Metallica - Updated Edition

The Complete Illustrated History

Martin Popoff

• Publisher: Voyageur Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781627889834
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

This new, thoroughly updated edition is the ultimate tribute to Metallica, complete with coverage of the band's most recent DVD set and live albums.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1981, Metallica has become the best-selling heavy metal group in music history, with an estimated 100 million worldwide album sales. The band has toured and performed on all seven continents.

In this updated edition of Metallica: The Complete Illustrated History, acclaimed heavy metal journalist Martin Popoff leads a roster of celebrated heavy metal writers in taking on Metallica's story, analyzing studio albums, and providing a complete discography. More than 300 images complement the band's story: their formative years spent woodshedding in the clubs of Los Angeles; tragedies, such as the death of founding bassist Cliff Burton; the triumphs of multiple platinum recordings; personnel changes, such as the departures of Dave Mustaine and Jason Newsted; and tours around the world. Live-performance and candid backstage photographs are accompanied by memorabilia.

This updated edition includes coverage of Metallica's two Orion Music + More festival gigs in 2012 and 2013; the band's 2012 departure from Warner Bros. and the formation of Blackened Records; the release of the Quebec Magnetic two DVD live set in 2012; and the release of Through the Never, an innovative 3D, no-dialog horror movie interspersed with Metallica live footage and a live soundtrack album in 2013. The band's Antarctica performance generated a digital live album, Freeze 'Em All, and Metallica toured the world in 2013, 2014, and 2015, with shows from England to Norway to Peru. All of this history and more is packed in the updated edition of Metallica.

Consider this updated edition a loud tribute to one of heavy metal's hardest-rocking bands.

1.

A DANGEROUS MEETING

1981–1982

“The English bands were more about playing what they wanted and, ‘F*** you, we don’t care about record contracts; we’ll just put it out ourselves.’ This was obviously borrowed directly from the punk thing. It was metal getting a second wind from the streets. That is where the thrash and speed bands in the ’80s got their attitudes from. It wasn’t what you looked like; it was like, here’s the music, here’s the attitude, and we don’t give a f*** what anybody else thinks about it.”

—Lars Ulrich, US Rocker, 1991

Somewhere between Unleashed in the East and British Steel, Judas Priest had moved heavy metal from a kerranging, mathematical guitar sound used often enough on records to pass muster, toward a language, a package, a credo, a multisensory experience. A light bulb flashed with the kids and an often-denigrated music became a badge (or sew-on patch) of honor. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal turned Priest’s whistling in the dark into an army screaming for vengeance—vengeance upon the punks, upon peaceful easy country rock, upon disco, upon glam.

The Old Waldorf, San Francisco, October 18, 1982. The band would soon grow dissatisfied with McGovney’s bass chops and bring in Trauma’s Cliff Burton. © Bill Hale

Ron McGovney at the Stone, San Francisco, September 18, 1982. © Bill Hale

Glam? Well, Ol’ Blighty’s version of it circa Sweet, Mott, and Slade didn’t need much extra killing, but thousands of miles away, in music-confused Los Angeles, this new heavy metal that headbangers could call their own . . . well, it was threatening to go the way of the hairspray. Good guitarists, sure, but why so pretty?

One surmises that most of the new peacock gang took much from the couple of dozen exciting new and unapologetic NWOBHM bands, but none were so struck by Motörhead, Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang, Angel Witch, Holocaust, Fist, Raven, Tank, and Venom as a skinny young fan of exotic Danish tennis-themed origin known as Lars Ulrich. And “fan” is the operative. This guy wasn’t even a drummer yet, but that didn’t stop him from getting a record deal, for which he would soon need to learn drums and build a band of rascals to play the part of. . . . Well, their name would have to suggest “encyclopedia,” with the further implication that if you looked up “heavy metal” in a dictionary, there’d be a little line drawing of Metallica.

