Metallica~Thrash metal, Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Hard Rock
Robert Trujillo, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield.
Metallica is an American heavy metal band formed in Los
Angeles, California in 1981. Metallica has become one of the most commercially
successful musical acts of recent decades, and are considered one of the “Big
Four” pioneers of thrash metal, along with Anthrax, Slayer, and Megadeth. The
band has sold more than 90 million records worldwide, including 57 million albums
in the United States alone.
Early days (1981-83) Metallica was formed in Los Angeles, California, 28 October 1981 by guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, after both had placed classified advertisements in the publication The Recycler about forming a band. The early incarnation of the band went through a number of members, including Dave Mustaine and Ron McGovney. Metallica got its name when San Francisco-area metal promoter Ron Quintana asked Lars to help pick out a name for his new magazine promoting U.S. and British metal bands. Quintana came up with a list that included the name “Metallica,” while Lars suggested “Metal Mania” and “Hesse”; Lars decided to use “Metallica” for the band’s name. Metallica’s music was inspired by bands such as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Diamond Head, Motörhead, Saxon, Thin Lizzy, Queen, Mercyful Fate, Venom and other, mainly British, metal bands. They also took inspiration from punk bands like the Misfits, Zeroption, and The Ramones and UK hardcore bands such as Discharge. In early 1982, Ulrich convinced Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel to include the song “Hit the Lights” on the first Metal Massacre compilation. Desperate for a full time lead guitarist, Ulrich posted an ad in a local newspaper. Dave Mustaine from Huntington Beach, California, who at the time was playing in
New York to record their first album,”Metal Up Your Ass.” However, due to conflict with the record label regarding the title, the album was later renamed Kill ‘Em All. The album was not an initial financial success, but it earned them a growing fanbase in the underground metal scene. Despite the animosity, Dave Mustaine still has co-writing credits for “Jump in the Fire” (with different lyrics from earlier demos), “Phantom Lord“, “Metal Militia” and “The Four Horsemen” (originally titled “The Mechanix“, [or alternately “Mechanics“], and listed as such on early demo tapes, with the earlier demo version having entirely different lyrics). The 1989 re-release included fan favorites “Am I Evil?“, from Diamond Head, and “Blitzkrieg” from the band Blitzkrieg, which were later included in their Garage album. A year later, Metallica released Ride the Lightning. The album’s inclusion of a slower, more introspective song, “Fade to Black“, set Metallica apart from other thrash bands. In addition to the title track and “Fade to Black“, it boasts “For Whom the Bell Tolls“, “Creeping Death“, and the 9-minute instrumental “The Call of Ktulu.” Last is the title track, “Ride the Lightning,” a protest against capital punishment (However, in an interview with Guitar World magazine, James Hetfield has stated that the song is not an indictment of the death penalty, in which he is a believer, but simply an exploration of the concept of being in a terrible situation with no control. Dave Mustaine still has credits recognized for “Ride the Lightning” and “The Call of Ktulu”. When Ride the Lightning caught the attention of major labels, Metallica signed with Elektra Records. Their first release with Elektra was 1986’s Master of Puppets, which would serve as their breakthrough album. Despite the fact that no singles were released from the album, the band received minor airplay from album tracks “Master of Puppets” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)“. Fans looking for an alternative to glam metal bands of the day relished in furious songs such as “Battery” and “Damage, Inc.“. The band gained even more exposure when they were asked to open for Ozzy Osbourne, and Master of Puppets climbed to number 29 on the Billboard Top Album Charts. Some critics consider the album to be the “greatest heavy metal album of all time”. On September 27, 1986, during the European leg of their Damage Inc. tour, Cliff Burton died near Ljungby, Sweden when Metallica’s tour bus skidded off an allegedly icy road and went onto its right side. Burton was thrown out of the window and the bus landed on top of him. It is debatable whether Burton was dead at this point or not, although he would certainly have been critically injured. A winch that was lifting the bus off him snapped, causing the bus to crush him a second time. Burton’s death left the band’s future in doubt. The three remaining members decided that the bassist would want them to carry on, and with the Burton family’s blessings, the band sought a replacement. Among the auditionees was Les Claypool (of the band Primus), a childhood friend of Hammett’s. The band liked Claypool but felt his style was “too funky”. Hetfield later explained that Claypool was literally “too good” and “out there” for Metallica. Ultimately Claypool was not offered the job, and Jason Newsted, formerly of Arizona’s Flotsam and Jetsam was asked to join. Newsted officially joined Metallica on October 28, 1986 three weeks after Burton’s funeral. The band finished their tour in the early months of 1987. Following the tour, the band recorded The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited in July 1987 as a way to test a new studio they had constructed and to trial the talents of Newsted.
