Enter Night, page 39
Reviews were also more positive, and widespread, with the album subjected to the glowing critical spotlight not just in the metal press but across the board, as Rolling Stone, NME, Time Out, the Village Voice, the LA Times, the New York Times and others around the world lined up to sing its praises. This was the double-whammy Q Prime had banked on: commercial success on a scale previously thought beyond the reach of a ‘genre’ act such as Metallica, while still miraculously building on their critical profile. Suddenly, no one was using the words ‘thrash metal’ anywhere in Metallica articles. The subsequent NME cover story may have owed something, as Dave Thorne suggests, to ‘the fact that Steve Sutherland was the editor and was married to the head of press at Phonogram, Kaz Mercer, who remains to this day Metallica’s press officer’. But as he also points out, ‘It was the right thing to do, obviously. Even the broadsheet newspapers were [now] writing about the band. They genuinely were taking it to the masses, as they say.’
‘I think also the reason we went next-level was because we knew we were on to something,’ said Lars, ‘that somehow when James and me had written these songs [we knew] there was a batch of songs that deserved that kind of level of work and that level of attention to details…that were worth fighting for.’ It was also, he realised now, ‘the element of the time, the element of the scene, the element of the temperature in music at the time’. That ‘this was the beginning of the Nineties and all the pop stuff, the hair stuff, the whole LA thing was coming to an end. There was about to be a changing of the guard. There was a bunch of things brewing up in Seattle. There was a whole new kind of thing going on, and the whole music mainstream audience had been shifting very subtly further and further left over the course of the Eighties. All of a sudden all of the sixteen-year-old kids were ready to embrace different things. So you can’t take out the sort of way the planets are aligning analogy. And the planets just aligned in ’91, ’92 when that record came out, it all just came together at the right time, with the right songs, the right producer, the right attitude and the right temperature on the music scene to create this absolute fucking monster that that record then became, for better or worse.’
It was, as Lars suggests, simply one of those once-in-a-lifetime albums: good for Metallica, who were now considered one of the most important bands of the coming decade. But beneficial also for the music scene in general, helping thrust open the door for alternative, underground rock to be accepted as a staple of American radio and TV, something then-unknown new names such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden would take full advantage of before the year was out. The backdraught of this was that Metallica would no longer be considered cutting-edge. But that, Lars pointed out astutely, was because ‘the mainstream has moved a lot closer to the new left edge than they were five years ago. To that bank clerk, Metallica’s still the most fucking extreme thing he could get into.’
Not that it made them immune from criticism – writers who had been impressed by Hetfield’s unflinching portrayal of the war victim in ‘One’ railed in the post-Gulf War atmosphere against the overt patriotism of the unapologetically flag-waving ‘Don’t Tread on Me’. But even here, the band had an answer: James, they pointed out, had written the song many months before the invasion of Kuwait, the flag he was flying not the Stars and Stripes but the one carried by the Culpeper Minutemen of Virginia during the revolutionary war, its coiled-snake banner – à la the Black Album sleeve – carrying the motto ‘Don’t Tread on Me’. (Indeed, a replica of the flag hung in One on One throughout the recording sessions.) ‘America is a fucking good place,’ James responded defiantly in Rolling Stone. ‘I definitely think that. And that feeling came about from touring a lot. You find out what you like about certain places and you find out why you live in America, even with all the bad fucked-up shit. It’s still the most happening place to hang out.’
Hetfield also, briefly, got into hot water over comments he made in the NME, characterising rap music as ‘extra black’, adding that it was ‘all me, me, me, and my name in this song’. Again, he was unapologetic: ‘Some of the stuff, like Body Count, our fans like because there’s aggression there. I love that part of it. But the “Cop Killer” thing, kill whitey – I mean, what the fuck? I don’t dig it.’ It reminded him, he said, of ‘the Slayer thing with Satan and tear-your-baby-up. Like going out and shooting cops. Hopefully, no one’s going to go out and do either. People like it, it’s fine. Whatever blows your skirt up, as my dad would say. It just don’t blow mine up.’
