Metallica: Enter Night (22 page)

Freed from the obligation of reproducing Dave Mustaine’s original work, Kirk Hammett’s guitars also come into their own, a universe apart from any notions of what a ‘thrash guitarist’ might be and much closer in aspect to the lessons he had been absorbing from that great Jimi Hendrix disciple, Joe Satriani. These were Kirk’s first attempts to break free of what he later described as the ‘one-voice guitar thing’ of 1980s thrash, and he recalled how ‘when the other guys heard the solos on “Creeping Death” and “Ride the Lightning”, it was a different aspect of soloing than they were used to. Dave Mustaine played fast all the time. I play melodically. And I play parts, different sections that make the solo as hooky as possible.’ Although he admitted he had ‘always been very flashy’, the playing on
Ride
was full of restraint and controlled aggression. Where the excitement boils over, as on what he called ‘the whammy-bar craziness’ at the conclusion of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, it does so knowingly. This is not to say they had completely abandoned their commitment to being ‘the fastest and heaviest’: James’ clench-fisted rhythmic downstrokes are much in evidence throughout. But while there would be little room for levity on the album, from its doom-laden subject matter to the ominous front cover of an electric chair suspended amidst an electrical storm, as recording artists increasingly in control of their musical destiny Metallica were already starting to subvert that idea; to play against the grain and deliberately bend the rules. The typically windmilling opener ‘Fight Fire with Fire’ – one of the fastest numbers they would ever record – actually begins with a short acoustic ‘overture’, before fizzing like a stick of dynamite into explosive life. The album closer, ‘The Call of Ktulu’ (printed on some pressings, unforgivably, as ‘The Cat of Ktulu’), meanwhile, is an eight-minute-plus instrumental that takes its inspiration more from Morricone than it does Motörhead. A far more substantial showcase for Cliff Burton’s extravagant talents on the bass than its little brother ‘(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth’ on
Kill ’Em All
, it’s entirely symbolic of the massive strides Metallica had made as musicians since their hurriedly wrought debut. It’s also an impressively bold way of concluding what it was still hoped would be the album to bring them to a wider audience than the loyal but still limited following they had so far attracted.

The real signifier of Metallica’s determination not to be boxed in by the limitations of others’ expectations, though, was the inclusion of a seven-minute acoustic-based ballad: ‘Fade to Black’. As James later put it, ‘If we’d been told when we were recording
Kill ’Em All
that we were gonna record a ballad on the next record, I’d have said: “Fuck off.”’ Built upon a sequence of minor guitar chords picked as an arpeggio that James came up with while idling on an acoustic, its sombre, reflective mood a million miles from the juvenilia of anything he’d attempted as a songwriter before, the lyrics – although presented as a suicide note – were initially inspired by the theft of the band’s equipment that resulted in him losing his cherished Marshall. With the addition of Kirk’s tastefully applied electric crunch filling in for the lack of a chorus and Lars’ drums, for once, mirroring a similar restraint, ‘Fade to Black’ became at once the most harrowing and beautifully subtle piece of music Metallica had yet come up with.

Mostly, however, this was Metallica laying down a mission statement. In ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and ‘Creeping Death’ they had, simply, created two enduring heavy metal classics that would have sounded apposite whatever era of rock history they had sprung from. The former (misprinted on early pressings as ‘For Whom the Bells Toll’) might just as easily have come from early-Seventies Black Sabbath, Cliff’s expertly distorted bass solo which signals its beginning a marvellous, musicianly touch; the latter – destined to become a huge crowd favourite, chanting ‘Die! Die! Die’ – the first touchstone Metallica classic.

Not everybody was bowled over by such ‘originality’. Kirk’s former Exodus bandmate Gary Holt, for one, was distressed to discover, as he says now, that not only did the riff from an early Exodus number, ‘Impaler’, ‘become like one of the best riffs on
Ride the Lightning
, on “Trapped Under Ice”’, but that the now famous line in ‘Creeping Death’ which begins ‘
Die by my hand…
’ was taken from Holt’s own composition ‘Dying By His Hand’. There was no question, he admits, ‘that the riffs were [Kirk’s]’. Nevertheless, it caused bad blood between the two for a while. ‘I remember calling Kirk up and giving him a great deal of grief,’ says Holt, ‘and he said, “Ah, I thought I asked you if it was okay.” I’m like, “No, you didn’t.” So I’ve had the
pleasure
– and I use the term loosely – of watching sixty-thousand people chant that shit [at subsequent Metallica shows over the years] yet I’ve never received a penny for it. I’ve had many people say, “Man, you should have sued.” But I’m like, yeah, whatever, you know? It is what it is. I laugh about it now. I had one conversation with Kirk about it then I let it go for ever.’