The record deal was just a dumb dream with Ulrich’s equally goofy buddy, Brian Slagel, soon to be bossman of Metal Blade Records and still head headbanger three decades later. “Before I started working in the record store, trying to follow the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was somewhat difficult, being in L.A.,” Slagel recalls. “Some of the stuff would kind of trickle in and then of course I met Lars at a Michael Schenker concert in L.A. He was wearing the Saxon European T-shirt and I thought, ‘What the hell is that?’ So we started going around the record stores. And it was me and my friend John Kornarens and Lars, and we were the only three people in L.A. that even knew the NWOBHM existed. And there weren’t very many record stores that had stuff. So we would drive, like two, two and a half hours and there’s three of us, and there were three singles or whatever we were trying to find.”

“But it was cool meeting him, because he had a lot of stuff that we didn’t have, and vice versa. . . . At that point, you’re so cut off being in L.A. The scene was happening six thousand miles away and you’re just desperate for any morsel of information on anything. And this was so difficult to get. It was obviously long before the Internet. So it was cool because, wow, there’s another guy who’s into the same stuff we’re into. So I would say probably about once every two weeks we would go out on a record-finding mission. We would be grilling the sales clerks: ‘OK, we gotta get this, we gotta get that, can you order that?’”

The Stone, San Francisco, September 18, 1982. © Bill Hale

The Old Waldorf, San Francisco, October 18, 1982. All © Bill Hale

Long story short, Slagel began working at Oz Records and bringing the damn records in himself, Iron Maiden’s debut making a huge impact. He even started his own U.K.-style ’zine, The New Heavy Metal Revue.

“So I was thinking about the big Metal for Muthas compilation and I thought, maybe I’ll do one here,” Slagel continues. “So I called all the big distributors and record stores and said, ‘If I put a compilation together of all the L.A. heavy metal bands, would you guys sell it?’ and they said sure. So I just went around to all the bands and said, ‘Hey, if you guys have a demo track, I’m going to put together a compilation album in conjunction with the magazine.’ I just said, ‘Just give me a track and I’ll put it on there,’ and everybody said, ‘OK, fine.’ And then Lars called me up one day and said, ‘Hey, can I be on your album if I put together a band?’ And I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ And that’s how the whole Metallica thing started. He started to jam with people. We were over at his house one time. You know, Lars was this crazy little sixteen-, seventeen-year-old Danish kid who was just all over the place and we would park the car, and before the engine was turned off, Lars was out of the car and in the record store. So we were running after him, ‘He’s going to get all the singles!’ So we were over at his house one time and there was the drum set sitting in the corner, not even put together and he was saying, ‘I’m going to start a band.’ ‘Yeah, sure you are Lars, right.’ And he started jamming with James.”

“If I put a compilation together of all the L.A. heavy metal bands, would you guys sell it?”

—Brian Slagel

Slagel continues: “When he was over in Denmark, he had started to play a little bit,” referring to Lars’ move to L.A. with his crazy, creative post-hippie family in 1980. “We had known him for a while and the drum set was just sitting in the corner of his room not put together. He finally did put it together. He went to England. He went over there before John [Kornarens] and I did, and he hung around in the scene, met all the bands, got influenced to start something. So he came back, put together his drum set, and started jamming. But he didn’t have anybody to jam with, so he put some ads in the paper. Him and Hetfield jammed a bit, but nothing happened. And then Lars, the ever-scheming guy he is, when I was doing the record, he thought, ‘Well, this is a perfect opportunity. I’ll call James and say, “Hey, we can be on a record so let’s keep jamming.”’ So that’s pretty much what happened.”

Lars did indeed get fired up by the NWOBHM firsthand, having made the pilgrimage to England, where he tagged along with the great Diamond Head, soaking up a ton of influences. Back home, his want ad in Recycler had read, “Drummer looking for other musicians to jam with Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, and Iron Maiden,” exotic code words designed to weed out those not tapped in, as well as those who were too pretty.

“I was growing up in L.A., where glam was king,” explains James Hetfield, then rhythm guitarist and vocalist in this duo auditioning prospective members. “I would say queen—glam was queen [laughs]. You know, that was live rock. If you wanted to go see a band, the heaviest you could see—unless Motörhead or somebody was coming through that was imported [laughs]—you were looking at Ratt or Mötley Crüe. And there were hun...