Robert Cavuoto of Metal-Rules.com spoke with Gabriel Kuo, the art director and designer for Messengers – The Guitars Of James Hetfield book.
Kuo was asked about Metallica frontman’s involvement in writing the history of the guitars and how it felt personal, like a one-on-one conversation about the guitars:
“That was what we wanted to achieve,” answered Kuo. “James picked all the guitars that you see in the book. He has something like 450 guitars, but these are the 45 that were important to him. Some guitars he even had to track down that were no longer in his possession, like ‘FUK EM UP,’ which producer Bob Rock had. These are the ones he feels tell his complete story, he remembers the most, and the ones he wanted to talk about. I would do my research to find out what the important aspects of this guitar could be versus some things that were not as important.
“I wanted to mention Zach Harmon and Steffan Chirazi because they were both great collaborators on this project. Steffan and I would shape a list of details we wanted James to speak about for each guitar, and he would always come back with a great essay. And with Zach, he was instrumental in helping me cross-reference everything with his notes and database. Zach is the gear guru for Metallica, so he had a huge hand in helping me distill so much of this information.
“Because James is a busy guy, you can’t get him to sit down and shoot the shit for days on end. You got to come at him with a purpose. From an editorial perspective, we asked them the most important things through the questionnaire to illuminate and make that guitar meaningful for him and the reader. He would come back with a great story for every guitar. We wanted to balance the technical and emotional aspects attached to each guitar because that is the takeaway we wanted for the reader: to have that emotional journey. We wanted to know where the emotion started with him, the middle, and where he’s going now. That’s how it tied to these instruments and the stories behind them.”
Messengers: The Guitars Of James Hetfield, is out now. Watch an unboxing video below.
In this gorgeous coffee table book, James shares his personal collection of treasured guitars and reveals the story and significance of each within his life and career. The guitars are displayed and described over a stunning 400 pages, accompanied by lush, museum-quality portraits by acclaimed photographer Scott Williamson.
The book is currently available in the Met Store in standard hardcover, and they've just received additional stock of the Signed Slipcase Edition and a very limited number of the Deluxe Box Edition. So, if you want one of the limited edition releases, get going now!
Order here.
