Enter Night, page 9
The term ‘thrash metal’ was still some way off from entering the lingua franca of international rock just yet, though. In the meantime, Metallica continued to plough a lonely furrow. ‘Played like shit!’ Lars would note in his gig diary after another half-empty show at Radio City in June, ‘Went down so-so.’ At the Troubadour in July they went on so late ‘everybody had gone home’, he recalled, while a show at the Whisky in August, where they ‘started at 9.15 with no one around’ was commemorated with one word in block caps: ‘SHIT!’ Looking back on those days nearly twenty years later in an interview for Playboy, James would recall how he and Lars simply ‘liked a kind of music that was not accepted, especially in Los Angeles. We were fast and heavy. Everything about LA was short, catchy songs: Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Van Halen. And you had to have the look. The only look we had was ugly.’ In fact, photos of the band in its earliest guise show them demonstrably trying to fit in with the prevailing trends while reaching out for something of their own true identity. As the writer Xavier Russell, an early champion of the band in the UK rock press, puts it, ‘It was Ratt and Mötley Crüe from the waist down, black spandex and bullet belts. Then on top they’d wear Motörhead T-shirts or Saxon.’ Their very first line-up shot has James dressed in billowing white shirt and tight jeans, a Motörhead-style bullet belt around his hips; Dave and Ron in much the same get up, although Dave also sports a waistcoat over his white shirt, while Ron favours a Motörhead T-shirt; and Lars, most wince-inducing of all, in what appears to be an early Metallica T-shirt but with an overshirt tied, girly-fashion, around his ribs. They all have long, blow-dried hair. At many of their earliest shows both James and Dave wore white, striped spandex pants – a look inspired by Biff Byford of Saxon. ‘We had our battles with spandex,’ James grudgingly admitted in Playboy. ‘You could show off your package. “Wear spandex, dude. It gets you chicks!”’
It wasn’t until halfway through the first Metallica US tour a year later, in fact, that James finally ditched the spandex, after his one and only pair of pants caught fire while he was drying them next to a heater. ‘A hole melted right in the crotch. It was like, “They’re not real pants, are they? They’re like pantyhose.”’ After that, he stuck to jeans. Even their occasional good gigs left a bitter taste. The first time they got an encore, James recalled, ‘It was a Monday night at two in the morning at the Troubadour and there were about ten people there.’ Then, having decided what they were going to do for their first encore – ‘Let it Loose’ by Savage – Lars arbitrarily struck up the beat to an entirely different number, ‘Killing Time’ by Sweet Savage, ‘because it started with drums’. James, who had forgotten the lyrics, was so furious that when the number finally came to its calamitous conclusion he walked over and screamed, ‘You fucker!’ at Lars, then punched him hard in the stomach. ‘People were going, “Huh?”’
Metal Massacre quickly sold all 2,500 copies of its initial pressing, mainly thanks to Slagel’s work at Oz Records, where the store’s main independent distributors – Gem, Important and Green World – ‘bought them all right away. In fact, about a month later they wanted more.’ After a short-lived manufacturing and distribution deal with a small fly-by-night operation called Metalworks, which pressed up a few thousand copies but which Slagel says he was ‘never paid a dime for – it was kind of a whole nightmare’, Slagel negotiated his own distribution deal with Green World, later known as Enigma. It was through Green World that his Metal Blade label would blossom into an actual record company, rereleasing the original Metal Massacre album – the new pressing of which would also replace the original Metallica four-track with the new, eight-track version on No Life ’til Leather – and putting together a follow-up release, Metal Massacre II. From there it was a short step to releasing stand-alone records by single artists. ‘I was a one-man record company,’ Slagel says now, ‘involved in the recording of it, the mastering of it, I did all of the artwork, did all of the promotion…kind of everything.’ Early Metal Blade releases included albums by other original Metal Massacre artists, Bitch and Demon Flight, followed by EPs from newer names such as Armored Saint and Warlord, both of whom would first be heard on Metal Massacre II. The fledgling label really hit pay dirt, however, in 1983, with the debut album from Slayer, Show No Mercy. Although Slagel admits he ‘didn’t really see a big connection at first’ between Slayer’s gargantuan rhythms and Metallica’s sheet-metal riffs, Slayer would go on to become one of what is now regarded as the Big Four of thrash metal, and the only really serious rivals to Metallica’s crown as ‘inventors’ of thrash, a claim that would grow in credulity as the years passed. Unlike Metallica, who would move early to broaden their musical horizons (and audience), Slayer refused to soften their approach or seek mainstream approval; the earnest, faith-keeping Clash to Metallica’s more maverick, rule-breaking Sex Pistols.
