Metallica’s James Hetfield admits Kip Winger ‘Nothing Else Matters’ diss was “uncool”

Metallica frontman James Hetfield called Kip Winger to apologise for dissing him in the band’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’ video.

In the video for the legendary metal anthem, Lars Ulrich uses a picture of Winger’s face as a dartboard, one of many digs at the singer across popular culture in the ’90s.

Now, Winger has reflected on the hate, and revealed that Hetfield called him a few years ago to apologise for the “uncool” move.

“It was the irony of my whole existence, because my focus has always been the music and being a good musician,” he told Yahoo! in a new interview.

“James Hetfield called me to apologise about a year and a half ago,” he added. “He was really contrite and was like, ‘You know what? That was uncool. And I’m sorry we did that.’

“It was a very nice conversation. It seemed that the guy was completely awesome and I totally could be friends with him. But, you know… it was really Lars [who threw the dart]…”

Elsewhere, Ulrich has recounted how he had to stop fans from stealing cushions from venues they were playing and throwing them around during their sets.

Speaking of the Long Beach Arena specifically, Ulrich said: “What are there, 16,000 seats in there? We’ve paid for about 15,000 of those 16,000 seats over the years because every time we were playing Long Beach Arena, people would just take the cushion, you know, play frisbee with it inside the arena.

“The next day [the venue staff] would be like, ‘Okay, Metallica, here’s those $300,000 worth of cushions that you have to pay for’.”

Elsewhere, last month Metallica dropped a new live EP titled ‘The Amsterdam Sessions’. The four-track EP, recorded in April at Ready Set Studios in Amsterdam, consists of ’72 Seasons’ cuts ‘Lux Æterna’ and ‘If Darkness Had A Son’, alongside classics ‘Master Of Puppets’ and ‘Nothing Else Matters’.

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