Name: James Hetfield Reflects on Napster (from Joe Rogan Experience #887)
Uploaded: 2016-12-23T19:19:20.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'James Hetfield Reflects on Napster (from Joe Rogan Experience #887)' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'James Hetfield Reflects on Napster (from Joe Rogan Experience #887)' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-12-23. Transcript available.

Hello freak bitches. Well you guys have been through such a
fascinating change in music too because I mean obviously Lars was a huge figure
in the controversy surrounding mp3s
Yeah, and that was like during the Napster days. That was the time where
Everybody realized like holy shit something just happened, you know, and I don't
think we realized it back then
I think Lars in a lot of ways was one of the first people sounding the horn
He was one of the first people going hey
All this selling record shit is gonna go away. Like do you understand what's
going on here?
People are just taking things and putting them online and this was a totally
new thing
Absolutely, and
That poor guy still you know, he's taking bullets. He's taking hits for it
still
Still really where oh
Everyone who's got a beef with any other thing then
uh, you know
Napster they it just gravitates towards that all the time
That poor guy. Yeah, he got beat up by that and we all stood behind him.
Obviously. He was the spokesman for it
He he chose he chose to do that management said hey, this is coming. This is
coming
Let's be the ones that stand up for artists
And he took that he grabbed the flag and said i'm going and
There were lots of other musicians and people that were
On board as well
But they weren't as vocal or taking the hits like he did there was something
about
You know, even you're like a dr. Dre. He was on board with it
But for some reason in the rap world, it's like well, it's all about money
anyway, so so what you know
For heavy metal there was some kind of stigma around
You know, you're you're an asshole if you're rich or if you've been successful
or something
It's like we got to pull you down into hell with us, you know, don't don't be
getting good now, you know
Yeah, so there was that stigma
But there were other artists that would show up at shows saying hey, man
I'm really glad you're doing what you're doing. It's like come on, you know,
join us
Oh, no, I can't
No, my career would be over
It's like you fuck, you know, it's so frustrating. It's like dude. Do you
believe in it?
Yeah, then stand up like yeah, but no it will fall apart something will happen
my fans blah blah blah
So they they were concerned about their own careers and not the big picture of
artists and obviously these days you can see
There's no copyright laws. There's no nothing man
You can rip this and that and whatever and do whatever you want with it
There's a beauty to that and a lot of creativity comes out of it, but
It gets watered down it gets, you know, I don't know we
We acknowledge that yeah, there's an inspiration somewhere for everything
But blatantly taking that and using it is it's pretty frustrating to me
um
And we're we're we were at that point where we were
we had
Such a following we had such a strength in metallica that we survived all of
that stuff
Um, but there was a lot of bands that didn't you know, uh, they couldn't
sustain themselves couldn't feed their families
Because of what happened and I think the frustrating part was no one really
understood that
music is our life, you know
if you take that
If you take our
Like the way we want to present our music is part of the art
Like in an album meaning like
One song leads to the next song meaning well, like releasing an album. Here's
how we'd like to release it, right?
We don't want it leaked over here. We don't want this happening. We don't right,
you know
A present
But presentation is part of the art like when you walk into an art studio
The artist has been in there putting it together like okay
I want you to see this first and then that and then you go here and you get bam,
you know
That there's a passion behind that and when someone just throws it out there
And and it's just it kind of loses uh loses an impact
um
so
If i'm complaining punch me in the face
But we have survived and we feel good about it and we've adapted
But the record company certainly did not you know, they took a hard hit
But also, you know when you look at the record deals the deal that record
companies make with artists
And you see like what would a record company selling well
They're only selling your work without your work without your creativity
without your creations
There's nothing to sell that's all they sell but then you look at these
insanely one-sided deals that they cut with artists
Especially emerging artists. They might be a little bit more desperate don't
realize the potential
Especially the potential for income that they might have in the future. I mean
i've seen some of those. I don't know
There was that one that somebody said that
Courtney love didn't really write it that it was ghost written
I don't know who the fuck wrote it, but courtly love put it out saying that she
wrote it
But it was a breakdown of how
Artists make money from the creation of an artist the creation of an album to
Having it sold in record stores to where the money gets extracted and how much
is left for the actual artists. It's pretty fucking disturbing
Yeah, even
Well, you know a couple years ago. We
We got the rights to our catalog our our music from kill them all up till now
We own it finally
Which is weird. I tell my kids. Hey
You know, let's go celebrate we've got we got the master recordings we own it
finally
And they were just looking at me like what the hell are you talking about?