But then, as Holt also points out, while both Metallica and Exodus had become known for ‘playing like real furious shit’, Kirk’s taste was always ‘a little more leaning towards the Maiden route, you know?’ And if James lifted a lyrical phrase from Kirk’s Exodus-era songbook, he certainly added to it in ways nobody else would have done. Inspired by the band catching a TV showing of the movie
The Ten Commandments
, the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic starring Charlton Heston, the lyrics of ‘Creeping Death’ were based on the Bible story of the tenth plague bestowed upon the Ancient Egyptians – the Angel of Death sent by God to kill every first-born child. When Cliff, in a cloud of weed, exclaimed, ‘Whoa, it’s like creeping death’ the rest of them laughed so much they decided they had to write a song with that title. That James so cleverly wove the convoluted lyric together said much for his rapidly improving songwriting skills. Musically, it was also a revelation; a brutal rock monolith built on incredible finesse, from its juddering riff to the mesh of vocal and guitar harmonies in its chorus, Hammett’s concluding double-tapped solo a masterclass in itself. ‘Creeping Death’ remains an all-time rock anthem, the thrash generation’s very own ‘Paranoid’ or ‘Smoke on the Water’.

The writing credits were also more evenly shared this time. The two most important tracks (‘Fade…’ and ‘Creeping…’) were credited to all four members. Two to Hetfield, Ulrich and Burton (‘Fight…’ and ‘For Whom…’); two to Hetfield, Ulrich, Burton and Mustaine (‘Ride…’ and ‘…Ktulu’) and the least significant two to Hetfield, Ulrich and Hammett (‘Trapped…’ and ‘Escape’).
Ride the Lighting
also codified a format for Metallica in the 1980s: manic opener, monumental title track, at least one death march, one big ballad and a fistful of all-out thrash crowd-pleasers. If anything, it was progressive rock Metallica were now leaning towards, making virtues of musicianship, long solos, complicated time changes; above all, lengthy numbers, Lars sitting there, as he told me, timing the recordings, ready to ‘build more stuff in’ if they weren’t sufficiently long enough. The question remained: what would the die-hard thrash fans make of it? According to Flemming, the band ‘weren’t too concerned about fans not liking “Fade to Black”, they were more worried about “Trapped Under Ice”, which they thought was maybe a bit too poppy. That was the only concern during the recording. They joked about it almost being a single song.’

They wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. Within a week of completing recording, the band was in London rehearsing for their first UK performance, headlining what would be the first of two shows in two weeks at the Marquee club in Wardour Street. Presented as an apologia for those fans who had bought tickets for the aborted Rods tour, Music for Nations made sure the venue was packed with media and industry faces. Hopes were high, the band nervous. Things could go either way; triumph or disaster. Fortunately, recalls Martin Hooker, ‘They were just
fantastic
.’ By the time of the second show on 8 April, ‘It was really starting to get a buzz going.’ Recalls Malcolm Dome: ‘They were very, very good. You still didn’t think, good grief, this band is gonna be huge. But it was clear they could really pull it off live. The line-up just looked right, felt right and sounded right.’ Described in the subsequent
Kerrang!
review as ‘the Ramones of heavy metal’, their down-at-heel image and speeded-up sound was distinctly at odds with the prevailing mid-Eighties hair-metal trend, as exemplified by the sorts of LA bands now regularly featuring on the cover of
Kerrang!
like Ratt and Mötley Crüe. They were doing the very opposite of what was happening sales-wise, recalls Xavier Russell: ‘There was a lot of hype but fortunately they were good. A lot of people were impressed that maybe hadn’t totally liked the
Kill ’Em All
album. For the first time, people could see there was really something there.’

One of the highlights for Lars was meeting another of his NWOBHM heroes, former Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist Jess Cox, who supported the band at the first Marquee date. Cox recalls, ‘I was touring with Heavy Pettin’ who pulled out [of the Marquee] at the last moment so I was going to headline and then [my agents] ITB said “Oh, there’s a new band coming over and you’ve got to support them.” I was like, “What band’s this?” and they said, “They’re called Metallica.” I said, “I’ve never heard of them.” They said “Well, you will, so don’t worry about it.”’ He was amazed to discover the drummer making such a fuss over meeting him – ‘I remember signing Lars’ drumsticks’ – blissfully unaware that Metallica had, in fact, once entertained the idea of recruiting him as their singer: ‘The guys have never said this to me personally. I only found out later.’

