One of the several footnotes to Metallica's music video for "Nothing Else Matters" is a scene featuring a game of darts, so to speak, with a very special target: Winger leader Kip Winger. Well, not Kip Winger literally, but a photo of him from a magazine affixed to a dart board in the studio rec room where Metallica recorded The Black Album. Drummer Lars Ulrich can be seen, clear as day, throwing darts at Kip's image, intently aiming for killer contact. To be honest, it was pretty goddamn funny.
Now, in some ways, it's better that it was only the video that the majority of viewers saw. The "Nothing Else Matters" video is one of the great examples of old school, "behind-the-scenes making of our album" music videos. But the Kip dart game sequence is also featured in its original context in Part 1 of Metallica's pre-Some Kind of Monster film opus, A Year and a Half In The Life of Metallica (1992 home video), where both Ulrich and vocalist-guitarist James Hetfield are screaming, "Die, Kip, Die!" repeatedly as the darts keep flying.
But apparently, at least one person felt bad about it, according to Kip Winger, who recently sat down for an interview on the recent episode of the Appetite for Distortion podcast, which you can watch in full just below.
Asked if he took offense, Winger said, "Nah, man, you can see a video on [the] Howard Stern [Show], where [Lars is] going, 'Man, I threw darts at Kip, but it was nothing personal.' 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. James is the kind of guy I can totally be friends with. And he was very sincere; 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."
Winger continued, saying "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? They were just doing what they were doing. I don't know. I can't answer to that."
Well, look… Kip Winger has got to be used to this by now—it's not just Metallica whose taken the piss out of him through the years. Remember how much he was relentlessly mocked on the original Beavis and Butt-head series? Although, in fairness, Kip does think that was funny, for what it's worth. "Beavis And Butt-Head was hysterical; it was really funny, Winger said. "I [just] ended up on the wrong end of it."
There are some people that believe that any publicity is good publicity. And even more people believe that if you're not getting noticed by someone for literally anything, then you're doing this show business thing all wrong. So, given the choice, what would you take: being remembered for writing "Seventeen," or having Metallica throw darts at you?
I'll take the darts.