You wrote it
Why isn't it yours right?
Okay, well, I had a little talk about how it was back then, you know
you would
somewhat sell a little bit of your soul to get a bigger something, you know
It was
Basically, the record company was a bank and a marketing tool to get you where
you wanted to be
so
uh, you know
It was a necessary thing at that time
But it's great to have our stuff back and be able to
You know, we own our own record press. How cool is that whoa
In germany, uh, one of our management people found
Uh a place that had some machines that were for sale and we we bought one and
So we press our own vinyl man wow and we could kind of do whatever we want
What color vinyl today, you know or what crazy things you can do, you know?
Uh, you guys can kind of do whatever the fuck you want now, right?
Much you don't need a record company. You can do anything. Well, it depends. Uh,
we have a record company
We own our own in america
Or north america
The rest of the world's a little tougher
You know, there's a lot of countries out there especially in europe and there's
no way we can deal with the distribution in each different country
so
we've cut really good deals with with other record companies that have
a vision and have a love for metallica and understand
That this is powerful stuff and people love it and we want to be part of the
family
Um, but having your own record press is a pretty darn cool thing. Uh, that was
really inspired by jack white
uh, who, uh, you know
white stripes fame, you know rack on tears. He's done a lot of stuff, but he
He loves that stuff. He's pressing his own stuff. He's coming up with different
ways of doing vinyls and colors and hidden tracks and
Cool stuff like that and it's it's just another way to get creative in in your
career is vinyl
What's selling more than anything now when it comes to actual physical hard
copies of things?
I don't know the numbers and they're probably vary all over the place, but
Vinyl has never gone away and it's it's
I don't know if it's coming back, but it's more popular than it was
I think there's just something tactile about it. There's something great that
people are finally understanding
That you can look at artwork you can feel it and then
the
the the ritualization of
opening up the player taking it out and blowing on it cleaning it putting it
down setting the needle down and
It's that's something really cool. I just I came down to la a few months ago
and hung out with some high school buddies
It's like hey, what do you want to do? Let's listen to some songs and he takes
out the kansas, you know album puts it on and
Carry on our way
exactly
I was like dude, this sounds so great
Wow
Yeah, and we were actually listening to music sitting down listening to it. My
kids got into vinyl. They got a
You know like at urban outfit or you buy the little the setup now and that's
where they that's where you can get vinyl
It's it's there. There are some record stores out there, but that's where they
gravitate towards
Got him this little player and
Uh, they just picked out some album covers. They didn't even know who they were
It's like this cap this cover looks cool. This speaks to me. I'm buying this
I remember doing that kind of thing. Oh, yeah cool cover. Yep. That's how I
discovered tons of bands
So they go into the room and you know, I leave them alone for a while and they
come back
They haven't come out. It's like what's going on? I look in there
They're you know the record players on the floor
Covers and stuff strewn out all over the place and they're laying on the floor
listening to it's like
That is what that was me, you know, uh
And my my daughter comes out. She said dad you'll never guess what like what
There's songs on the other side
Like oh my god. Yeah, it's not a cd, you know
It's like she discovered some huge thing, you know
Wow, well, that was one of the things that was not what is this vinyl sales outperformed
digital downloads for the first time
Wow
Shows a significant shift in how people are consuming music. That's really
interesting man. I tell you that's just cool
In general, yeah, the more ways you can get music to people
The better well, I think the other thing that you were saying that's it's like
it's a whole presentation
The album cover you open it up the inside the artwork all that represents your
vision of what you guys are trying to put out
And that was one of the things that kind of went away with digital like all of
a sudden
There were no album covers so the cd was that big so you couldn't really there
wasn't you know
It's like a tiny little piece of art
And if you're downloading it, you're not even getting that you're just you're
just getting the music itself
That's it. Well, you will you would get you know downloadable artwork
But you're not really looking at the artwork while you're listening to it on
your mobile device, right?
