I'm just sittin here trying not to be unhappy.

Whenever I buy a painting, someone invariably says, "Oh, what a great investment." And I hate that reaction. To me, it's a matter of love and not an exchange of equity.

The music business, or what`s left of it, is obviously a very - it`s like a wild west now.

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.

What's the message in Metallica? There is no message, but if there was a message, it really should be look within yourself, don't listen to me, don't listen to James, don't listen to anybody, look within yourself for the answers.

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.

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.