The four members of METALLICA took part in a question-and-answer session with The New Yorker writer Amanda Petrusich after the screening of their new documentary, “Metallica Saved My Life”, which premiered at New York City’s Tribeca Festival on Wednesday, June 11 at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. Fan-filmed video of the discussion can be seen below (shot and uploaded to YouTube by Lauren Wong).

“Metallica Saved My Life” documents the incredible stories of family, identity, redemption, loss, and salvation that make METALLICA‘s fans perhaps the most recognized example of why music matters to the world, and of why METALLICA is the kind of band that can literally save lives, including their own.

Filmmaker Jonas Åkerlund, who previously directed METALLICA‘s music videos for 1998’s “Turn The Page”, 1999’s “Whiskey In The Jar” and 2016’s “ManUNkind”, interviewed fans from 23 different countries for the documentary, which is slated for release later this year.

Speaking about his connection with the METALLICA fans, METALLICA frontman James Hetfield told Petrusich: “When I get up on stage, I feel so much more comfortable up there than I do in regular life a lot of the times. I feel like I’m so easily able to be me with these fans, and the more I’m me, the more they like it. It’s just so opposite of how I was brought up. Being yourself wasn’t always welcomed for some reason. But speaking my truth up there and other people understanding that truth, the four of us have gone through so much together, and we care about this a lot because a lot is still happening for us even into our fourth decade as a band. It’s gotten better every decade.”

James explained: “It’s okay to be human and to fuck up and learn from it. And that’s why we’re here. We’re here to learn. And we learn from each other. And if you don’t try, you don’t learn. So, I’ve grown probably the most in the darkest of times. So accepting the great stuff and the dark stuff as just life… Life isn’t happening to me; it’s happening with me.”

Hetfield added: “I’ve learned so much about myself and other people on how to live life better and to not take things completely seriously and to be on stage and be yourself. We get to do that. I got the best job in the world. The end.”

Asked about the “brutal transition” going from touring the world and playing to millions of adoring fans to returning home and adjusting to regular family life, Hetfield said: “The family around you that has to deal with that as well. You come home and they go out of their way to make you not a premadonna. ‘Here’s your list of shit to do.’ ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was just pampered.’

“We know we all have our own rituals that we have to go through,” he continued. “The coming down off the tour and the ramping up, all the nightmares of guitars made of rubber and I can’t get to the microphone. There’s lots of those dreams, anxiety dreams before. And what I’ve noticed about myself is that I build up stuff in my head so much, but as soon as I get behind that microphone, all is well. And there’s a part of the objectification that we have to deal with… And I’ve really worked on not fighting that, but just accepting it more and just realizing that these people are expressing themselves because of what you’ve done in their life. I have no idea what they’re going through. They think they know me and they really don’t. I don’t have time to get to know everybody. But it is really great to be able to go home and feel comfortable in whatever our hometowns are. And we just feel, like, ‘Okay, we just get to be people again.’ But we get the best of both worlds. So no complaints here at all.”

METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett chimed in: “I like to put myself in situations and around people where it’s like an instant equalization, and it just knocks me off the pedestal that I might have been on for the last three or four weeks. And that’s usually putting a surfboard in the water, going down the beach, surfing, getting beat up by the ocean and getting worried about getting beat up by other surfers. It instantly puts me down to Earth and just brings me back down.”

Speaking on the red carpet of the “Metallica Saved My Life” premiere, Hetfield stated about how the idea for the film came together: “It all started with a friend of ours, Jim Breuer, who is a comedian that was opening up for us in the arena tour, and he was traveling around with a lot of these fans and just kind of got to know them staying in the Airbnbs with them. And he says, ‘James, you have got to hear these fricking stories. They’re unbelievable — where these people came from, how they got into music and why.’ … Such deep emotional human stories. So he’s the one that inspired this in a way. We didn’t know what to do with it at first. What? Do you just do a podcast or blah, blah, blah? It’s, like, no. Let’s get together. And everyone knows our bio; we wanna get the fans’ bios out there.”

Regarding why Jonas was the right person to helm “Metallica Saved My Life”, Hetfield said: “He’s our kind of favorite go-to guy, and he gets us. He’s done a couple of our just song videos and whatnot, and he totally gets us. He gets that world. He grew up in a metal band himself from Sweden. He’s a big fan of metal, so we knew he was the guy.”

James went on to talk about how the METALLICA members’ personal stories are intertwined with those of the band’s fans. He said: “It’s not like we clock in at eight and clock out at five. Our job, it kind of… It’s, like, we’re leaving home for a month and a half. There’s an anxiety, there’s a weirdness, there’s a ritualistic psycho-ness in our heads that happens. And the winddown after that too. How do you get back into regular life? And, hey, I’m not objectified by my neighbors now. I’m just a dude, which is great. I’m taking the garbage out in my underwear, being a regular guy. And that’s what we are at the end of the day. And this is all just wonderful dust. It’s not real out here, essentially. So we try to stay as grounded as possible, and I think this movie really shows how we are the same as our fans, and we’ve got, and they’ve got, a great story to tell.”

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich was equally excited about sharing the fans’ stories, saying:  ”This is a celebration of the diversity of our fans. I’ve said for years, for decades, if you line up 10 METALLICA fans, you get 10 different stories. If you line up a hundred METALLICA fans, you get a hundred different stories. This is 10 to 15 of those stories. We’re turning the spotlight away from us and on to the fans and celebrating how unique our fanbase is and all those great human beings. And this is really ultimately about trying to break down that barricade that separates a band from its audience and trying to celebrate the oneness of all of it and how we’re all in it together and how we all are METALLICA together.”