Every great Metallica song usually touches on the darker side of the human condition. While the rest of the hair metal scene was making the biggest tracks based on the virtues of partying every night of the week, James Hetfield’s lyrics about the deepest depths of sorrow struck a nerve with any metalhead looking for something heavier than Van Halen. Even though Hetfield would take inspiration from the horrors he saw around him, he also found his muse on the silver screen.
Before the band had solidified, Hetfield was already writing the basis of every great Metallica riff. When working in a sticker factory in his native California, Hetfield would spend his lunch breaks in his truck with his guitar, putting together the riffs for songs like ‘Seek and Destroy’ and ‘Hit the Lights’.
When a young drummer named Lars Ulrich was looking for a group, Hetfield became the perfect fit, playing in lockstep with his drumming partner with his rhythm guitar. Although the group’s first attempts at pieces were the blueprint for thrash, they hardly catered to the intellectual side of metal.
Across the band’s debut, Kill Em All, many tracks have to do with the recklessness of being a teenage metalhead, from riding on motorcycles to taking a night out on the town and getting into as much mischief as possible. While Hetfield was still making baby steps into songwriting, he knew he wanted to write about something other than the demons that every other metal outfit talked about.
Working on the songs for Ride the Lightning, Hetfield would become more esoteric with his lyrics, pulling topics from different works of literature on ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and telling the biblical tale of the plagues in ‘Creeping Death’. Of all the inspirational works that went into Metallica tracks, Hetfield was drawn to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Based on the book of the same name, Jack Nicholson plays the role of a man trapped in an insane asylum before being given a lobotomy towards the end of the film. Empathising with being trapped in an asylum without means of escape, Hetfield poured his feelings into ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’.
Looking back on the song, Ulrich said that the similarities between Hetfield’s writing and the film were practically interconnected, saying, “It’s a bit like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s from the point of view of a man locked in a sanitarium, but he believes that he is sane, but he’s locked up with all these insane people.”
In the first few seconds of the track, Hetfield puts the listener in the mind of that protagonist, with the opening notes painting the picture of the steel doors closing in behind you, knowing that you will never be let out until you’re sane. By the end, Hetfield takes things in a sinister direction, talking about the prisoner finally escaping by murdering all of those who he felt locked him up for the wrong reasons. Many metal bands may have been able to scare people by singing about demons, but Hetfield knew that some of the scariest scenarios of all are man-made.
