James Hetfield of Metallica and wife Francesca Hetfield have called it quits, as the rocker has quietly filed for divorce.
Close sources to the ex-couple, said James filed in Colorado earlier this year, but their marriage’s end flew under the radar of the public.
James and Francesca were married in 1997 after five years of dating. They then welcomed three children, daughters Cali, 24, and Marcella, 20, and son Castor, 22.
The couple remains cordial and in contact, after the divorce, for their children’s sake.
Hetfield, 59, has previously credited his soon-to-be ex-wife, 52, for helping him get control of his anger and alcohol issues, telling Joe Rogan in 2017, “Fear was a big motivator in that for me. Losing my family, that was the thing that scared me so much, that was the bottom I hit, that my family is going to go away because of my behaviors that I brought home from the road. I got kicked out of my house by my wife, I was living on my own somewhere, I did not want that.”
He went on to elaborate, “she kicked my ass right out of the house and that scared the s—t out of me. She said, ‘Hey, you’re not just going to the therapist now, and talking about this, you’ve got to go somewhere and sort this s–t out,’ so that’s what I did.”
At the time, he was determined to make it work due to his own broken childhood.
“Maybe as part of my upbringing, my family kind of disintegrated when I was a kid,” he explained. “Father left, mother passed away, had to live with my brother, and then kind of just, where did my stuff go? It just kind of floated away, and I do not want that happening. No matter what’s going on, we’re going to talk this stuff out, and make it work.”
