A video that features all of James Hetfield’s vocals from Metallica’s Grammy performance with Lady Gaga is currently streaming.
Metallica’s Romanian fan club, RoLoad, has uploaded the video showing the group and Lady Gaga performing “Moth into Flame” at Sunday’s Grammy Awards. The broadcast was marred by a problem that left Hetfield’s mic silent for much of the song.
RoLoad, which posted the video on its Facebook page, notes that the web feed of Metallica’s performance was fine: “Only the TV broadcast had problems for some reason.”
Hetfield was evidently unable to hear himself onstage or be heard in the venue. He eventually moved over to share Lady Gaga’s mic, though his microphone problem was fixed by the song’s end.
TMZ reports that the frontman’s mic worked fine during the band’s line check prior to the performance but was accidentally unplugged by a stagehand.
The Recording Academy has offered up a slightly different explanation. A spokesperson says, “What we believe happened was that either a dancer or an extra clipped the line running on the floor and it unplugged at the base of the mic. It was, of course, accidental.”
You can watch the entire performance, minus the mic issues, below.
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Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
