there oh my god colorado has twice as many elk as any other state in the California and turkey season. So, so do you get to hunt near Vail where you live? Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. A lot of elk up there, man. Oh my God. Colorado has twice as many elk as any other state in the country. It is amazing. And you know, from the house or dropping the kids off at school, just drive up the road a little bit and be spotting, you know, Hey, there's some elk up there. And you know, where the kids go to school, there's a sheep herd, you know, just up in the mountains. Wow. Like, oh, my God. It'll take me about 45 years to draw that tag, but might as well start. Yeah, get those points up.

Absolutely. Yeah. So that's another good reason to live in Colorado, right? Absolutely. You're out there near, I mean, mule deer, whitetails. I mean, that's a pretty game-rich state. Yeah. there near, I mean, mule deer, white tails. I mean, that's a pretty game rich state. Yeah. The elk,

I mean, you know, I like, I like the venison, but elk, that's probably the thing I would eat. Yeah. Nonstop. Yeah. People who've never tried it before really, they, I mean, you can get it in a restaurant, but you're getting it from New Zealand and it's not going to be as fresh and it's not the same, but it's an unbelievable meat. Well, pulling it out of your freezer and making it there for your kids i mean there's nothing there's no nothing more organic than that especially when you know specifically where it came from you were there yeah this is not mixed up with some other crap from some other farm or something this is it this has been cut and prepared for you so i see that massive thick bastard out in your yeah that. Yeah, that was my latest one.

Dude, that is something. That's a big boy. That's from Tohon Ranch. I should have let you guess. No, I was going to guess New Mexico. No, that's from here, California. Tohon Ranch, they put Rocky Mountain elk in Tohon Ranch in the 1950s. And because California, it's about a half hour outside of Bakersfield. So it's sort of like mid-California. And because of that, it's not cold. They get snow up there, but not enough snow where the elk have to struggle for food. So they eat a lot. Yeah. A lot of mountain lions up there, though.

Dude, that's massively thick. It's a big animal. Yeah, he was huge. He was like 1,000 pounds. It's a big-ass elk. Bow? That one was a rifle. Yeah.

I've shot one there last year with a bow. This year I went with a bow. We unsuccessfully hunted for five days and pulled out a rifle and got it done in an hour. Yeah. I go back and forth with the bow. Do you? It's not cheating. I mean, it's hunting.

But if you want the meat, it's the best way to go. i'm a meat hunter and that's the way to do it you know and how often do you bow hunt uh i do it on my ranch uh at home in california uh it's just tough it's tough with the black tail you know you gotta black tail is fairly small deer too yeah it's pretty tough i just like pulling it i like you know target practicing and stuff you know i have gone bow hunting i'm taking a pretty nice elk with it when it's the rut i mean that yeah it's so amazing and it scares the shit out of you and that they're screaming friggin frothed beast coming running down at you with a heart to kick your ass or fuck you yeah okay yeah it's a pretty intense moment right um but i've missed some stuff so much and i just you know i'd rather use i want to get the animal down and done yeah so rifles definitely the best

way to do that yeah but bow i bow hunting requires so much more discipline it's just it's a constant pursuit but for me it's a great meditation just the practice of archery not not even just bow hunting i'm a big fan of just i love to do it like i'll leave here i'll go home i'll shoot 100 arrows cool you know just to just clean my head out it's a good way to just because you can't think about anything else other than that target in order to do it right, especially when you're shooting at like 70 yards or something long. Yeah, yeah.

So what bow? I saw you got a. I use a Hoyt. Hoyt, yeah. Yeah, I have a Hoyt Pro Defiant. It's the newest model. It's just a fucking awesome bow. This is the coolest thing about bows is that unlike rifles, I mean, rifles, the technology is at such a high level level but i have a rifle from three years ago it's awesome it's just as good but a bow from

three years ago it's well it's like a little behind the times you know you got some new technology you could still use it you could still kill something with it but the newest stuff they the the technology and bows they essentially innovate every year. I agree. Yeah. And yeah, I had a Matthews from three years ago, and I went in to get it tuned up, and the guy says, oh my God. It's like a computer. That's a few years old? Wow. Dude.