Suitably encouraged, in September 1982 Brian Slagel decided to put on a dedicated Metal Massacre show in San Francisco, at a small club called the Stone. Nearly two hundred people showed up, the largest crowd most of the bands on the bill had ever played to. Metallica, who were the big hit on the night, had only been added to the bill as an afterthought. ‘The bill was going to be Bitch, Cirith Ungol and I can’t remember who the third band was going to be,’ says Slagel. When Cirith Ungol was forced to pull out at the last minute, ‘I called Lars and asked if Metallica would like to do it, no money but a gig.’ Typically, Lars agreed – then worried later about how they would actually get to San Francisco. It was to prove a wise decision that would have far-reaching consequences. As Lars observed in his gig diary, it was Metallica’s ‘First real great gig. Real bangers, real fans, real encores. Had a great fuckin’ weekend. Fucked up a lot onstage!’ Certainly, they weren’t note-perfect, says Slagel, but the band was slowly starting to hit its stride, encouraged by the very different response their music received in San Francisco. Unknown even to Lars, the No Life ’til Leather demo had been a hit on the underground scene in San Francisco, thanks in no small part to the proselytising in Ron Quintana’s Metal Mania fanzine. At the show, they were amazed to hear the audience actually singing some of the lyrics to the songs. Afterwards, some even asked for autographs! ‘It was a trip,’ says Ron McGovney, ‘we couldn’t believe it.’
They were also starting to write new material that reflected their improved status as a gigging band. Added to the seven No Life ’til Leather tracks, all of which they performed at the Stone, was another new number recently worked up in Ron’s bungalow: ‘No Remorse’ – a tour de force built around at least three different riffs, dating back to James’ pre-Metallica days, any of which would have been catchy enough to build a whole song around, but subjugated here to a greater sonic whole, laced with Mustaine’s enflamed guitar solos and propelled by Lars’ stop-start drums, before suddenly taking off into yet another, entirely different section, lightning-fast, the number climaxing with a bomb-blast finale. It would become the template for what would become the trademark Metallica sound in their earliest, groundbreaking years. Not that the band was ready yet to stray far from its roots. The encores were two Diamond Head songs, ‘Am I Evil?’ and ‘The Prince’, both of which were now sounding more like trademark Metallica numbers and less like covers – a line the band was still happy to blur.
The most significant outcome of the Stone show, though, was the reaction of the crowd. ‘It was our first encounter with real fans,’ said James. ‘It was like, these people are here for us, and they like us, and they hate the other bands – and we like that ’cos we hate them too.’ Says Brian Slagel, ‘In LA [Metallica] were kind of looked at like a black-sheep band because they were way too heavy compared to what the other bands were doing at this point. Even Mötley and Ratt were getting more commercial and that’s kind of where the scene was going. So they didn’t go down so well. But when they came up to San Francisco that night, all of a sudden they have all these kids there that went crazy for them. Just loved them and loved what they were doing. It was really amazing. I was like, holy shit! Even the band was like, wow, we never saw that coming!’ Eager to keep that good feeling going, the band booked a follow-up show in San Francisco, at the Old Waldorf, for October. It was only a Monday night – the deadest night of the week – but they played it like a Saturday night. They didn’t even bother with the safety net of the Diamond Head covers this time, just went out and blasted through the No Life ’til Leather demo plus ‘No Remorse’. Again, ‘the people went nuts’, Ron recalled. Among them was Gary Holt, guitarist in local San Francisco outfit Exodus, who would open for Metallica at a November show at the Old Waldorf – later immortalised on another officially sanctioned live tape for the traders to play with, dubbed Metal up Your Ass. He recalls that ‘they were great but they were really sloppy. Lars could barely play his drums and they were really drunk onstage. But they had this raw punk energy.’ Such was their growing reputation in San Francisco the band even took out an ad in local music free sheet, BAM (Bay Area Music). It cost $600, a great deal of money to shell out for an otherwise penniless unsigned band in 1982. Fortunately, they had good old Ron to pay for it – again. ‘It was probably Lars’ and James’ idea,’ said Ron. ‘They laid the ad out and showed it to me and said it will cost $600. I said, “Okay, Lars…James, where’s your money?” and they said, “We don’t have any money.” I was the only one that had any money, so I wrote out a cheque for $600 to BAM. Till this day I never got that money back.’