…And Justice for All, the first studio album since Burton’s death, was released in 1988. The album was a massive commercial success, reaching number 6 on The Billboard 200, their first album to reach the top 10. On the album very little of Newsted’s bass is audible. According to Newsted and the other band members, this is a result of the internal hazing and bullying toward Newsted for being the newest member and replacement for Cliff Burton. Ulrich has also stated his opinion that the lack of perceived bass resulted from Newsted exclusively mirroring Hetfield’s rhythm tracks. There were other complaints with the production, such as Lars Ulrich’s drums clicking more than thudding and the thin sound of the guitars. The Damaged Justice tour followed to promote the new album. Fans again appreciated fast and furious tunes, as well as lengthy songs, such as on “…And Justice for All” (9:45) and “To Live Is to Die” (9:48). In fact, all the songs are over 5 minutes, with 7 of 9 songs over 6 minutes long. Despite criticism, in 1989, Metallica received its first Grammy nomination for the album. The nomination was for the newly created Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrument categories. However, the award was given to Jethro Tull for the album Crest of a Knave. The result generated much controversy, as Metallica was widely expected to take home the award and was standing off-stage waiting to receive it after performing the song “One” for the telecast. Jethro Tull (who was considered by most to not even be a Hard Rock/Metal group) had not even bothered to attend the ceremony, assuming that their chance of winning would be a long-shot. Lars Ulrich even referred to the snub in accepting a Grammy for “Enter Sandman” three years later, stating, “We gotta thank Jethro Tull for not putting out an album this year”. Following Metallica’s release of …And Justice for All, they embraced the mainstream music world with their debut music video for the song “One“. The band performed the song in an abandoned warehouse, and was then extensively “remixed” with footage of the film version of Johnny Got His Gun. Rather than organize an ongoing licensing deal, Metallica simply bought the rights to the film outright. This is why the film has not had a subsequent DVD pressing apart from a release in the UK. The end result featured a coherent but shortened “mini-movie” version of “Johnny Got His Gun” with an intricate level of synchronization between the song and the film’s dialogue, creating a singular narrative between the two. The “remix” video was submitted to MTV, with the alternate “performance only” version held back in the event that MTV would ban the remix version. MTV accepted the remix version despite its length (the video ran for nearly ten minutes). The video would be viewers’ first exposure to Metallica and was voted #25 in the fall of 1999 when MTV aired its last “Top 100 Videos of All Time” countdown. The video was also prominently featured during MTV’s 25th Anniversary edition of “ADD Video,” which showcased the top videos to air on MTV in the last years.
Also, later on in 2005 Metallica would release “The Videos”. This DVD collection included all music videos by Metallica from 1989 through 2005, but it featured “Two Of One”. This was the original “One” video and the “Jammin’ Version”, which was the video of the band performing in a warehouse. On 14 August 1991, Metallica released their self-titled album, Metallica (popularly known as The Black Album by fans), which included songs such as “Enter Sandman“, “Nothing Else Matters“, “Sad But True,” “The Unforgiven,” “Holier Than Thou,” and “Wherever I May Roam.” The record was co-produced with Bob Rock, whose resume included work with hard rock acts The Cult, Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe. The album featured a black cover that had a very pale image of a snake in one of the corners, with the band’s name in the opposite corner. The album art evoked humorous comparisons to fictional band Spinal Tap, who in the spoof rockumentary This is Spinal Tap put out an album with an all black cover. The majority of the making of the Metallica album and the following tour was documented in A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica. The recording sessions were a long and arduous process, lasting over a year due to infighting among the band’s members and endless arguments with Rock about the album’s direction, scope, and sound. The cost of recording the album was over $1 million (as stated on Behind the Music: Metallica). However, despite the battle to finish the album, it quickly became the band’s most successful release, charting at number one on the Billboard charts. The album’s first single was “Enter Sandman“, which showed off the new album’s slowed-down style of music compared to Metallica’s previous work. The Black Album is currently tied for the 26th spot of highest selling album of all time in America.