You know, so you know the event of sitting down and and
Disappearing into the music, you know being a real music listener not I mean
while you're driving I get it
It's it's keeping you from killing people on the road
But when you go home and you sit and you just get lost in stuff
even um
Like those the cheap friggin headphones man the little earbuds my kids were
listening to stuff on that
It's like you guys haven't experienced
Music like good sound here. Try these headphones on they're like, whoa, I hear
stuff. I didn't hear before and
uh
But just seeing my kids get excited about going to a live concert, you know
They go there and they absorb it in
Like every sense
You're not just
He having your ears hear something
And that will never be
I don't know
Maybe the friggin goggles or
Some kind of uh audio visual stuff will
Reproduce live shows, but
There's something about being next to a sweaty fucker at a gig and you know
them pushing you or
Uh, you know seeing someone headbang wildly or getting thrown over the top of
you and
There's just so much smells things like that that just can't be recreated
so live music my daughter just like
I can't believe that guy just pressed a button on his computer and he's singing
over his own music
That's not performing. You know, she discovered that on her own
Hey, these guys are actually playing their instruments and they fucked up. They
fucked up a song. It was so cool
You know, I saw something that I wouldn't have you know really cool like that
Yeah, the lip-syncing thing man that when you go to see a concert and you find
out the people are lip-syncing. That's so
Disturbing
It's just what what have you done with this is what is the point of this?
It is disappointing. What is live performance live performance is supposed to
be your experience in this thing actually happening
You're watching this person express themselves. They're not put they're not
pretending
You're not supposed to be pretending right. Are you pretending you're you?
You should be able to get your fucking money back because you're not that's not
That's not that's pretending. That's not singing. I've gone to see plenty of
shows with my kids and
You can tell it's like all right it the mics way over here and they're still
singing and it's like well
They have to have the backing tracks cut there. There's they're dancing and
they're out of breath
It's like we'll fucking stop dancing and do the song. I mean are you a dancer
or are you a musician or singer?
You're fucking cardio, you know, start running hills
It can be there you go
Come to vale and then run up the 14 or exactly
It can be done, but i've seen shows where there's that going on and then
They'll get real you know like sit down on a couch plug it in acoustic and and
sing out a key and
Like really try and struggle with the song or sing it. You know
It's like that's natural that feels good. Who would not gravitate towards that?
Yeah, then listening to the out
I can listen to the out my home. Yeah, that's why it's cool to just see an
acoustic set sometimes from people
You know, just like it's as minimal as possible
You're breaking it down to the bare bones just a guitar and two people singing
or something, you know
Yeah, that is pretty intimidating
I tell you when we do like that neil young benefit where it's you know acoustic
only
And if you're you're friggin naked naked up there dude, you know
every note is like
You know and every fuck up on the vocal
it's
It's great
I mean, it's like when uh, you know, you go or you're gonna be on a tv thing
and they put makeup on you
It's like why are you doing that? Right? Exactly. Uh
So when people see me in person, they think damn you're one ugly fuck
It's like no
I want to be as ugly as possible to everyone so when they see me they go hey,
it's you
You know exactly exactly right? Yeah, you're not airbrushed
Yeah, you see a photoshopper yourself and it's
Like, you know, they smoothed out all your lines and you're like, what the fuck
are you doing?
Sometimes sometimes you gotta do it or like, you know
If you're in a band like I am and the three guys get the stuff put on and then
I show up
Dude, oh my god, I you're shiny
Exactly
It's like people are gonna go but fuck this band that dude's sweating
Yeah, right, right
When it comes to the napster thing and what what happened with lars, I feel
like
There's two different things. There's something there's what's really happening
and there's how people look at it
And what's really happening was like all of a sudden this door got opened up or
this pandora's box got open
Right, and you guys were looking at it going. Well, this is uh, we're gonna
lose our record sales
Like you do you understand that like people have been consuming music in a
certain way?
You've been paying for music and that paying for music is supported
All these people that are a part of this industry that makes albums. There's
this gigantic thing behind it
This is all gonna go away because you just put a hole in the bottom of it and
all the money's gonna get dropped out
But then the way it looks is look at this rich motherfucker, you know, he doesn't
it doesn't appreciate his fans
Hey, man, I can't afford your album right now. Is it okay if I just download it
for free?
And a lot of people thought well, hey people who can afford it will still be
downloading it
And then they'll buy it when they can but that wasn't really the case was it?
