As anyone who's heard 1998's gloriously fun Garage Inc can attest, Metallica love throwing themselves into a good cover song. That said, the Four Horsemen busting out a full-hearted rendition of an Elton John classic was not something we had on our bingo card for 2024.
In a new clip uploaded to Metallica's social media channels earlier this week, metal's biggest band could be seen smashing through Elton's own Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, the epic opening track from the legendary singer-songwriter's 1973 double album, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The cover was performed as part of a special PBS show for this year's Gerswhin Prize for Popular Music, honouring the career and legacy of Elton and his songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin.
"Sir Elton John helped cover Nothing Else Matters on The Metallica Blacklist in 2021, and tonight, you can see us return the favor!" remarked the band. The performance was aired on Monday evening (April 8) on PBS.
Watch the full cover below on YouTube, and see what Metallica had to say about it just below that.
Elton teamed up with Miley Cyrus, WATT, Yo-Yo Ma and Metallica's own Rob Trujillo for a new version of Nothing Else Matters as a part of Metallica's epic Blacklist project to celebrate 30 years of The Black Album. Speaking on The Howard Stern show in 2021, Elton heaped praise on the original song, stating: “Listen, this is one of the best songs ever written, to me. It’s a song that never gets old. And playing on this track, I just couldn’t wait. The chord structure, the melodies, the time changes, it’s got drama written all over it.”
“I have to say, it was a no-brainer playing on this song," he added of being involved in the cover. "Metallica are probably the crème de la crème of those kind of bands. You can’t really define them. They’re not a heavy metal band. They’re a musical band. Their songs aren’t just heavy metal. They’re beautiful songs. This is such a melodic song — it’s fucking great, actually.”
"If you could have said 40 years ago when James and I started down… in Norwalk, in the garage down there, without a pot to piss in," replied Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. "If you could say 40 years later that we would still be functioning, that we would be sitting here with the greatest stars in the world next to us, with Elton on the Zoom and doing your radio show talking about the accomplishments and what this record means to so many people, that would be the mind fucks of all mind fucks."
