For over 20 years, Metallica has been pounding out rock tunes, and is now the seventh top-selling act in the United States. Music in Schools Today spoke with Metallica's singer/guitarist James Hetfield and guitarist Kirk Hammett about the role that music has played in their lives.

Kirk
My first interest in music all stems back to my brother's record collection. He bought all the newest album releases in the mid-sixties from people like the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Hendrix, Grateful Dead, and I was a bratty little kid who just wandered into the room and wanted to look at the album covers, but found myself gravitating more toward the music than just album graphics. It's probably my earliest solid memory of actually being drawn to music and showing interest in music, and it's stayed with me ever since.

James
I was fortunate enough to have musical instruments in the house. I had two older half-brothers who played in bands, so there was a drum [set] there, as well as a guitar. There was actually a piano sitting there, so I had my choice of whatever I wanted. So I did band around on all of them and to this day, I can play a little bit of each one of them. I became a musician because of a posters I had up in my room. I wanted to be on a poster. That was it. And also I didn't want to get stuck in a regular job. I thought music -- you won't get stuck in one spot. I could go anywhere with music, and there was more of a creative outlet.

Kirk
As a kid, I carried a set [of figures] to the piano, looking at these little plaster busts of Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Hayden, Bach, saying I'm going to do that when I grow up, and would when I was about eight years old. I became an oboe player, but I got stuck with the oboe because I really feel something for it, but the idea of being a composer has perversely come true for me, being a rock and roller. I went to Julliard, I went to all these official music schools there could possibly be. From then I joined a rock and roll band. And what we're doing here with Metallica is exactly what I've been doing since I was a kid.

James
As far as just listening to different musicians that my brother had, records really influenced me to continue playing music. My mother forced me to play the piano at a young age -- take lessons -- but I thank her for that because it developed my ear. Because it really helped me, even though we don't need to read music now in the music we play, it taught me theory and how notes work together, and it really developed my ear, all with the early piano lessons.

Kirk
I think if the right music programs were available to me when I was in school, I wouldn't be cutting school to go home and play music. I'd stay in school and play music, if I knew that I could get a decent grade out of it and actually make good use of that time at school. I would have definitely stayed in school and studied music. But where I went to school, the music program was just like your standard jazz band, and at the time I was a rock and roller. In retrospect, I would have took that jazz band class, but I didn't. But you know, I think that it's important for music to be taught in school, because if a child or a young person shows the tiniest interest in music, it can be the beginning of something really big, and in retrospect if I had that opportunity back then and would have taken it, I would have been that much more of a musician now.

I didn't have that much support when I was younger. I was a real short child, a real short teenager, and I think in regards to my time the most influence when I was starting out I would have to say it would be my friend John Marshall who happened to start playing guitar at the same time, who happened to be one of two friends I had at the time. And I was just me and him playing on guitar in a room and we would love try to outdo each other. And we had one guitar between the two of us a lot of the times, and we'd get into a tug-of-war regarding the guitar, saying "I want to play it," and he'd be saying "no, I want to play it," and we were just trying to outdo each other and impress each other and that attitude stuck with me and is still with me till this day -- it's just that it's grown into a thing called Metallica.

James
A lot of the musical instruments in the house to me were toys. They were toys. You got on them and you just played. You wanted to do things till the lessons came in but the drums or whatever was laying around were toys. We've got a little dour near and we have actually -- and we've got certain baby cats that are instruments that are toys, whether they're tambourines or things you knock -- so not being forced into it was a big thing as well. It became part of your life.

Kirk
The reason why I became a musician is that I thought it would be a way to get closer to my heroes, and to have met mean heroes as Jimmy Hendrix. And as a kid I didn't know much about him, and I thought learning his music would unlock some of the mysteries that surrounded his whole persona, and I thought it would bring me closer to the performer and pretty much that's how I became a musician. I was drawn to the music as well as the persona, and I thought it was a way to get closer to the musicians, in a musical way as well as a structural way. I'm still doing that. To this day, really.

James
When you're in school there are so many things that are forced upon you that don't seem so natural to you. There are certain times that you need to learn changes and certain times that you're not ready for them. But I thank music from day one -- you move to music, you move to sound. Music has helped me a lot in my life when there weren't that many friends around. I put on songs that make me feel good or feel a part of something, and being able to play instruments, you can express your feelings that way. So it's really been a big therapy for myself. I think it's extremely important for children to have at least within a grasp some sort of instrument.

Kirk
I think the best way to get into the music is you first have to have a sincere motivation and you have to want to have your music be heard, whether it's an original composition, a composition that's been around, like Michael says, for 500 years and you know as a musician that's 90% of the time that's something that you want to do. My advice is you should just go out there and be as brave as you can and just go out and play for as many people as you can as often as you can.

James
Music really changed my life without me knowing. It really was such a natural thing. I didn't sit down and decide, boy I better do this later on in life. When I picked up the instrument and began playing, I knew I wanted to do this, whether I did have to get another job doing something else, I was going to play music. If it helped me out financially, fine. After we played our first gig, it was pretty clear that we wanted to do this for the rest of our lives. Whether you're playing with a band or a huge orchestra or just the four of us, you get a kinship, you get a family vibe. Some of us have grown up in broken families, and that really is helpful as well.

Kirk
Music gives me a purpose. For me, music is my soul reason for being on this earth. If it wasn't for music, I don't know what I would be doing. And music gives me a place to fit in the big picture. It gives me a lot of self-esteem, and it feels good to play music. And it doesn't matter if I get paid or not -- I'd still be playing, and that's how deeply I feel about it.