Metallica and their non-profit All Within My Hands Foundation were the focus of a segment on the latest edition of CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend.
Each member of the band was included in the conversation with CBS reporter Luke Burbank, along with Carmen DeBerry, one of the 9,000 Metallica Scholars who have benefited from the foundation’s grants through trade schools and community colleges. DeBerry currently works as a commercial delivery driver after going through trade school via financial support from All Within My Hands.
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“I mean, to be honest, I didn’t know when I first signed up that it was through Metallica; they just called it a scholarship,” DeBerry told CBS News.
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That “Metallica Scholarship” was part of the more than $10 million that the band’s foundation has donated to workforce education, mostly in the form of grants. The charity has also supported hunger relief, disaster relief efforts for the California wildfires, and has been the focus of the band’s recurring Helping Hands benefit shows.
“We all came from, I mean, pretty humble beginnings,” said Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo. “At a certain point you realize, like, hey, you know, we’re selling tickets, we’re doing well, the ship’s not sinking. What can we do to make people’s lives better?”
Added Lars Ulrich: “I think instinctively you just want to help. I mean, we all depend on each other — you know, if you really want to break it down, then you go, humans are herd animals and really thrive, you know, the flock does better when everybody is doing well.”
The CBS feature gave Metallica a rare chance to speak publicly about their charity work.
“It is so amazing,” James Hetfield said. “We get to go make some people smile out there, deliver the goods by playing songs that saved us in our lives. And then to create a foundation that’s giving back to, you know, the blue collar America? We get to go from thousands that are making big noise, that we know we’re impacting, but to get a one-on-one, you know, heart-to-heart with somebody whose life you’ve changed, it changes mine.”
You can watch the full segment below.