Metallica rocked the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, on Friday night, headlining the Helping Hands Concert and raising money for their All Within My Hands Foundation, and took the opportunity to play fast and loose with their songbook.
Or should that be slow and low with the songbook, because this was an opportunity for Metallica frontman and rhythm guitar kingpin James Hetfield to demonstrate exactly what he meant when he told MusicRadar that the Load and ReLoad era was a time when the thrash pioneers were letting their blues guitar influences show, by reworking Fuel as a slack-tempo’d groover in baritone tuning.
Hetfield’s white Flying V copy, his Gibson Les Paul Custom, and arsenal of ESP signature guitars could sit this one out. Instead, he leaned upon a bona fide MusicRadar favourite, and a notorious purveyor of low-end twang, Danelectro’s ’58 Longhorn Baritone.
Presenting Fuel in a lower register is not something we had on our Metallica bingo card but then over the years the Bay Area behemoths have been full of surprises. The original, tracked a half-step down in Eb, is all high-energy – the music to match the lyrics. In baritone tuning, it sounds more Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Maybe this was how they wanted to do it all along.
“On Load and ReLoad we tried to get a little looser, a little bluesier,” said Hetfield in 2009. “Greasy is the word. I love to riff, to down-pick, alternate-pick, gallop… That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”
With Hetfield working this muscular redux of Duane Eddie’s electric guitar tone, clearly Kirk Hammett wanted to get in on the twang, choosing a Fender Esquire. We’d have expected him to play “Greeny”, his 1959 Les Paul Standard, previously owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore. Or maybe his factory black 1959 Les Paul Standard. But the twang was the thang and the tone was on the money.
The performance was streamed via YouTube, but there is some cool fan footage that captures the reworked Fuel. The band was joined by San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist Avi Vinocur, who also played on a rare performance of The Unforgiven II, which hadn’t been played live for nine years, and on ReLoad deep cut Low Man’s Lyric – that really is a rarity. The last time that was played for an audience was 1998.
That one had not been played since 2015. Though, in fairness, we can’t remember being at too many Metallica shows where the crowd has been crushing cans of beer on their foreheads and baying for Low Man’s Lyric.
There were more guests. Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam joined them for Kill ‘Em All rager Hit The Lights. Master Of Puppets closed the set. Delivered straight-up. No messing around.
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