YEAR
2009
INDUCTED BY
Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
CATEGORY
Performers
Heavy metal went mainstream thanks to Metallica.
A thrashing Bay Area quartet fond of breakneck-speed riffs glinting with menace and aggression—owing to their affinity for new wave of British heavy metal bands—the group are responsible for some of the most brutal, enduring rock & roll albums of the ’80s and ’90s.
Cliff Burton
Kirk Hammett
James Hetfield
Jason Newsted
Robert Trujillo
Lars Ulrich
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Deborah Frost
Happy families, Leo Tolstoy noted, are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
That goes double, if not quadruple, for bands, particularly those who achieve greatness. The picture has never been painted so graphically as in Some Kind of Monster, the 2004 documentary that chronicled the previous three years and crack-up of Metallica, at the very pinnacle of its fortune and fame.
