Metallica released the single “Turn the Page” on November 16, 1998. Their cover of Bob Seger’s account of life on the road led Garage Inc., the double album of covers that followed eight days later. The international single centered on the exhausting hours between performances.
Seger had first released the song on Back in ’72 in 1973, before recording the live version included on Live Bullet in 1976. The story came from experience. In an interview republished by Classic Rock in 2018, he recalled being mocked for his long hair during a late-night stop in Wisconsin. That encounter fed the song, but his larger subject was the strain of constant travel and separation from home. Its details belonged to a working musician’s routine: the drive, the scrutiny from strangers and the effort of getting back onstage.
Metallica kept that perspective while changing the arrangement. Kirk Hammett used slide guitar to carry the melody associated with the original’s saxophone, giving the familiar opening a different voice. James Hetfield took over the narrator’s part, and the heavier backing made the fatigue in the words feel more forceful. Seger appreciated the changes. Discussing Metallica’s version in that same interview, he said, “I especially liked the drums on it.” His approval focused on a specific musical choice the band had made.
The recording came from the September and October 1998 sessions at The Plant Studios in Sausalito, California, with production credited to Bob Rock, Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. It became the fourth track on Garage Inc.’s first disc. That disc gathered 11 covers, while the second collected earlier recordings, including the material from the band’s 1987 The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited. The two-disc structure placed the Seger interpretation alongside a longer history of Metallica recording other people’s songs, stretching back to the covers issued with “Creeping Death” in 1984.
The single carried some of that history into its own packaging. International Part One paired “Turn the Page” with live versions of “Bleeding Me,” “Stone Cold Crazy” and “The Wait.” Those last two songs also appeared as studio recordings on the album’s archival disc. For listeners buying the single, the extras connected the new cover to songs Metallica had already taken into their live repertoire.
Director Jonas Åkerlund extended the song’s subject in the accompanying music video, filmed in Los Angeles in October 1998. Ginger Lynn played a single mother working as a stripper and sex worker while raising her daughter. The film moved away from a musician’s touring schedule, placing the song against another life shaped by difficult work, exhaustion and responsibility. Its mother-and-daughter story gave the lyrics a separate narrative alongside the band’s performance.
“Turn the Page” went on to spend 11 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, carrying its run across late 1998 and early 1999.