If you want to get hooked up with Hoyt, I'll have one sent to you. Okay. I'll hook it up. Let's do it. I got a Matthews that I really love, and, you know, who knows? Next year, like you said, the technology, just the way they pull, the way they balance, and all that stuff that, like you said, with a gun, you know, guns have come a lot of ways, a long ways, too. I got this awesome, fierce gun that, you know, carbon fiber barrel, and it's super lightweight for packing in.

You know, it's down to like six pounds, you know, with the scope on it. So, yeah, lightweight, good. Yeah, if you're going like sheep hunting or something like that, you're going way up into the mountains. I know guys who cut the bottom off of their toothbrush in order to save weight. I mean, literally, they do everything they can. They cut every ounce. What do you bring a toothbrush for?

They brush your teeth up in the mountain. You don't brush your teeth? No way. They're going to smell your stinky-ass fucking breath before anything. That's probably the first thing they smell. That's why I'm unsuccessful. I know guys who actually eat, like, they'll take pine leaves and chew them up inside their mouth just so that their breath doesn't come off as some meat-eating monster predator to a deer or an elk. Interesting.

Yeah. All right. Because I think that's probably like one of our big smells is the breath. Right. You know, B-O and then your breath. A lot of people's breath smells worse than their B-O, right? You got to think. Especially old guy.

Yeah. Old guy. Rotten insides. Yeah. All that fucking funk. So you spray up? You do all that stuff and get- I donten insides. Yeah. All that fucking funk. So you spray up, you do all that stuff and get- I don't spray up, no. I've used ozonics, you know, those ozone things in a tree stand.

I've used that where they blow ozone on you and it confuses the scent. That actually works. It's very bizarre. It has to be directly on you. And the ozone somehow attaches itself to your scent molecules and then when the deer gets it he's like what in the fuck is this but it doesn't blow off all those red flags where he just wants a you know he smells a predator and he wants a bolt right yeah wow well i guess that'd be you could see the results of it if you're in the same spot year after year or

something but i never know if that stuff works, you know, because we're traveling, doing different stuff, different places all the time. Yeah. Well, most of the hunts I go on are spot and stalk, so that's not really, it doesn't really apply. But in that sense, when you're doing something spot and stalk, you just have to play the wind. If your wind is going towards them, you're fucked.

They're just, that's what they're designed for. I mean, they can smell things. The way I describe it to people is like, you know how you could smell a skunk if it got killed like five blocks away? That's how a deer can smell. That's how an elk can smell. They can smell you like a skunk. Like they're like, fuck, let's get out of here. They smell skunk. They bolt. I've seen them smell you from a hundred, 200 yards out and they just catch your wind like boing, boing, fuck this. Yeah.

Just bound away. So brush your teeth. Yeah, you got to brush your teeth, bro. Thanks for the tip. It's probably a good idea. You're 53, I got to tell you to brush your teeth. Listen, man, it's hard to tell a rock star to do anything. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that some people like about hunting is that you

don't have to wash. You just go out there and wear the same goddamn clothes for five, six days in a row. Yeah, and that doesn't send off a signal. Oh, it certainly will. But if you're wearing merino wool, especially like base layers, it actually absorbs most of the smell. So you think the baby wipes do good or bad? Well, baby wipes, it's probably better not to smell like shit, especially human shit. You don't want to smell like a fake cleaning product either.

Maybe the fake cleaning product won't. I think anything odd to a deer is probably not good. Right. But I think there's probably specific predator smells that we, you know, unless you're like a strict vegetarian who also hunts, I would imagine, Nick, you smell terrible. You probably smell like a killer. I don't know what they're smelling right you know i would like to know like if they could tap into the mind of a deer when it smells a person like what what alarms go off that would be bizarre like the you know it's like the red flag and the cape on the bulls like it's yeah it's not really red it's just something's moving you know what do they see what are they here what do they smell yeah I guess

once we figure that out then it's really on how much how much shit did you have to deal with when there was that the blowback from that the hunt show you know it was it's like I wanted to get into voiceovers so that I took the gig now you have a great voice for it it was it was I didn't even know it was your voice while you were doing it it was kind of interesting like it's you you know you did it in a very professional manner but it was a very it's a controversial show because it was grizzly bear hunting yeah yeah yeah and well you know I took the gig you know I wanted to I wanted to get into voiceover stuff.

