When a young guitar player named James Hetfield and a young drummer named Lars Ulrich put a band together in California in 1981 and called it Metallica, they had very similar taste in music – except when it came to the kind of soft rock they heard on the radio. Hetfield hated that.
In a 2008 interview with MOJO, Hetfield talked about his formative influences and revealed how he argued with Ulrich – and with Metallica’s original bassist Ron McGovney – about the smooth, radio-friendly sound of mainstream rock acts such as Styx, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner.