Although second to AC/DC, everywhere Metallica went that summer they were the most talked about band on the Monsters bill. ‘We’ve been very lucky with critical acclaim from a lot of fashionable magazines,’ Lars acknowledged when we spoke. ‘All these writers who would spew about Bruce Springsteen or Prince, usually. Metallica’s kinda been lumped into that crowd in America.’ Why them, though? Why not, say, Slayer? He took a deep breath as he tried to keep the condescension out of his voice. ‘I think a lot of it has to do with our approach lyrically, and about wanting to confront issues that were more realistic and had more to do with things that were happening around us. I’m the first to line up for a Slayer record when it comes out, ’cos I think Slayer are the best at what they do. But lyrically, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. We’ve always been very adamant about shying away from the metal clichés – one of them being the whole sexist, satanist crap. And as a consequence it seems all the trendsetting journalists have been throwing acclaim at Metallica right, left and centre…’
As Lars had predicted, there was, however, a significant shaking of heads among certain older Metallica fans. Accusations of sell-out were rife, justifiably so, from a certain old-school perspective. Even two decades on, it’s a subject that polarises even their staunchest allies. The normally outspoken Robb Flynn, who had been such a big fan as a teenager, and whose band Machine Head was actually supporting Metallica on tour when we spoke in early 2009, managed to change the subject when I asked for his specific views on Black. As Joey Vera puts it, ‘The Black Album was never in the cards…But they were very smart in what they did. And Lars probably had a lot to do with that, working with the management company. They made some really, really, really smart decisions, albeit maybe some of them questionable to some of the fans. But in the end they made very smart decisions all along the way.’
Others agreed. Says David Ellefson, ‘The Black Album, sonically, is just one of the best-sounding records ever made in the history of multi-track recording.’ Even Flemming Rasmussen, frozen out after carrying the can for the production nightmare of Justice, ‘absolutely loved’ the Black Album, he says: ‘It sounded great, well produced, well played, I thought it was brilliant. They were doing a lot of the stuff I wanted them to do on Justice, in terms of sounds and all the things that simplified everything. They went from the really long songs to one song, one riff. And the fact that James suddenly had started taking an interest in singing pleased me very much. ’Cos this was like the first album where he actually sings, and where you can hear that he takes it seriously. I think it’s a fabulous album.’
The big question was: what would Cliff have made of it? The feeling was that Burton, so long the uncompromising soul of the band, would have been frankly appalled by this turn of events. As Joey Vera says now, ‘it’s unimaginable’ the band would have made such an album were Cliff still alive: ‘I’m not saying they would have turned into King Crimson or anything, but you never know. It could have been this crazy who-knows-what, you know?’
Prophetically, however, in what proved to be his final interview, less than forty-eight hours before his death, Cliff told Jorgen Holmstedt of Sweden’s OK! magazine that he thought Metallica would become more ‘mellow and melodic’ as time went by. ‘We don’t care about that right now,’ he insisted, but was remarkably prescient about what might eventually happen, speculating that they would work with ‘some big-name producer’, something he said they had actually considered for MOP. ‘If we get our wish,’ he said, ‘we’ll probably record in Southern California, probably in Los Angeles.’ He had not liked enduring ‘the worst winter’ of their months at Sweet Silence in Denmark, complaining that there had been ‘no energy’. Next time, he said, ‘it would be cool to do it somewhere where it’s light and [there’s] plenty of sun’. Cliff’s musical tastes were certainly broad enough to encompass the 360-degree turn the Black Album had made. As Kirk told me, ‘If we’d made another album with Cliff I think it would have been extremely melodic. Like, right before he died, I’ll give you an example of what he was listening to…’ He listed Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Eagles, the Velvet Underground, R.E.M. and Kate Bush. ‘Cliff was the most open-minded musically of us all.’