No, I don't know I you know, I'm all for convenience
In the technology moving forward getting music out to people is the important
part, but just
Make sure the artist gets what they deserve from it because without that it's
going to become a hobby
No one wants you know, I don't want to see the paramedic show up at my house
And it's like a hobby for him. Hey, you know, I'm not really getting paid for
what I
Think I should get paid for my creation, but I guess I'll save your life, you
know, maybe
People didn't relate that to their their career or something
Equivalent, you know, I think because the money wasn't equivalent they looked
at you guys like you guys are already so rich
What do you give a shit? There's no way you're gonna be broke
You guys made millions and millions and millions of dollars you tour all over
the world and it became the touring thing
Was way artists made money then right?
Touring and merchandise and that's now how record companies are
Structuring their deals, you know, hey, we get a piece of your merch and and
touring see that's bizarre though
The record companies getting a piece of your touring to me is very strange and
I've seen not just a piece
But an exorbitant amount and that disturbs me. Well, that's the only way they
can survive now
They shouldn't be around then well because then you become a parasite because
you don't deserve it
I mean, especially now where bands can literally become gigantic because of
youtube
I mean didn't justin bieber become huge just entirely because of youtube jamie
knows look at him. He's a fucking justin bieber fan
He hides it
Hey, me too
First I heard him saying I thought it was a girl. I didn't even know it was a I
didn't know
Well, I'll tell you the the whole uh, you know
Would you would you go up to the artist and take that out of his pocket? You
know, would you go into a record store and just
Lift that steal it run out the door with it, you know
Would you do that with you know, okay, there's
You know, there's there's big corporations that are rich and would you go walk
in and just steal their stuff?
I mean, there's software companies that are massive. Would you go in there and
just rip their stuff?
I don't get that mentality. I don't
Call me old school, but you you you need to earn what you get and
If it gets stolen from you, it doesn't make any sense. It's it's hard to fathom
and
What it seems like to me and I I could be talking out my ass, but
The record companies dropped the ball and the new record companies
Became itunes
control at all
Here's how much we're charging for your music and here's how much you're gonna
get
Everyone's even it's like some communist approach, you know
And I I don't understand I don't understand that if we're an artist and we make
a lot of money
That's up to us
If we give all our money away to charity or we throw it back into a movie that
bombs which happened
Um, that's our choice. We're the fucking artist. We get to do what we want. It's
our party
You're invited and we can destroy this thing if we want. I don't want you to
destroy it
Yeah, the itunes distribution model is a very bizarre one. It's very strange
how they've so they don't know what they're doing
No one knows what they're doing and you know
There was a system that worked and i'm up for bucking the system and making it
better, but it didn't
It didn't get better. It's like the like you said the cat got out of the bag
and you can't put it back in man. You just can't
um
So what do you do? Well, you got spotify or you got something else where
streaming is gonna help get the artist their money and
it's it's um
You know companies like that are losing money a lot and spotify
I don't I don't I don't know the exact workings and i'm not going to speak for
them at all
But it hasn't been figured out yet is what i'm saying it hasn't been figured
out how to
Make a music model work and there's no one way. Maybe there will never be one
way again, and that's fine, but
It's still unbalanced

James Hetfield Reflects on Napster (from Joe Rogan Experience #887)

Hello freak bitches. Well you guys have been through such a
fascinating change in music too because I mean obviously Lars was a huge figure
in the controversy surrounding mp3s
Yeah, and that was like during the Napster days. That was the time where
Everybody realized like holy shit something just happened, you know, and I don't
think we realized it back then
I think Lars in a lot of ways was one of the first people sounding the horn
He was one of the first people going hey
All this selling record shit is gonna go away. Like do you understand what's
going on here?
People are just taking things and putting them online and this was a totally
new thing
Absolutely, and
That poor guy still you know, he's taking bullets. He's taking hits for it
still
Still really where oh
Everyone who's got a beef with any other thing then
uh, you know
Napster they it just gravitates towards that all the time
That poor guy. Yeah, he got beat up by that and we all stood behind him.
