METALLICA's JAMES HETFIELD: 'Being A Parent Is So Hard'

In the one-and-a-half-minute video below, METALLICA frontman James Hetfield recalls turning 50 and reminiscing about having to balance between being a rock star and his family. His family is most important, because it's unconditional love. Some parents can smother their kids with rules and boundaries; and some look the other way and give no attention. James talks about being in the middle of those two; finding a balance between showing you care but setting boundaries as a parent. It's not easy, but James knows how important the balance is.

Says Hetfield: "When I turned fifty, there was a strange split in the road, thinking I'm this rocker dude who's gotta go out blazing. I'm an artist, I'm a struggling artist. I need to struggle, I have to… Maybe I have to fall farther. Maybe the elevator needs to go further down. I need to… I need to… I need to do some more research. I need to show my fans that I really care about them more than anything else, and forgot about the other split — my family — and that's an unconditional love. Just because my family kind of disintegrated as a kid doesn't mean my parents didn't have unconditional love for me. I know there are parents out there that struggle with loving their kids, or not knowing how to love their kids."

He continued: "God, being a parent is so hard! And I'll either smother that kid with control, or I'll just go like this [puts his hands up]. 'Whatever you do, I don't wanna know about it.' Being in the middle is so hard… so hard in the very middle, showing that you care. And being hated as a parent… Even when you're doing a good job, you're hated."

The latest Hetfield video, like the three before it, was produced by Road Recovery, an organization dedicated to helping young people battle addiction and other adversities, in partnership with Hooplaha.

It was during the late '90s that cracks began to show in both METALLICA's public image and Hetfield's tough-guy demeanor. Always a heavy drinker, his alcohol intake reached toxic levels in 2001 just as the band was starting work on its eighth studio album.

He recalled the moment when he made the decision to get help for his problems with drugs and alcohol. "My wife threw me out of the house and I went to rehearsal, and she could not believe that I had done that, and said, 'You've got to check yourself in somewhere,' and I said, 'Nah, no way, I'm the singer for METALLICA, I can't get help. I don't need help,'" he told The Pulse Of Radio. "A lot of denial. She was very adamant about me seeking the help and I went in, I think, for her and for my family."

Hetfield said that entering rehab was one of the scariest times in his life. "I was just kind of really scared," he said. "I was dropped off into this place and at that point my family was in question. Basically the family had split up, or I was no longer in the house, and it was totally one of the most scary times in my life. It was really like the earth was shaking under me, there was no stability, it felt like a constant earthquake. I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going."

Hetfield got clean and sober in 2002, returning to METALLICA to record the controversial "St. Anger" album and make the documentary "Some Kind Of Monster", which chronicled his struggle as well as the band's near-breakup.