But even if Cliff Burton would have been comfortable with the shift in musical direction, how he would have responded to the other changes in the band remains open to speculation. What would their ‘big brother’ have made, for example, of them all living in LA during their near-year making the album, where they were all in their various ways now caught up in the rock star life, frequenting the Rainbow (the Hollywood watering hole where Led Zeppelin enjoyed some of their most notorious groupie-baiting nights) and hanging out with new friends such as the guys in Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row? How would Cliff have reacted to the new era in the band where music was still important, but no longer the most important thing once they left the studio and earnest Bob behind each night and headed back to West Hollywood and the chicks and the coke and the booze and the twinkling neon ooze of Sunset Strip after dark, the high-five, hair-metal sound of KNAC blaring from the car radio?
Speaking to me almost twenty years later, Lars confessed, ‘Whenever I think of the Black Album now, I think of spending a year in LA. I think of hanging out with Guns N’ Roses, I think of hanging out with Skid Row, who were there making records at the same time. I think of going out to the studio in the Valley every day and fighting with Bob Rock about what was going on. I think of all the late nights and early mornings, probably the craziest year of my life in LA, living everything that you can imagine when you’re twenty-six years old in LA and your dick is fucking six feet long.’ It was, he added, ‘great’. These were the days when Lars, James and Kirk (although still not Jason) would form an impromptu band one night with Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, also roping in Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach, under the ha-ha name of Gack – insider slang for coke – to play a set at a birthday party for RIP, the most hellacious hair-metal magazine in America, at the Hollywood Palladium; the days when Lars and James would visit Slash at his pad for some ‘outrageous partying’. In his autobiography, Slash recalls ‘a girl James wanted to fuck and I let him take her into my bedroom. They were in there for a while and I had to get in there to get something, so I crept in quietly and saw James head-fucking her. He was standing on the bed, ramming her head against the wall, moaning in that thunderous voice of his, just slamming away, and bellowing, “That’ll be fine! That’ll be fine! Yes! That’ll be fine!”’
The real fun, however, didn’t begin until the band was back out on tour – although on the surface it appeared that there at least they were trying to move away from, as Lars put it, ‘the metal clichés’. Just as they had worked to expunge the obvious ‘tells’ from their music and artwork, purged from their new stage show was the Iron Maiden-influenced paraphernalia of the Damaged Justice tour. Performing on an unadorned diamond-shaped stage, the emphasis was now on crowd interaction, with Kirk able to seemingly walk among the crowd while soloing and Lars on a movable drum-riser able to reach either side of the stage. Giant video screens were now mounted front and side, broadcasting close-ups of the band throughout, and the lightshow was much more subtle, blinding white light one moment, deep limpid shadow the next, casting James’ face in a suitably eerie glow, à la the ‘Enter Sandman’ video. Even Jason now had more of a feature. Besides his never-quite-Cliff bass solo he got to perform a lead-vocal cameo on ‘Seek and Destroy’ – which also allowed James the space to roam free among the audience in the new show’s most impressive innovation: the Snake Pit – an area set aside solely for the most fanatical fans situated right in the middle of the stage. Each night as Jason spat out the words to ‘Seek…’, James would leap into the Snake Pit and get the kids to sing along, hugging them, yelling at them, making them part of the band in a way that no other groups did.
