“We were sleeping on the floor, stealing food, stealing bikes”: Metallica turned to “thieving” to survive the early ’80s, says James Hetfield

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While recording at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Metallica had to “borrow [things] forever” to make ends meet

Metallica posing together in 1985
(Image credit: Ross Marino/Getty Images)

Metallica singer/guitarist James Hetfield has revealed the lengths the heavy metal titans had to go through to make it through the early ’80s – and that they sometimes had to turn to “thieving”.

Hetfield made the revelation on the new episode of official podcast The Metallica Report, where he reminisced on recording classic albums Ride The Lightning (1984) and Master Of Puppets (1986) in Sweet Silence Studios, Copenhagen.

While in Copenhagen, Hetfield says, the band had to resort to theft so that they could afford to stay.

The frontman remembers (per Guitar.com): “[We were] up in the attic, sleeping on the floor and stealing food from other bands that were coming through there, stealing bikes just to get around, stealing empty beer bottles to go turn them in for more beer.

“There was a lot of thieving.”

Hetfield continued with a laugh: “We didn’t have anything, we didn’t have shit. So it wasn’t thieving, we were just borrowing it forever.”

Metallica returned to Copenhagen on June 14 and 16 as part of their ongoing M72 world tour. The tour features ‘no repeat weekends’, where the band play a pair of two-hour-long sets at each stop featuring entirely different songs.

Pro-shot footage of the band performing 1983 Kill ’Em All cut Hit The Lights in Parken Stadium on the June 14 date was recently uploaded to Youtube. Watch the clip below.

Metallica will continue their European tour tomorrow (June 29) with a headline set at Hellfest in Clisson, France.

They’ll be performing in the continent until mid-July, before starting a tour of North and Central America in August.

See the full list of Metallica’s 2024 live dates and get tickets below.

Metallica 2024 tour dates:

Jun 29: Clisson Hellfest, France
Jul 05: Warsaw PGE Narodowy, Poland
Jul 07: Warsaw PGE Narodowy, Poland
Jul 12: Madrid Estadio Cívitas Metropolitano, Spain
Jul 14: Madrid Estadio Cívitas Metropolitano, Spain

Aug 02: Foxborough Gillette Stadium, MA, USA
Aug 04: Foxborough Gillette Stadium, MA, USA
Aug 09: Chicago Soldier Field, IL, USA
Aug 11: Chicago Soldier Field, IL, USA
Aug 16: Minneapolis US Bank Stadium, MN, USA
Aug 18: Minneapolis US Bank Stadium, MN, USA
Aug 23: Edmonton Commonwealth Stadium, Canada
Aug 25: Edmonton Commonwealth Stadium, Canada
Aug 30: Seattle Lumen Field, WA, USA
Sep 01: Seattle Lumen Field, WA, USA
Sep 20: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico
Sep 22: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico
Sep 27: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico
Sep 29: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico

Get tickets.

Matt Mills
Matt Mills
Contributing Editor, Metal Hammer

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.