KIP WINGER Says METALLICA Nearly Ruined WINGER’s Career: “LARS Never Apologized, But JAMES Did”

In a recent conversation with “Appetite for Distortion” podcast, Kip Winger talked about Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield saying how differently both are about the responsibility of dealing such a blow to fellow musicians.

Metallica in particular did metric tons of damage to Winger’s reputation by releasing footage of Lars Ulrich throwing darts at a poster of Kip Winger as part of both the mega-popular “Nothing Else Matters” music video, as well as “A Year and A Half With Metallica” documentary.

Here’s what Kip said:

“You can see a video on Howard Stern, where (Lars) is going, ‘Man, I threw darts at Kip but it was nothing personal’, and he’s never apologized, but James Hetfield called me about a year and a half ago and apologized for the incident. James was really cool.

“And, you know, James is the kind of guy I could totally be friends with. He was very sincere, and it wasn’t like, he just called to apologize and then blow me off. He’s actually texted me a few times; we text every now and then.

“I don’t think Lars would ever call me to apologize. But you know… I think everybody was just young kids. And they were thinking it was funny. To me, it’s not funny to slag off a fellow musician. But, who knows? I mean, they were just doing what they were doing.”