Poor old James Hetfield. The Metallica frontman has faced more than his fair share of tour-fluctuating injuries over the years, from a skateboarding accident that derailed some Master Of Puppets dates to when he famously went up in flames in 1992. However, one accident that’s seldom talked about is when he hurt his back jet-skiing in 2000, and thus his band were forced to play their three strangest-ever concerts in his absence.
The injury occurred on the first Independence Day weekend of the new millennium. Metallica were midway through their Summer Sanitarium tour and, between a July 4 gig in Baltimore and the next show in Atlanta three days later, had a modicum of downtime. Details of what actually happened are thin on the ground, but Metallica’s management told MTV that their singer spent some of the inter-gig break “on a lake outside of Atlanta”; there he “suffer[ed] from herniated and bulging discs in his back following a jet-ski accident”. Papa Het would sit out the trek’s next three concerts – July 7 in Atlanta; July 8 in Sparta, Kentucky; and July 9 in Irving, Texas – but was projected to return to the stage as normal afterwards.
