When Metallica took Napster to court and won, putting the company out of business in the process, they faced a backlash that still follows them to this day.
Fans felt betrayed that the band would go to such extremes to deny them access to their music without paying for it, especially those who remember when Metallica released Garage Days Revisited and Lars gave many interviews where he openly admitted to going to his friend’s homes when he was younger and copying their albums onto blank cassettes, basically doing the exact same thing he destroyed Napster for.
Since then, however, many musicians have come out in support of what Metallica did, and even to this day, their lawyer is 100% convinced that Metallica took the right course of action. Talking to Variety, Peter Paterno said;
“They were basically thieves! It’s not a popular opinion. The popular opinion now is a sort of revisionist history that we shouldn’t have sued Napster, we should have worked something out with them — well, no, there was nothing to work out with them. ‘You could have made a deal.’ What was the deal? People were getting music for free. It was really necessary in order to set the ground rules for what music is worth. Those fans aren’t fans — fans pay for music and appreciate its value. It’s like Dre said when we told him about Napster,’ he said, ‘I work 24/7 in the lab and these guys just steal it? Screw them.'”
Lars has always claimed that it was never about the money, when he was asked about the fallout from the case back in 2017 by Sonar, he stated;
“After all the Napster stuff, the preconception is that Metallica is greedy and cares about money and is money-hungry and money-driven or whatever. That’s a very big misconception.”
I will openly put my hands up here and admit that when all this happened I was firmly of the belief that what Metallica did was insane and they didn’t care about the fans and this was all purely motivated by greed, but as the years have gone by I’ve mellowed somewhat, and realised the error of mh ways and I now feel that Metallica were wrongly cast in the roles of pantomime villains.
The early days of the internet were somewhat akin to the Wild West, where it was a free for all and you could get anything you wanted, for nothing, just by knowing which torrent sites to use. In doing so you were depriving the artists who created the work their rightful payment, but who cares? Right? They’ve got enough money? Yeah? Well, perhaps a band like Metallica has, but what about when people are downloading Icelandic Ska Punk or some such thing?
Okay, I’m being somewhat facetious, but the fact remains that all bands rely on the income they make to survive, and if you’re denying a group who are barely getting by their lifeblood because you’re too much of a tight ass to cough up the few quid it costs to buy their record, then can you really call yourself a fan?
Metallica took a lot of crap for what they did, but in making a stand they gave a lot of smaller bands a fighting chance to make a living out of what they love, and they should never have to apologize for that.