Obviously. He was the spokesman for it
He he chose he chose to do that management said hey, this is coming. This is
coming
Let's be the ones that stand up for artists
And he took that he grabbed the flag and said i'm going and
There were lots of other musicians and people that were
On board as well
But they weren't as vocal or taking the hits like he did there was something
about
You know, even you're like a dr. Dre. He was on board with it
But for some reason in the rap world, it's like well, it's all about money
anyway, so so what you know
For heavy metal there was some kind of stigma around
You know, you're you're an asshole if you're rich or if you've been successful
or something
It's like we got to pull you down into hell with us, you know, don't don't be
getting good now, you know
Yeah, so there was that stigma
But there were other artists that would show up at shows saying hey, man
I'm really glad you're doing what you're doing. It's like come on, you know,
join us
Oh, no, I can't
No, my career would be over
It's like you fuck, you know, it's so frustrating. It's like dude. Do you
believe in it?
Yeah, then stand up like yeah, but no it will fall apart something will happen
my fans blah blah blah
So they they were concerned about their own careers and not the big picture of
artists and obviously these days you can see
There's no copyright laws. There's no nothing man
You can rip this and that and whatever and do whatever you want with it
There's a beauty to that and a lot of creativity comes out of it, but
It gets watered down it gets, you know, I don't know we
We acknowledge that yeah, there's an inspiration somewhere for everything
But blatantly taking that and using it is it's pretty frustrating to me
um
And we're we're we were at that point where we were
we had
Such a following we had such a strength in metallica that we survived all of
that stuff
Um, but there was a lot of bands that didn't you know, uh, they couldn't
sustain themselves couldn't feed their families
Because of what happened and I think the frustrating part was no one really
understood that
music is our life, you know
if you take that
If you take our
Like the way we want to present our music is part of the art
Like in an album meaning like
One song leads to the next song meaning well, like releasing an album. Here's
how we'd like to release it, right?
We don't want it leaked over here. We don't want this happening. We don't right,
you know
A present
But presentation is part of the art like when you walk into an art studio
The artist has been in there putting it together like okay
I want you to see this first and then that and then you go here and you get bam,
you know
That there's a passion behind that and when someone just throws it out there
And and it's just it kind of loses uh loses an impact
um
so
If i'm complaining punch me in the face
But we have survived and we feel good about it and we've adapted
But the record company certainly did not you know, they took a hard hit
But also, you know when you look at the record deals the deal that record
companies make with artists
And you see like what would a record company selling well
They're only selling your work without your work without your creativity
without your creations
There's nothing to sell that's all they sell but then you look at these
insanely one-sided deals that they cut with artists
Especially emerging artists. They might be a little bit more desperate don't
realize the potential
Especially the potential for income that they might have in the future. I mean
i've seen some of those. I don't know
There was that one that somebody said that
Courtney love didn't really write it that it was ghost written
I don't know who the fuck wrote it, but courtly love put it out saying that she
wrote it
But it was a breakdown of how
Artists make money from the creation of an artist the creation of an album to
Having it sold in record stores to where the money gets extracted and how much
is left for the actual artists. It's pretty fucking disturbing
Yeah, even
Well, you know a couple years ago. We
We got the rights to our catalog our our music from kill them all up till now
We own it finally
Which is weird. I tell my kids. Hey
You know, let's go celebrate we've got we got the master recordings we own it
finally
And they were just looking at me like what the hell are you talking about?
You wrote it
Why isn't it yours right?
Okay, well, I had a little talk about how it was back then, you know
you would
somewhat sell a little bit of your soul to get a bigger something, you know
It was
Basically, the record company was a bank and a marketing tool to get you where
you wanted to be
so
uh, you know
It was a necessary thing at that time
But it's great to have our stuff back and be able to
You know, we own our own record press. How cool is that whoa
In germany, uh, one of our management people found
Uh a place that had some machines that were for sale and we we bought one and
So we press our own vinyl man wow and we could kind of do whatever we want
What color vinyl today, you know or what crazy things you can do, you know?
Uh, you guys can kind of do whatever the fuck you want now, right?
