Heavy metal was always an overly broad term to define a single type of music. It’s difficult to categorize a band like Rainbow alongside Poison, yet when you look at the basis of what each group does, they frequently fall under the same tent. However, James Hetfield was always interested in the purest types of metal, and when he finally went on tour with Guns N’ Roses, he thought that they were not the type of band he wanted to learn from. Hetfield had always been influenced by Black Sabbath’s approach to guitar lick writing. Even if not all of the songs made the most sense from a music theory standpoint, each Metallica record
If Metallica were the offspring of bands like Sabbath, then the Guns N’ Roses were more in line with Aerosmith. In an era that was still dominated by glamorous rock stars focused on their looks more than their technical ability, tracks like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ reminded everyone why hard rock sounded good in the first place.
That didn’t stop Lars Ulrich from drooling over them, as Hetfield told Guitar World, “Guns N’ Roses were part of the enemy, and Lars was out there with them, posing up a storm. Lars is that way. He will fall in love with select people in his life and feel compelled to pursue them. He enjoys learning from people who have that something, and Axl had it. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to learn from newer bands, but it didn’t come as a huge surprise when it came back to both bands in the ass. When they were planning a combined tour, Rose authored the textbook on how not to act on tour. Since this was the era,
No matter how many times that someone plays their rockstar card, nothing would get in the way of rowdy fans, who normally would riot every time they paid good money to see a joint show and only got a handful of songs out of the deal before Rose walked offstage. They certainly weren’t as inauthentic as the Poisons of the world, but even compared to the rock gods of old, Hetfield saw Rose as the kind of singer with a head too big to fit through an aeroplane hangar.
While Metallica have been known for making questionable career moves throughout their time together, touring with Guns N’ Roses may have been a learning experience for everyone. They weren’t nearly as much of an enemy as Hetfield probably thought, but their story is still a cautionary tale of everything an act shouldn’t do once they get famous.
