Rock Around the Doc: Metallica in Therapy

It took two years and more than a million dollars in group therapy for the macho icons of hard rock to save their band Metallica. But first they had to save themselves.

By Hara Estroff Marano, published on July 01, 2004 - last reviewed on August 30, 2007

James: I didn't perceive that I was controlling—a controlling person never does. Lars and I had a lot of issues because we were both controlling. We both saw in each other what we didn't like about ourselves.

Lars: James and I had two years together before we met Kirk. We appointed ourselves coleaders of the band. The only thing we agreed on was suppressing the other guys in the band.

Kirk: That's a control freak's perspective. When you're fighting over control, the only one in your sights is the one you can't control. I clearly recognize that everything is not meant to be controlled. My personality has always been very laid-back. I've always been an observer. It takes me longer to process things. I think if I threw myself into that quagmire of trying to control everything, this band would self-destruct.

James makes clear that his control issue had to do with an underlying fear of abandonment. Was there, for you, some underlying fear speaking through control?

Lars: As an only child growing up in Denmark, in a very safe community, I ran around by myself from a very early age. My parents traveled a lot, and I would be home by myself. Locking the doors, locking the windows was how I controlled everything in my surroundings, because I was autonomous in them. I don't trust the path in front of me if it's steered by other people; I'm not sure I'm going to be safe. I'm working now on learning to accept that when things derail, my life doesn't get turned upside down.

Lars, there's a very intense scene after James comes back from rehab where you accuse him of controlling even when he's not there. He leaves every day at 4 and asks you all not to even listen to the music in his absence. You say, "Fuck, this is a rock-and-roll band!" What does that mean to you? No rules?

Lars: You end up in a rock-and-roll band so you don't have to play other people's games. It becomes a lot about moods and about moments more than about living by a clock and checking in or checking out. When you leave a studio, you don't necessarily stop thinking about what you're working on. Rock and roll represents freedom from those boundaries. What if you have a great creative thought at 3 or at 9? Then what do you do with it?

Anger, frustration, rage—those are things that a lot of your teenage audience connects with. How do you think your fans react when they see you guys wrestling openly with your feelings?

James: For me, connecting with people has never been easy. Now I realize that the more I connect, the easier it is to be me. The more that people know about my troubles, the easier it'll be to connect with people. I put myself out there, and if people choose to stomp on my heart or to embrace it, that is up to them.

Lars: I have no control. If you line 20 Metallica fans up against the wall, you're going to get 20 completely different reactions. Some people really connect with what we've gone through, others couldn't give two shits about it. I've just given up on trying to figure out who does what.

Kirk: If anything, they're going to see that we're just normal human beings, not these rock gods. The film really shows that we are mammals just like everyone else.

Metallica: Some Kind of Mammal?

Kirk: Exactly. Somewhere along the way I got seduced by the mythology of being a rock star. It happened when we started traveling all over the place and making money. After a while, I disconnected from the reason I did it in the first place, which was to express myself. I was a victim of that myth of being in a rock band for 15, 18, 20 years and having any sort of behavior instantly justifiable. You do whatever you want to do; everything you ask for is given to you. A hot tub backstage? Poof, it's there. A private plane to take you to Las Vegas for a day off? Poof. It became really empty. It was hurting my relationship with my wife. I got into a vicious cycle of wanting to medicate with more booze and drugs. As soon as I stopped doing all that, a lot of the depression went away. The therapy helped me see clearly why these things were happening to me.

James says in the film that he was looking for excitement but wound up doing the same things over and over again.

Kirk: No matter where you launch yourself from, you're going to land in the same spot—waking up feeling poisoned and depressed.

James: I had to reach extremes to balance life out for me. I wasn't able to assert myself to express my feelings. James was the guy who could take the pain; he could endure anything. So I would build up all this anger, and it would pop out as rage or depression—and the way I'd deal with that was drinking, partying, screwing around on the road.

Acting like a rock star.