I hope your head is not spinning with my bouncing around with different genres of music in this series. For those of you of a certain age, this week’s selection will bring back memories of your own youth. The song I have chosen is “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica. I know some of you will be wondering have I gone off the rails picking a song by a Heavy Metal band?
The answer is no, I’m still a professional musician and I know lots of fellow musicians who love this song. Not just because of memories of their own youth, but also because it is high sophisticated music in terms of its melody and chord changes. Orchestras love to play the song as do pianists. YouTube is littered with piano renditions of this song. Some pianists, like Scott Davis, make their living touring playing only Metallica and providing sheet music transcriptions of Metallica for others to play.
Our own students love to learn this music. Not only is it something to wow their friends with but also their parents. When parents hear their own kid playing Metallica, they no longer seem to mind paying my wife and I $80/hour to teach their kid piano. We hold two student concerts a year, early June and early December. Three years ago we had a drummer friend, lead Guitar friend, and my wife played bass and put together a set at the student concert which included “Nothing Else Matters, Fade to Black and Enter Sandman’. To this day, parents keep talking about it wondering when we will something like that again.
Metallica emerged as a band in 1981 in Los Angeles lead by Danish drummer and primary songwriter Lars Ulrich. The band recorded a number of albums and met with intermediate success. They were primarily a touring band where they developed a faithful following. However, it was not until 1992 when they released their Metallica album which included the song “Nothing Else Matters” that the band hit the big time.
Like all rock bands heavy on touring, alcohol and drugs soon took their toll on some band members and Metallica was constantly replacing some of their members. Gradually, Mettalica started to fade, just like their song – Fade to Black. They are still around doing some touring and working on new albums – but no longer big time. The YouTube of “Nothing Else Matters’ I have chosen features a piano with an orchestral background – give it a listen.