Friday, January 13, 1984 was a bad day for . The crown princes of thrash metal had pulled into Boston, Massachusetts, where they were due to play a show at local sweatbox The Channel the following night. They had just returned from a much-needed two-week break from the relentless treadmill of playing, rehearsing, writing and drinking that seemingly hadn’t stopped since the release of their landmark debut album six months earlier, and their spirits were high.
They were soon brought crashing down to earth. The night before the gig, on that ill-fated Friday the 13th, thieves broke into Metallica’s equipment van outside the venue. Lars Ulrich’s drum kit was stolen, as were frontman and guitarist ’s Marshall head cabinets.
Financial inconvenience aside, the robbery temporarily stalled their momentum. Understandably, they were gutted. But this particular cloud would have a silver lining.
Bereft of his amp, James Hetfield picked up his acoustic guitar and began to write a melancholy arpeggiated melody and some uncharacteristically vulnerable lyrics: The sentiments may have been out of proportion to the crime, but the song that came out of it would be pivotal for Metallica. A seven-minute semi-acoustic suicide letter, was the controversial centrepiece of their second album, . “If we’d been told when we were recording that we were gonna record a ballad on the next record, I’d have said, ‘Fuck off!’” Hetfield later said.
Both the song and the album it appeared on we.