So that was offered to me. And yeah, I probably had it could have had a choice whether I did it or not. But that's what that was. And I think the main the main headbutting happened when I did that show, and then we went to go do Glastonbury, which is like the ultimate celebration of English hippiedom. And they somehow caught wind that I'd been always a hunter, and he did this show. And it was like boycott Metallica. Don't play the show. We don't want that. And wow.

So what we did was we made this silly video. There's always something going on in England where there's something. There's a controversy that's going to happen. So when an artist shows up, they do something, they, they want something special is what they want. So the fact that I was, you know, I did this bear hunting show. And so we made this movie, uh, about, uh, it was a guy in England, put this movie together that, um, uh, depicted old school English huntsmen. You know, they're on horseback, fox hunters, you know,

and release the fox and all the hounds go and they go galloping through the English countryside and they come to a spot and they start getting shot at and it's these bears come out of the woods and they've shot the hunters and they become the hunter and the crowd loved it you know they oh yeah right you know arm the bears you know uh so it kind of just instantly diffused all that bullshit and you know when you're able to like we said earlier make fun of yourself and make fun of controversy, then it just kind of goes away. And then you just get on, you know, get back to business, you know.

Was it frustrating when they were distributing that picture that wasn't even you? There was a photo of some guy that looked kind of like you in front of this giant brown bear. Well, that to me just told me about them that they're ignorant and that it's not even me. So, you know, there are people out there that want to just, they just want to throw the fuel on the fire and make it crazier and get upset about stuff. And, you know, I got no control over that, man.

You know, once it's out there, you know, I got no control over that, man. Once it's out there, I don't want to spend all my time justifying what I do or don't do, and it's not even something that I did. So, yeah, it's a waste of time. Do you bear hunt at all? I did. I did.

But now I wear clothes. Do you hunt bear? That was really stupid, man. man sorry i like stupid jokes casually do you hunt bear uh i did i went i went to russia went to kamchatka and and hunt bear yeah it was a it was a crazy crazy adventure was it brown bear or what do they have up there? Yeah, it was brown bear. Did you eat any of it? No, no, I did not. And that's one regret I have. And I mean, getting the meat, I mean, for some reason they didn't allow you to bring meat from Russia into America.

But we did have meat there. They had meat from other bears. And so that's how we sustained ourselves out in the middle of the Kamchatka. What does brown bear taste like? You know, bear doesn't taste great to me. It's super fatty, for sure. This was less fatty because it was, you know, spring bear. And then, you know, they were out, you know, they just come out of hibernation.

So it's not my favorite thing, so I probably wouldn't hunt it again because I do like to eat what I harvest. So it wasn't great, but we had lynx. We had all kinds of different stuff there that they, you know, they were out in the middle of nowhere. You ate lynx? Yeah. What does that taste like?

Tastes like chicken, you know. Everything tastes like chicken. You know, it depends on how you cook it i mean it's meat and it tastes like meat and we were in this little little hut that was super short because you know it's really really cold out there and there's like about eight feet of snow and uh yeah you're in this little hut that's really short to keep warm, you know. And the hunter, the guides out there, they had AK-47s, you know. We were, it was pretty scary, you know. We took a military helicopter.

We probably flew two hours in this thing that looked like it survived World, you know, one and two, well, it wasn't around, World War I, but survived World War II. And it was, you know, exhaust and two, well, it wasn't around World War I, but survived World War II. And it was, you know, exhaust down the side and no seats. And we're sitting on the metal floor and we get dropped off in the middle of this nowhere place. And these guys have snowmobiles and you can't get around because the snow is so thick. You need a snowmobile. And the guys show up and they're, you know're here's russians with ak-47s we're americans hi you know hey how common is it that they have these hunts out there it's you know so they knew what they were doing this is a normal thing they do it was set up you

know i was like you know the um um through the safari club you know and uh it was just one of those crazy things like hey i'm gonna try this and uh get scared and i was wow listen man you got to get out of here because i know you're uh you're supposed to leave it too it's a couple minutes later than that so uh thanks for doing this man i really appreciate it it was great meeting you it was uh great talking to you and uh it was just awesome conversation well likewise brother i appreciate you and uh keep doing what you're doing man i will you too all right see you folks