The only real fly in the ointment was the increasingly hard to handle Dave Mustaine. Slagel recalls the guitarist coming up at the first Stone show and telling him, ‘You’re gonna hear something from somebody that’s not true.’ Explains Slagel, ‘Apparently what had happened was they had gone through all the beer that the promoter had given them and they wanted more beer. And the promoter I guess didn’t feel he should give them more beer or wasn’t giving them the beer quick enough. So Dave just went behind the bar and grabbed a case of Heineken and took it backstage and they drank it. When the promoter found out about it he got upset and decided not to pay them the hundred bucks [fee] and it became this big thing. I’m like, oh boy. But it was a classic Dave Mustaine moment in the early days.’ Indeed, Mustaine’s overbearing personality and wayward behaviour – not helped by his daily over-consumption of weed and alcohol – had been causing the band problems almost from the start. Ron, in particular, found the grating, confrontational Mustaine distinctly at odds with his own more steady, even-keel personality. Ron was the one who rented a trailer so they could load the drum riser and all their other gear and have it towed up to San Francisco in his father’s 1969 Ford Ranger. Ron, who had never been to San Francisco before and found himself driving around Chinatown trying to find the club while the other three were ‘back there in the camper shell drinking and partying, and I’m just pissed [off]’.
Dave was the one who dealt pot, stole beer and did all the talking onstage, acting like he was the leader of the band, not the newbie. That also made Ron ‘pissed as shit’. There had already been several flashpoints between the two before the trip to San Francisco, like the Sunday afternoon James actually fired Dave from the band – before allowing the contrite guitar player to talk his way back in. Mustaine had turned up at the bungalow Ron shared with James with ‘his two pit bull puppies’. Ron, who’d been taking a shower when Dave arrived, was aghast to discover when he came out that the dogs were ‘jumping all over my car’ – a reconfigured 1972 Pontiac LeMans – ‘scratching the shit out of it’. Ron recalls James running outside and yelling, ‘Hey, Dave, get those fuckin’ dogs off of Ron’s car!’ According to Ron, Dave yelled back: ‘What the fuck did you say? Don’t you talk that way about my dogs!’ The two men flew at each other and a nasty brawl ensued. According to Ron, ‘They started fighting and it spilled into the house. I see Dave punch James right across the mouth and he flies across the room, so I jumped on Dave’s back and he flipped me over onto the coffee table.’ At which point James got to his feet and told Dave, ‘You’re out of the fuckin’ band! Get the fuck out of here!’ Says Ron, ‘Dave loaded all his shit up and left all pissed off. The next day he comes back crying, pleading, “Please let me back in the band,”’ which, to Ron’s chagrin, James and Lars, not thrilled at the prospect of having to find yet another guitar player, eventually – after more from Mustaine – agreed to do.
