Load, whose title track eventually became the song "King Nothing", was nothing like the Metallica of old. But as Kirk says, "The 'not-giving-a-fuck' meter is as far into the red zone as ever before." The song "Mama Said" was on the verge of country music, with that oh-so-familiar "twang thang" typical of Garth Brooks and Terri Clark. They still are "heavier than a herd of elephants" (as The Grand Rapids Press put it after their February 15 concert at the VanAndel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan), but in a different way. They had been called many names before by critics, and now the name-calling had spread to their own fans, who at first seemed to be turning on them because of Load's new style. They were dubbed "Alternica", suggesting that Metallica had "sold out - in more ways than one," changing from heavy metal to the new wave of alternative music. But even Cliff Burton would've known how to handle those types of people: "We do what we want, and if they consider that selling out, then whatever."
"Every time we put a record out, we lose people that can't deal with the growth." -Lars Ulrich
"We write for ourselves, and that's it." -James Hetfield
"...it's still heavy for what it is..." -Jason Newsted
"Metallica’s all about the music, not the length of our hair." -Kirk Hammett
The song "Wasting My Hate" was written by James after having dinner at a restaurant with his friend, country singer Waylon Jennings. A guy outside seemed to be sitting in his car giving Waylon the 'evil eye' - but when they finished eating and were ready to go beat the snot outta the guy, they got outside and discovered that it was just the way the light had hit the window on the car - he was actually asleep! Waylon commented, "Well, I guess I wasted my hate on him..."
James Hetfield, on the song "Until It Sleeps": "That song is, I think, extra-special at least to me, and I'm pretty sure the other three and Bob because it was something that - I think Bob was a little concerned that we don't really jam and create things, like all four of us. Like Lars and I sit and we construct the songs, y'know. But this was something. We were just loosening up before some drum tracks or somethin', and we just started goofin' with some thing, and [Bob] whispered, 'Hey, push "record"!' and got some stuff on tape. And within a couple days we worked at it, kinda twisted things around, and it came out to be that song. We built it. And it was so cool. It's like, 'Hey, we can do it, guys!"
"...The main thing that happened between the black album and [Load] is that we kind of - a few of us developed some pretty close relationships with [Bob Rock]. We got a chance to hang out away from the studio...When it was time to sit down and figure out what to do with this record, it was pretty automatic, but it wasn't automatic four or five years ago when the last album was done...of the 6 records we've done, definitely the easiest record to make, the least stressed-out record we've made. We definitely also bought some time on this one in the studio. We worked one notch lesser in terms of the stress level. This is the first record we've ever made at home in San Francisco and we kind of told ourselves that we would rather the record take, y'know, two, three months longer and we don't kill ourselves or each other doing it...I look at Bob more in the studio as, like, a friend..." -Lars Ulrich
Lars on the album's title: "We wanted something that was vague. We wanted something that was not, pardon the pun here, a 'loaded' title. Something that had a lot of weight to it...We've been there before with the concept records, we've been there with the deep, meaningful, y'know, bordering-on-political-statements and this type of stuff. And in the spirit of 'the black album', or 'the untitled album', or the Metallica album, whatever you call it, we really wanted to continue that. I think especially James felt that as the lyrics were getting more and more personal, he felt that he was less and less interested in tying the songs together...I think we wanted to just try and find a title that...meant nothing or could mean anything you wanted it to mean."
On June 10, 1996 Metallica played for the entire world via the Internet. The performance was at Slim's Club in San Francisco, and it was broadcast through spy cams, music, video, pictures, and descriptions.
June 27 of 1996 kicked off the famous "Lollapalooza" festival tour (and the first two months of the "Poor Touring Me" tour) in Kansas City with Metallica headlining.
MTV had presented a colossal Metallicontest on June 17, and when the contest final was aired on July 1, it took four tractor-trailers, one to each house, to deliver the prizes to the four winners. The grand prize winner got to have Metallica come to their house, meet the neighbors, and play some tunes.
On Monday, September 23 in Barcelona, Spain at the Palau Sant Jordi, Metallica was recording "Hero Of The Day" for a live video. Five seconds before all three attempts at the song, the metronome that gave the band the required tempo somehow was going through the whole audio system at the stadium. Kirk also got three or four notes wrong on the intro the first time. Moreover, each time they tried to play the song, Lars told the crowd to be more energetic. So by their third and final attempt, it was louder than hell!
On November 13, 1996 Metallica recorded three live songs for the TV program Later...With Jools Holland on British channel BBC2. "Wasting My Hate," "Mama Said," and "King Nothing" were recorded live and broadcast three days later.
The day after they recorded those songs, Metallica was to perform "King Nothing" live at the MTV Video Europe Awards show. Or at least that's what everyone thought. When the lights went down, Metallica ripped into "Last Caress" followed by "So What?" (They had been nominated for Best Rock Video for "King Nothing" but the award went to the Smashing Pumpkins.) James' comment on that performance? "We needed to wake people up at the show! We felt it was a little boring, and we had been daring each other to do that for years."
