“I auditioned for a guitar commission with a carload of basses! I laid them all out on the floor, and he went, ‘OK, let's make a guitar’”: James Hetfield's luthier on how he went from crafting basses to becoming the Metallica guitarist's go-to axe maker

James Hetfield of American heavy metal group Metallica performing live on stage at the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester on February 27, 2009. Hetfield is playing a Ken Lawrence Explorer guitar.

Luthier Ken Lawrence has been equipping one of the biggest names in metal, James Hetfield, with some truly iconic axes for the best part of three decades – most famously ‘Carl’, which was made out of wood from Metallica's ’80s home.

But the famed guitar builder is in fact a bassist – and managed to win over the Metallica guitarist with basses before clinching a guitar commission.