It's safe to say that James Hetfeild is the coolest member of Metallica, and basically one of the coolest motherfuckers alive. The dude likes peforming for gnomes and the dude loves his heavy metal. Case in point, Metallica played Rock in Lisboa festival in Lisboa, Portugal a few weeks ago, and Mastodon was playing the bill as well. Rather than watch from the side of the stage, like some sort of VIP, James opted to go in the pit, like a real metalhead. Now obviously, a guy of Hetfield's fame would get malled if he went out into a public setting at a show, so he needed a disguise. Turns out he had the perfect disguise.
Here is a fan account sent into our bro-bros at MetalSucks:
So, during Mastodon at Rock in Rio, into the snake pit comes a guy fully dressed in metallica apparel, hoddie over the head, gloves in hands (with that heat!) and a mask. I was “ok, seen weirder stuff” and continue to rock on. But a friend of mine (the blonde girl on the picture below) grabbed me and said: ” That’s James!” And it really was him. Made some eye contact with him a few times, it really were his blue eyes. Also, the way he was rocking out, full of his manerisms (is this how you spell it?).
To add everything up, there was an security guy (not from the venue’s security) at the entrance of the pit, ALWAYS looking at him. To top it off, Jeff came in and snapped a few pictures of him. James was right behind me.
Most of the people in the pit didn’t noticed it, but the ones around him did. Nobody made a fuss about it, we let the man rock out, but we KNEW, and he knew we we’re on to him. In fact, he elbowed this friend of mine twice in a row, despite the fact she was not too close to him. Elbowed her once, she didn’t care, elbowed her twice, she looks back and he’s all relaxed, just watching the show… ;) He wanted us to notice him.
A few songs later, he walks out and a venue security grabs him; the other security guy that came with him talked with him. We couldn’t hear of course, but we later went to the venue security and asked him “Hey, was that James?” and his reply? “Yeah, he was in Metallica.”.
