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Metal Hammer
Metal Hammer
Entertainment
Merlin Alderslade

"We get off stage and I haven’t seen him like that in 20 years. He was livid." How Metallica's crazy team-up with Lady Gaga started with an A-list dinner party and almost ended in total chaos

James Hetfield and Lady Gaga screaming into the mic.

It has become one of the most surprising and iconic images to have emerged from the Grammys in recent years: James Hetfield, barrel-chested and iron-lunged Metallica frontman, screaming into a microphone he's sharing with generational pop superstar, Lady Gaga.

The duo, backed by the rest of Metallica, pillars of pyro and a gaggle of backing dancers as they rip through Moth Into Flame, have had to improvise after an almighty technical hiccup threatened to throw the entire performance into parody. Luckily, it all only serves to make an historic collaboration both more intimate and, somehow, more epic. Disaster averted, basically.

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