Metallica’s “One” became a defining song for metal in 1989, but its origins actually lie in a 1939 anti-war novel that vanished from public circulation just as the US entered World War II.

This is the story of how Johnny Got His Gun shaped Metallica’s One, leading to an iconic video which they had to pay to control, and how a breakdown accidentally wrote the blueprint for modern metal.

Johnny Got His Gun

Dalton Trumbo was a politically active author who would later become a member of the Communist Party USA. In 1939, he published a book that refused to glamourize war. Johnny Got His Gun tells the story of a soldier, Joe Bonham, who survives a battlefield explosion and loses everything that makes life recognisable. Arms. Legs. Face. Voice. Sight. Hearing. What remains is a conscious mind, trapped inside a body that cannot respond.

The book is explicit in its message. War doesn’t create heroes; it creates survivors who wish they had not survived. Within two years of the United States entering World War II, that message became inconvenient.

In 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the politics shifted in an instant, and with the Communist Party USA now supporting the war, so long as the US was allied with the Soviets against Nazi Germany, Trumbo and his publishers quietly suspended reprinting Johnny Got His Gun until the conflict ended.

Fast forward to 1959, and Trumbo tried to bring the book back into print, but when right-wing isolationists began contacting him directly, asking for copies, he reported the letters to the FBI. But instead of ending the matter, it drew renewed attention to Trumbo himself, as his communist views once again made him a person of interest, and so Johnny Got His Gun slipped back into obscurity.

That would last until 1971, when Trumbo would turn the novel into a theatrical film release.

Whilst it received a relatively warm reception, the film cost about $1 million to make but would only gross about $770,000 at the box office, and so once again Johnny Got His Gun faded into obscurity…

Enter Metallica

During the writing sessions of Master of Puppets, James Hetfield & Lars Ulrich were already circling an idea of writing a song from the perspective of not being able to reach out and communicate with anyone around you, with the finished lyrics of “Deep down inside, I feel the scream, This terrible silence stops me” reflecting how the song was built.

And this is where their managers entered the picture to shape the course of One, as Lars would state in the video “2 Of One“

So when we were writing songs for the Justice album in the fall of 87, the idea came up again. And one day I was talking to Cliff Bernstein, our manager, about the idea, and he suggested that, or said that there was a book called Johnny Got His Gun written by a guy named Dalton Trumbo way back in the, I think actually late 30s, which was about a guy in a similar situation just sort of played against the background of World War I.

Peter Mensch, our other manager, told us, which we actually didn’t know, that there was a movie of the same name, Johnny Got His Gun, that was obviously based on the book and that Dalton Trumbo had directed himself.

Not only did the narrative of Johnny Got His Gun fit perfectly into the idea of One, but the band also went even further and secured full ownership and rights to the film. No official figure has ever been released, but there are reports that it cost them around $100,000 to secure the film, instead of paying $10,000 per scene plus royalties required.

This was a big commitment from the band to develop the idea of One into something substantial, as it was also their first-ever video release, which was controversial at the time, as they were accused of selling out due to breaking their “No Video Rule”. But the resulting video was uncompromising. Hospital scenes intercut with the band performing in darkness. Joe Bonham banging his head in Morse code, pleading for death, and despite the morbid message and lyrical chorus of “Hold my breath as I wish for death, Oh please, God, wake me”, MTV played it relentlessly.

Whilst it found huge popularity on MTV, the band was famously snubbed by the Grammys in 1989, with Jethro Tull winning the award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance. The response was immediate, with attendees booing the result. Metallica would later win a Grammy for One, for Best Metal Performance in 1990, but not before Lars had his say, openly criticising the Grammys when receiving the award.

Throughout this huge amount of exposure, Johnny Got His Gun, a novel once withdrawn from the public, was now suddenly reaching millions through a metal song, but behind the scenes, the band was actually still in turmoil as they struggled to grieve the death of Cliff Burton, whilst also integrating Jason Newsted.

This famously led to the bass being turned down in the mix for …And Justice For All, and years later, in 2013, Jason Newsted shared his thoughts with me about the mix of the album and the idea of it being remixed via And Justice For Jason.

Pete Bailey: I was wondering if you are aware of And Justice for Jason?

Jason Newsted: Yeah I got one two weeks ago! A fan went here you go, and I asked, you want me to sign that? And he goes, no, look! And I go, Justice for Jason, what the hell is that? And he goes, no, it’s your bass on the thing. I’m like, all right, cool. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I mean, it’s pretty cool to have, and it was a nice gift.

Pete Bailey: In hindsight, do you think you would have liked the bass to be a bit higher on that mix?

Jason Newsted: I don’t know if it’s good enough. I mean, I’ll have to listen to that thing and see what it’s all about. A very different, um, different deal. You know, like And Justice, everything’s EQ’d like this. Bass and guitar are a EQ’d like this, so it’s all the same. Fighting for the same space. That’s literal science, man, right? How your ears work, that’s how what’s what happened.

Pete Bailey: Are you still writing like that? Do you still feel you are a guitar player on the bass?

Jason Newsted: No, no, no. I learned to play bass then, and I’ve played bass ever since then.

Despite the production issues, One had a very important musical element that would change metal forever. The song is considered by many to feature the very first breakdown with synchronized riffs and double kick drums.

It’s been used many times over, from death metal to hardcore, metalcore and even inspired Fear Factory to start an entire band, based just on that One Breakdown, as guitarist Dino Cazares explained to us at Download Festival 2024:

Metallica did this thing on a song called One where the guitars and drums were syncopated together, I heard that, and was like I’m gonna start a band like that and that’s exactly what I did. So all of our records are very syncopated with the drums, mainly the kick drums and the guitars are locked in together. That’s pretty much become our staple.

Metallica – One Lyrics In Full

To this day, the endurance of One can be felt in all parts of the metal community, but the message of One and Johnny Got His Gun is more important than ever. Whilst we’ve seen the decline of MTV and The Grammys, One has consistently found new audiences, with nearly 800,000 million streams on Spotify, nearly 400 million views on YouTube and remaining a key part of the Metallica setlist, with it being their 5^th most played song live.

From a story that was once withdrawn because its message about war was inconvenient, decades on, that message hasn’t dated; if anything, it’s now become a lot harder to ignore.

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