In 1991 there was a kind of shift in rock music in America - it was shifting away from all the hair bands in LA. And with Kurt Cobain you felt you were connecting to the real person, not to a perception of who he was - you were not connecting to an image or a manufactured cut-out. You felt that between you and him there was nothing; it was heart-to-heart. There are very few people who have that ability. I never met him but our guitarist Kirk Hammett had a relationship with him. We were doing this tour with Guns N' Roses in the US in 1992 and we wanted Nirvana to come out and join us. Kirk asked Kurt, but while Cobain said he would play with Metallica anywhere in the world, at any time, on any stage, he would not step up on the same stage as Guns N' Roses - obviously he felt that Axl was the antithesis to what he was. As I said, I never met Kurt, and he's probably the only guy in rock'n'roll that I have never met that I really wanted to - other than Bon Scott maybe. What a sad thing we can't hear the fourth Nirvana album. It would have been so great to be able to see how that would have evolved.

Music·Culture·Rock·Authenticity