Metallica: Enter Night (43 page)

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…’

In fact, the running order was the least of anybody’s worries, with it agreed early on that Metallica, although billed as co-headliners and splitting the proceeds 50/50 with GN’R, would go on first, by simple dint of the fact that by this stage Axl Rose was keeping audiences waiting for up to three hours most nights of the tour. As Slash said, ‘Metallica was not a band to pull that kind of shit at all, so they wisely opted to play first so as to avoid being pulled down by our bullshit.’

The twenty-five-date stadium tour began at the RFK Stadium, in Washington, in July. Axl was at the height of his megalomaniacal fame. To his usual on-tour retinue of chiropractor, masseuse, vocal coach, bodyguard, driver, personal assistant, PR, manager and gaggle of hangers-on masquerading as friends, he now added a psychotherapist, Suzzy London, and a professional psychic named Sharon Maynard, a short, middle-aged Asian woman nicknamed ‘Yoda’ by the rest of the band (after the mystic goblin in
Star Wars
) whose specialities included ‘channelling’ past lives, communicating with extraterrestrials and utilising the power of crystals. Sure enough, Metallica would go onstage each night bang on time – and Guns N’ Roses wouldn’t. Sometimes because Axl genuinely had throat problems; often times because he was still ‘psyching himself up’ back at the hotel. The energy might not be right, the vibes all muddled, or Yoda would simply advise him against it.

Ten days into the tour, at Giants Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey, Axl was struck in the genitals by a cigarette lighter thrown from the audience. He hurled down the mike, tore off the white cowboy hat he was wearing and hobbled to the side-stage wings where he tried to catch his breath. A chant went up among the crowd: ‘Axl! Axl! Axl!’ Then the houselights came on and it became clear the show was over. The next three shows – in Boston, Columbia and Minneapolis – were all cancelled. The official explanation: ‘severe damage to [Axl’s] vocal chords’. The real reason: humiliation; fury; hubris? Only Axl really knew.

To begin with, Metallica took it all in their stride. They knew touring with GN’R would be ‘a trip’. Besides, they were busy having their own, less public adventures. During the lull after New Jersey, James flew down to Mexico, ‘had a few too many tequila poppers, got into a fight in some bar and had a bottle cracked over my head’. He was still carrying the scars when the tour resumed, on 8 August, at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. At this point, a real, much more frightening accident occurred when, during ‘Fade to Black’, James badly injured his left arm after a mistimed pyrotechnic explosion, the twelve-foot flame leaving him with third-degree burns. Forced to abandon their set while James was rushed to the hospital, a frantic call was made to GN’R, still relaxing at their hotel, requesting that they start early that night to compensate for Metallica having to truncate their show. They all agreed, according to Slash, then had to wait for Axl, eventually going on three hours later than their own time slot, before leaving the stage early when the flame-tempered singer walked off after just nine songs, complaining that the onstage monitors weren’t loud enough for him to hear his voice. Others whispered he was just pissed off at Metallica ‘leaving him in the shit’. His parting message to the crowd: ‘Thank you, your money will be refunded, we’re outta here.’ Righteously pissed off, having endured premature ends to both sets, more than 2,000 angry fans rioted as they left the venue, fighting with police, resulting in over a dozen injuries. As even Lars later wryly noted, ‘That was the wrong night to have monitor problems.’ Added James: ‘I was so disappointed in [Axl] because he could have won so many people over by continuing the show.’ Instead, ‘There was a lot of unnecessary violence because of his attitude. He could have turned it into a great evening.’ This time, seven shows had to be cancelled and rearranged. By then, Alan Niven had long-since departed – for talking back to ‘the red-haired dictator’, as he called Axl. But even his replacement, Doug Goldstein, had to admit the tour had become ‘like people who go to watch the Indy 500. They don’t go to watch the race. They go to see the crash.’