Sammy Hagar recently said via Instagram that Metallica still owes him $200 for a bet that he made with them back in 1988. The Instagram post was sharing a press photo that was taken prior to the Monsters of Rock ’88 tour that featured Van Halen Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica, and Kingdom Come.
Hagar wrote on the post, “This was the press conference for the Monsters of Rock stadium tour, I must admit we had a good time that day hanging out with all these guys. Metallica hadn’t [broken] yet with ‘Enter Sandman,’ but they crushed it every night [and] put a big hurt on Dokken, who had to follow them — ouch!”
Hagar continued to say, “I bet the members of Metallica $100 each that at the end of this tour their next record would go platinum, So far, Lars [Ulrich] and Kirk [Hammett] are the only ones that paid up.”
The record that had the best placed on it was And Justice for All, which was released in September of 1988. The album quickly became their fastest selling LP to date, going on to sell over 8 million copies in the United States.
Back in 1991, Hammet commented on how the experience of touring Justice brought Metallica to ultimately rethink their songwriting approach. He recalled,
In 1991, Hammett recalled how the experience of touring Justice led Metallica to rethink their approach to songwriting, which influenced the tighter arrangements on their self-titled 1991 LP, commonly known as the Black Album.
“Touring behind it, we realized that the general consensus was that songs were too f-cking long. Everyone would have these long faces. And I’d think, ‘Godd-mn, they’re not enjoying it as much as we are.’ … I can remember getting offstage one night after playing ‘Justice’ and one of us saying, ‘F-ck, that’s the last time we ever play that f-cking song!'”
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