Music for Nations had rented a flat in Cadogan Gardens in Kensington for the band to stay in; another home from home to follow Jonny and Marsha’s house in Old Bridge and Mark Whitaker’s garage in El Cerrito. Recalls MFN label manager Gem Howard, who became Metallica tour manager throughout their UK and European dates that year, ‘It was just a shit-hole. Getting them a flat was much cheaper than a hotel and they could invite people back and be much freer with it. But of course they had no sort of ability to clean up. I remember walking into this flat and there was a table lying on its side with food over it, someone had left a half a pound of butter on the floor and trodden on it. Loads of empty bottles and cigarette ends and God knows what…Made Tracey Emin’s bed look neat and tidy.’

Xavier Russell became a regular drinking pal during their time in London. Lars and James came back to his Notting Hill Gate flat one night where ‘we played Blue Öyster Cult till about three in the morning’. Xavier recalls handing out squash rackets and the three of them miming guitar on them to Molly Hatchet’s ‘Boogie No More’: ‘The neighbours would be banging on the ceiling. Then they would put Thin Lizzy on – anything you could play along to on the squash racket. I remember we had a [Kentucky Fried Chicken] and we chucked up in the bucket!’ Another time, he went to see them rehearse in Shepherd’s Bush: ‘Afterwards we went out drinking and I remember James was so pissed he was standing on top of the roof of this cinema in the Tottenham Court Road going mad; it was brilliant!’ he laughs. James later recalled the occasion, too: ‘I got arrested for destruction of property…kicking the lights down on people. It was just one of those things we had to do when we were drunk.’

Xavier also spent time with Cliff and Kirk, but ‘that was different. Cliff was really into his own little world. He had a totally different mindset, really, and that shows in his playing. And he’d always have a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt on. He liked a lot of the bands I liked so we had a lot in common. While Kirk was quite funny, he’d always talk about comics. Lars was just Lars. He was the leader, in a way. And Hetfield back then just liked boozing and having fun, really. So they were all quite different characters but they all got on quite well. You could have a chat with each of them on totally different subjects. I remember [a couple of years later] going to see
Blue Velvet
with Lars when it came out, at the Gate cinema in Notting Hill Gate. We saw it twice. He was like, “Hey, we’re gonna write a song about it.”’

With the UK and Europe-wide MFN release of
Ride the Lightning
scheduled for 27 June, the band were back on the road that same month: four shows opening for Twisted Sister in Holland and Germany, followed by an appearance low on the bill at the Heavy Sound Festival on 10 June, then a return performance at the Poperinge Sports fields in Belgium, opening for Motörhead. Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who still recalled the bunch of kids he saw playing for Jonny in Old Bridge a year before, was fond of telling people that Metallica were a nice bunch of kids but there was no way they were ever going to make it. Most non-thrash fans agreed. The most optimistic forecast among the non-believers was that maybe, if they played their cards right, Metallica might become as big as Motörhead one day. Oblivious, the band was back at El Cerrito by the time the album was released a fortnight later. Reaction was immediate. In Britain,
Sounds
became the first heavyweight music weekly to give a Metallica album a rave review, in a glowing piece written by a seventeen-year-old Motörhead fan named Steffan Chirazi – these days better known as the editor of the official Metallica fanzine,
So What
. Reviewing it for
Kerrang!
, Xavier Russell called for readers to ‘soundproof the walls, get in a six-pack of beer, sit back and listen to one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time!’

Ride the Lightning
may not have been quite that but it would certainly become one of the most influential. Not all their old fans were so in thrall to its confection of illicit charms. Ron Quintana maintains now that in San Francisco, where Metallica had hardly shown their faces since temporarily relocating first to New Jersey and then to Copenhagen and London, Exodus’s debut album
Bonded by Blood
– although not released until early 1985, completed in the summer of 1984 and already receiving exposure on the underground tape-trading scene – ‘was liked better than
Ride the Lightning
by most of the underground kids here, and paved the way for the metal-punk crossover that spurred thrash to its heights’. In the UK, Dave Constable, then a key figure both in the pages of Bernard Doe’s
Metal Forces
fanzine and, even more influentially, serving behind the counter at London’s most high-profile metal-specialist record shop, Shades, in Soho, when asked to sum up the new, emerging thrash scene in a piece for
Kerrang!
, described
Ride the Lightning
as ‘a much watered-down follow-up’ to
Kill ’Em All
, designed specifically for ‘cracking the conservative home market’.