The single "Mama Said" was released worldwide on November 18, 1996.
November 18th and 19th saw Metallica playing concerts in Helsinki, Finland at the Icehall with a group called Apocalyptica that consists of 4 cello players doing Metallica tunes, which have also been released on Apocalyptica's self-titled album.
On January 26, 1997 Lars Ulrich, Metallica's spastic Danish drummer (and San Jose Sharks fan), got married to his long-time girlfriend, Skylar Satinstein. (She insists she didn’t know who Metallica were before she met Lars.) The next day, when Metallica played "King Nothing" on the American Music Awards and won the award for Best Metal/Hard Rock Album, James and the boys went up to accept their award, and Lars said, "I would like to thank this man, James Hetfield, for putting on his best suit and being my best man at my wedding last night."
The sequel to Load was released in November of 1997, entitled Re-load. The song "The Memory Remains" was released as a single and the import version has a song called "Fuel For Fire," the predecessor of the song "Fuel." It has a few more verses, but basically sounds a lot like "Fuel." It's actually what can be called "work in progress" as it was recorded a few months before the real song was recorded and put on the album.
Kirk was also married to his girlfriend Lani on January 31, 1998.
The Mighty Het himself tied the knot for the first time with his long-time girlfriend, Francesca, on August 17 of 1997 - and on June 13, 1999 they became the parents of a daughter, Cali Tee, and in 2000 Francesca had a son, Castor Virgil.
Lars' wife gave birth to a son, Myles, on August 5th, 1998 at 4:15 a.m. in New York City.
On November 23, 1998, the long-anticipated re-release version of Garage Days was released - as a double CD set entitled Garage Inc., with the old cover tunes on the first disc and the new cover tunes, recorded after the end of the "Poor Re-Touring Me" tour, on the second. The first single released was a new cover of Bob Seger's "Turn The Page," a song about what the fans don't see - the touring and backstage aspect of a musician's life.
Their next album was met by many with shock and disbelief - it was called by some "the biggest disappointment of 1999." But S&M (Symphony and Metallica) was something that the world of metal had never seen done. Sure, Pink Floyd could be done by a symphony. But Metallica? Never! Never say never. April 21 and 22 of 1999 were spent at the Berkeley Community Theatre in California entertaining a mixed crowd who didn't know what the hell to expect when Metallica combined with the 72-piece San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Metallica played 2 new songs, "-Human" and "No Leaf Clover." The 2 evenings were combined and released as 2 CDs on November 22nd and 23rd (Europe and American release dates, respectively) of the same year. Michael Kamen, symphony conductor for those 2 historic evenings, called it a "Wagnerian orgasm...A bit like experiencing all nine of Beethoven's symphonies and 'The Rite of Spring' in one evening!" The musicians were met with a mixed audience of tuxes and tie-dye, and many didn't know whether to politely applaud or headbang and play air guitar. But in the end, both groups came out happy and all the wiser as to the other's point of view. S&M has also been released on video and DVD.
Metallica's brief tour supporting S&M included the Metallenium show at the Silverdome in Pontiac, MI on December 31, 1999. Sevendust (added to the bill after Tommy Lee's band Methods of Mayhem dropped out), Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent (in that order) took the stage and riled the crowd up first. Then Metallica took the stage. Suffice it to say, the new year was rung in in the proper manner, even though many people left before the ball dropped for fear of Y2K complications. The lights didn't go out, the world didn't end, and Metallica kept playing - some old favorites like Phantom Lord were played at the end to the few diehards that remained.
The annual debacle we know as the Grammy Awards recognized Metallica's existence on February 23rd of 2000 by awarding them "Best Hard Rock Performance" for "Whiskey In The Jar."
March 20th marked the release of "No Leaf Clover" from S&M.
April 13th, 2000: "Metallica Files Suit Against Napster" filled newspapers and websites' headlines alike, marking the first strike in what would become the industry-wide battle between artists, the music industry, and music-downloading fans everywhere. Napster, the music downloading program, got a load of publicity from this suit - and as they say, there IS no such thing as negative publicity. Metallica first named Napster, USC, Yale, and Indiana University in the suit, later dropping the schools and focusing more on Napster and how to eliminate what they saw as copyright infringement. People being able to download music using Napster, getting it essentially for free? This is akin to what happened when recordable tapes came out - remember? "This will be the end of the music industry! People can just copy music to tapes, off the radio or otherwise, and get it for free! Then they won't buy it and the music industry will die out!" The extremity of the situation was as exaggerated as Y2K. But the speculated length of it was not. Many estimated this battle could go on for months, possibly years.
On May 18th, while others were worrying about the future of CD-buying, James and Francesca Hetfield had other things on their minds. Namely, their new son Castor Virgil. (Virgil was James' father's name.) Castor was 22.5 inches long and weighed 9 lbs. 6 oz.
Meanwhile, on June 26th, the single "I Disappear" was released officially, although much to Metallica's dismay, it had been circulating on Napster (and other file-sharing services) prior to this time, and some radio stations played it before its official play date on April 25th.
