I think you have to sort of accept that nobody really knows where it`s going so there has to be a lot of impulsive kind of attitudes. So it`s like a train that`s moving and you don`t quite know where it`s going but you try to steer it in the best way you can realizing that it may go in different places that you had no idea.

As long as it says Metallica on the record it's Metallica.

Parenting changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others - which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.

Doing things the way you see it, going by your own heart and soul, that is pure artistic integrity. Whether the hair is six or sixty inches long, the eyes have make-up or not, the riffs are in 'E' or 'F' sharp, the amps are Marshall or not, all those things don't matter if you are doing it for the right reason, which to me means doing it for yourself!!

The day Metallica's over, i'm not going to put an ad looking for another band. I'll put my drumsticks on the shelf and there's 14 other things I wanna try. Metallica's the only band I've ever been and it's the only I ever wanna be in.

Metallica lives in a little bubble. We just do our own thing. We're not part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all the time. It's a great luxury. I don't think we were really appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps us alive. It's great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to piss our managers off.

People are always spewing this horseshit about how age doesn't matter. Well, it does matter! I'm thirty-five, and I'm happy to be thirty-five. I can't pretend I'm still a snot-nosed 21-year-old.