METALLICA Hire Psychologist For 'St. Anger' Management

July 25, 2003

Jon Bream of the Minneapolis Star Tribune is reporting that when shit hit the fan, METALLICA "brought in sports psychologist Phil Towle, who has worked with pro football's St. Louis Rams, an Olympic silver-medalist swimmer and other athletes.

"Towle's first session with METALLICA was coincidentally the day bassist Jason Newsted unexpectedly announced he was quitting after 14 years. The members of the quartet were confused about dynamics, direction and decision-making. They clearly needed group therapy.

" 'Phil gets guys on the same team to stop letting their differences and their idiosyncrasies get in the way of the progress of the team,' said METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich. 'He helped us try to understand who we were, where we were coming from, why things ended up the way they did with Jason.'

"After several sessions with Towle, lead singer and chief control freak James Hetfield decided to head to treatment for alcohol issues. Meanwhile, the shrink continued to meet with Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and producer Bob Rock.

"The group therapy intensified after Hetfield's four-month stay ended. 'We were getting to know each other again,' said Ulrich, 39, 'or maybe getting to know each other for the first time, like my wife said when I came home one day. That's pretty scary after 18 years.

"I know that sounds terribly black-and-white. It's about being comfortable about opening sides of yourself up. There were certainly sides of James and a whole new truth and honesty. The facade of 'Hi, I'm James Hetfield the lead singer of METALLICA' — that was left in rehab. What he came back with was more like, 'Hi, I'm James Hetfield, human being on planet Earth.' " Read more.

Find more on

Prev More News Next

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).