There was even room for a certain reflection, the show beginning each night with a twenty-minute video documentary depicting the band’s history, dedicated specifically to Cliff Burton. Now firmly part of the Metallica mythology, the biggest cheer of the night would be for that moment when Cliff’s image appeared: wayward hair, windmilling arm, permanently clad in cardigan and bell-bottoms the way Jesus would always be in white robes. A great moment for everyone, with the possible exception of Jason, who always paid lip-service to the Cliff Burton legend but must surely have grown sick of the constant reminder that he was only there through luck, and bad luck at that. The spell was only broken when James would turn to the crowd and admonish them, ‘You all got the Black Album, right? Studied all your lyrics and shit? No fuck-ups now. Hey, any time this stuff gets too heavy for you…’ A moment’s pause while the crowd jeered and James fixed a jester’s crooked smile to his lips…‘Tough shit!’ There were occasional nods to the past – ‘Creeping Death’, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, ‘Master of Puppets’, all played at such excoriating speed it was as though they wanted to get them out of the way as quickly as possible, ending each night with an extended, cataclysmic version of ‘One’ guaranteed to bring the house down, before an encore of ‘Battery’, delivered at even more pummelling speed. This was street rock as spectacle, the best money could buy, and that said everything about the new, all-singing, all-dancing, Nineties-version of Metallica that had eluded the original finger-pointing, chest-thumping, weirdly straight-laced Eighties version. Whatever was in the minds of Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield it was clear to the outsider that this was no longer about back-room, garage-roots authenticity but total devotion, all-out war, world domination. It was about being number fucking one, you fuckers…
Now firmly part of the establishment, in February 1992 Metallica picked up another Grammy, their third in a row, this time for ‘Enter Sandman’, which won the ‘Best Metal Performance with Vocals’ award. ‘We gotta thank Jethro Tull for not putting out an album this year,’ quipped Lars, all of the Shrine Auditorium yucking it up with him. Behind the laughter, though, was now steely-eyed intent. ‘We worked so fucking hard on this album,’ said James afterwards, ‘so the fact that we won a Grammy for it this time actually meant something. All the other ones, I don’t know what to do with ’em, really.’ What about Lars, though – did it make him feel proud? I asked. ‘Of course I like winning a Grammy!’ he smiled, not the least bit sheepishly. ‘I want a Grammy as much as the next guy; even more than the next guy.’ He sat up straight in his chair. ‘I’m just sitting here thinking nobody has asked me if I’m proud of it before. Come to think of it, I’m really fucking proud, I really am! I used to always think it didn’t mean much, you know? But the truth is I guess it does…’
In April that year, Metallica confirmed its newly won place at rock’s top table when the band appeared in London at the Concert for Life tribute show to the late Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, staged at Wembley Stadium. They performed three songs, all from the new mainstream-approved album: ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘Sad but True’ and ‘Nothing Else Matters’. (All three songs were released as a special commemorative single the following week, with all proceeds from its sale donated to the Freddie Mercury AIDS fund.) Hetfield also sang ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ with the three surviving members of Queen, plus guitarist Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath.
Then in May, Lars and Slash co-hosted a special press conference at The Gaslight in Hollywood, where it was announced that Guns N’ Roses and Metallica would co-headline a US tour together that summer. On paper it looked like a snug fit. The Metallica album had only just vacated the Number One spot when Guns N’ Roses had issued their latest release – two double albums released simultaneously, titled Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. The latter had swiftly followed Metallica to Number One while the former had also become hinged to the US Top Five. Eight months on, combined American sales of all three albums were now topping ten million. Guns N’ Roses and Metallica on the same ticket together would be the largest, most lucrative concert draw of the year. It would also become one of the most incident-filled and controversial tours ever.
The brainchild, almost inevitably, of the Axl-besotted Lars, as former Guns N’ Roses manager Alan Niven says now, ‘As much as I loved Metallica – I would go just to see-hear “Seek and Destroy” and hope for “Orion” – I thought the idea of them touring with Guns N’ Roses was absolutely absurd and a recipe for some kind of disaster. Who follows who for one thing? It’s insane to forget it’s better to be a hard act to follow than to follow a hard act.’ Niven also ‘found it most uncomfortable to be sitting in Duff’s bathroom one night with Lars and co all gacked to the gills planning their onslaught on the world. “How am I gonna get around this one?” I wondered, and half thought to drop Lars off at the Hollywood Sheriff’s station, in his blithering condition, ranting about the enormity of this sonic blitzkrieg, his arms waving expansively in the big windows of the Range Rover as I tried to quietly and unobtrusively slip down a traffic-less pre-dawn Sunset [Boulevard], instead of at his hotel, which I reluctantly did as the cold grey light of the day came up.’ He adds wearily, ‘God bless cocaine and the idiocies it induces…’