Speaking with writer Joel McIver, in 1999, Mustaine recalled the incident with some regret, regarding it as the first nail in the coffin of his career in Metallica. ‘If I had to do it all again,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have brought the dog[s]. I was dealing drugs to keep myself afloat, so I had these dogs to protect my merchandise. I took them up to rehearsal one day and [one of] the dog[s] put her paws on the bass player’s car. I don’t know if it scratched it or left paw prints on it, or put a fuckin’ dent in the car, I don’t know. Whatever happened, James kicked it, we started arguing, push led to shove and I hit him. And I regret it…’ Only Lars, who was equally outgoing, for different reasons, really enjoyed Dave’s company. It might be argued, in fact, that Dave Mustaine was the missing link between Lars Ulrich’s ultra-confident, says-me personality and James Hetfield’s stone-faced, emotionally fragile character. In common with the latter, Mustaine was a young Los Angelino who had come from a badly broken home. But where James had erected an impenetrable, monosyllabic façade to shield him from the world, Mustaine met everything head-on, ready to out-gun all comers with his fast guitar and even faster mouth and fists. Like James, Dave had an inordinate fondness for Clint Eastwood movies, particularly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Unlike James, he had an absurdist streak that meant he also loved the Pink Panther films. Meanwhile, like Lars, Dave’s musical influences were broad-shouldered enough to encompass both The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, before similarly falling for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, although in Dave’s case as much as a reactionary fuck-you to the existing LA scene as for any musical merit; his tastes veering more towards the less boxed-in, more technically able end of the spectrum where Diamond Head and Judas Priest existed than the purely heavy-legged likes of Saxon or Samson. ‘Motörhead, Mercyful Fate, Budgie and AC/DC’ had ‘all added’ to his musical education, he said. ‘After that, I was pretty much done.’
Lars also appreciated that Dave could be a useful guy to have around when things got out of hand in other ways. Getting shit-faced at a party with East LA metal newbies Armored Saint, Lars’ big mouth got him into trouble with Saint guitarist Phil Sandoval. When Sandoval shoved Ulrich to the floor, Mustaine, never backwards at coming forwards, launched a karate kick at Sandoval which poleaxed him and resulted in a broken ankle. Years later, after Mustaine finally straightened up he sought Sandoval out and apologised, bringing him a gift of a brand new ESP guitar, in order to bring what the newly sober Mustaine referred to in counselling-speak as ‘closure’ to the incident. Dave had just been watching Lars’ back, he explained. Sandoval understood. All little guys need a big guy to do that for them, right? Especially when the little guy has a big guy’s mouth. As Mustaine would later tell me, ‘I felt like I had something on everybody else. I was a bad boy. I didn’t realise I was tainting my image.’ Not even when he began dealing drugs from his apartment, which made him the odd man out in the band straight away. All of Metallica drank, but none had yet really experimented beyond smoking pot. Ron didn’t even like getting drunk; he hated the fact that it stopped him from driving and being in control. For Lars, dope was aptly named and slowed him down. Cocaine, when he could scrounge some, was more suited to his driven, megalomaniac personality. As for James, any form of drug was simply a no-no; even simple over-the-counter medication was viewed with suspicion. As a child, he had suffered from migraines, for which the only help his parents offered was prayer ‘or reading the Bible’. It wasn’t until he had lived with his elder half-brother that he first swallowed aspirin. Even then, he later told the writer Ben Mitchell, ‘I was freaking out. What’s it going to make me feel like, what’s it going to do?’ The first time Dave offered James a hit on a joint, he nearly ran from the room in terror. By then he had tried smoking pot – as a grand experiment, in the same way others would have viewed their first LSD trip – but ‘it hit me so hard, I freaked out’. From that point on, James would look down disapprovingly whenever anyone, particularly from his own band, used drugs of any description, whether viewed as ‘soft’ or ‘hard’. That Mustaine so clearly felt the opposite to James about drugs would help drive a further wedge between them that would eventually result in an irreparable fissure. Though not quite yet, not just as things were beginning to get interesting for Metallica. In fact, the first victim of the band’s steadily rising star wasn’t the hard-to-please Mustaine but the ever-dependable Ron McGovney.
According to Brian Slagel, McGovney’s difficulties in Metallica revolved around his stunted abilities on bass. ‘After Metallica had been around a while and they were getting better as musicians, the one thing they felt was that Ron, as great a guy as he was, wasn’t progressing as much as they were. So Lars came to me and said, “Hey, we’re thinking about looking for a bass player, is there anybody you think that would be good for us?”’ Brian immediately thought of Joey Vera, the bassist in Armored Saint, who had been on Metal Blade, and who were about to get signed to Chrysalis. ‘Joey was a thought,’ he says now, ‘but [on balance] I didn’t think that was gonna work.’ Joey was too committed to his own band, who were much further down the road with their own career anyway, at that stage. That was when Slagel came up with another idea. ‘I told Lars, “Look, there’s this band called Trauma…”’