Much you don't need a record company. You can do anything. Well, it depends. Uh,
we have a record company
We own our own in america
Or north america
The rest of the world's a little tougher
You know, there's a lot of countries out there especially in europe and there's
no way we can deal with the distribution in each different country
so
we've cut really good deals with with other record companies that have
a vision and have a love for metallica and understand
That this is powerful stuff and people love it and we want to be part of the
family
Um, but having your own record press is a pretty darn cool thing. Uh, that was
really inspired by jack white
uh, who, uh, you know
white stripes fame, you know rack on tears. He's done a lot of stuff, but he
He loves that stuff. He's pressing his own stuff. He's coming up with different
ways of doing vinyls and colors and hidden tracks and
Cool stuff like that and it's it's just another way to get creative in in your
career is vinyl
What's selling more than anything now when it comes to actual physical hard
copies of things?
I don't know the numbers and they're probably vary all over the place, but
Vinyl has never gone away and it's it's
I don't know if it's coming back, but it's more popular than it was
I think there's just something tactile about it. There's something great that
people are finally understanding
That you can look at artwork you can feel it and then
the
the the ritualization of
opening up the player taking it out and blowing on it cleaning it putting it
down setting the needle down and
It's that's something really cool. I just I came down to la a few months ago
and hung out with some high school buddies
It's like hey, what do you want to do? Let's listen to some songs and he takes
out the kansas, you know album puts it on and
Carry on our way
exactly
I was like dude, this sounds so great
Wow
Yeah, and we were actually listening to music sitting down listening to it. My
kids got into vinyl. They got a
You know like at urban outfit or you buy the little the setup now and that's
where they that's where you can get vinyl
It's it's there. There are some record stores out there, but that's where they
gravitate towards
Got him this little player and
Uh, they just picked out some album covers. They didn't even know who they were
It's like this cap this cover looks cool. This speaks to me. I'm buying this
I remember doing that kind of thing. Oh, yeah cool cover. Yep. That's how I
discovered tons of bands
So they go into the room and you know, I leave them alone for a while and they
come back
They haven't come out. It's like what's going on? I look in there
They're you know the record players on the floor
Covers and stuff strewn out all over the place and they're laying on the floor
listening to it's like
That is what that was me, you know, uh
And my my daughter comes out. She said dad you'll never guess what like what
There's songs on the other side
Like oh my god. Yeah, it's not a cd, you know
It's like she discovered some huge thing, you know
Wow, well, that was one of the things that was not what is this vinyl sales outperformed
digital downloads for the first time
Wow
Shows a significant shift in how people are consuming music. That's really
interesting man. I tell you that's just cool
In general, yeah, the more ways you can get music to people
The better well, I think the other thing that you were saying that's it's like
it's a whole presentation
The album cover you open it up the inside the artwork all that represents your
vision of what you guys are trying to put out
And that was one of the things that kind of went away with digital like all of
a sudden
There were no album covers so the cd was that big so you couldn't really there
wasn't you know
It's like a tiny little piece of art
And if you're downloading it, you're not even getting that you're just you're
just getting the music itself
That's it. Well, you will you would get you know downloadable artwork
But you're not really looking at the artwork while you're listening to it on
your mobile device, right?
You know, so you know the event of sitting down and and
Disappearing into the music, you know being a real music listener not I mean
while you're driving I get it
It's it's keeping you from killing people on the road
But when you go home and you sit and you just get lost in stuff
even um
Like those the cheap friggin headphones man the little earbuds my kids were
listening to stuff on that
It's like you guys haven't experienced
Music like good sound here. Try these headphones on they're like, whoa, I hear
stuff. I didn't hear before and
uh
But just seeing my kids get excited about going to a live concert, you know
They go there and they absorb it in
Like every sense
You're not just
He having your ears hear something
And that will never be
I don't know
Maybe the friggin goggles or
Some kind of uh audio visual stuff will
Reproduce live shows, but
There's something about being next to a sweaty fucker at a gig and you know
them pushing you or
Uh, you know seeing someone headbang wildly or getting thrown over the top of
you and
There's just so much smells things like that that just can't be recreated
so live music my daughter just like
I can't believe that guy just pressed a button on his computer and he's singing
over his own music
That's not performing. You know, she discovered that on her own
Hey, these guys are actually playing their instruments and they fucked up. They
fucked up a song. It was so cool
You know, I saw something that I wouldn't have you know really cool like that
Yeah, the lip-syncing thing man that when you go to see a concert and you find
out the people are lip-syncing. That's so
Disturbing
It's just what what have you done with this is what is the point of this?
It is disappointing. What is li