Some people try and tell you what the songs are about and it bores me to death.

I guess that seeing yourself on a screen is something that you get used to. Let's face it, these days, there's really nothing that you do that doesn't get filmed.

This isn't about fans, greed or money. It's about being morally right or wrong. Nobody is governing the way music gets from artists to fans. It's all running amok.

Back then, I was really into composing the entire solo, beginning to end. I wanted to have it at least 80 to 90 percent complete before going into the studio. I didn't improvise in the studio. I was young, and I didn't really have the development in my playing or the ability to show up with nothing and then put down 500 ideas. I can do that now because I'm so much more of a musician now.

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.

I don't like to be pigeonholed, and I really like that people never really know what's going on with Metllica.

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.