After almost three years of touring to support The Black Album, including a headlining performance at Woodstock 1994, Metallica went straight back into the studio to write and record their sixth studio album Load. They took a break in the summer of 1995 and played 3 outdoor shows which included Metallica organizing and headlining Donington Park UK supported by Slayer, Skid Row, Slash’s Snakepit, Therapy? and Corrosion of Conformity. The Short Tour was entitled ‘Escape from The studio Tour 1995′. On December 13 of that year, they recorded their rehearsal for Lemmy’s 50th birthday party; four Motörhead covers, which were later released (titled “Motörhead–ache”) as part of the Hero of the Day singles collection. The band spent around a year writing and recording new songs, resulting in 1996’s Load. During early production, Load was intended to be a double album. Ultimately, it was decided that it would be best to release half of the songs first, continue to work on the remaining songs, and release them the following year. This resulted in the follow-up album, ReLoad. By 1996, with the release of Load, all band members had cut their hair (although Hammett eventually grew it back), which was ridiculed by fans, including band friends Alice in Chains, whose edition of MTV’s Unplugged featured, on Mike Inez’s bass, the words “friends don’t let friends get Friends haircuts” These albums represented a significant musical change for Metallica. The band’s breakneck metal tempos and layered guitar compositions had largely been replaced by bluesy guitar tones and slide guitar. Several songs include the use of new instruments including the use of the hurdy-gurdy and violin in “Low Man’s Lyric”. The changes on Load and ReLoad had been anticipated by earlier experiments (especially on The Black Album). Sales of these albums were lower than sales of the previous three albums. Hetfield noted later in the documentary film Some Kind of Monster that the songs on these two albums were initially thought by the band to be of only average quality, and polished and reworked repeatedly until judged to be releasable. Hetfield also felt, however, that Metallica’s changed image worked to the songs detriment, saying that ” ‘Bleeding Me’, is, I think, some of my better lyrics of all time, and what are people talking about? Lars’ fuzzy jacket.” In December 1997, Metallica performed on NBC’s Saturday Night Live to promote ReLoad. They performed “Fuel” and “The Memory Remains” with Marianne Faithful. In 1998, Metallica compiled a double CD called Garage Inc.. The first CD contained newly recorded covers ranging from Killing Joke, The Misfits, Thin Lizzy, Mercyful Fate, and Black Sabbath to more unexpected choices like Nick Cave and Bob Seger (the band’s cover of Seger’s “Turn the Page” garnered extensive radio airplay). The second CD gathered together previously released covers, including the original The $5.98 E.P.: Garage Days Re-Revisited, which had become a scarce collector’s item. The CD also included B-side covers going as far back as 1984. Their cover of Queen’s Stone Cold Crazy won a Grammy for Best Heavy Metal Performance. On March 7, 1999, Metallica was inducted into the San Francisco Walk of Fame. The mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, proclaimed the day “Official Metallica Day” in San Francisco. A month later, on April 21-22, 1999, Metallica recorded two performances with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, then conducted by Michael Kamen. Kamen, who had previously worked with Bob Rock on “Nothing Else Matters”, had approached the band eight years prior, just after The Black Album was released with the idea of pairing Metallica’s music with a symphony orchestra. Kamen and his staff composed additional orchestral material for a number of Metallica In 2000, Metallica discovered that a demo of their song “I Disappear” was being distributed via the Napster P2P file-sharing network. Not only was the song unfinished, it was supposed to be released in combination with the Mission: Impossible II soundtrack. They soon discovered that in addition to the demo, their entire catalogue was freely available. The band initiated legal action against Napster, demanding that 300,000 Napster users found to be trading Metallica songs be banned from the network. Legal actions were also filed against Yale This led to Lars Ulrich providing a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding copyright infringement on July 11, 2000. The lawsuit created a public relations nightmare. Throughout the controversy, websites hosted cartoon parodies of band members, portraying them as selfish rock stars who were out of touch with their fans. The most popular of these was a cartoon parody entitled Napster Bad!, by Camp Chaos, which spawned an entire series. Critics mocked Ulrich by spelling his name as “Lar$”. Public ridicule was widespread as Metallica had gotten their start via underground trading of bootleg recordings of their performances. Metallica’s defense was that Napster was allowing free access to their back catalogue and not live bootleg recordings, which the band had always encouraged. In 2007, years after the controversy, Metallica was still subject to ridicule for its actions, even being named #17 on Blender magazine’s list of “biggest wusses in rock” for its “anti-Napster crusade”.
As plans were being made to go into the recording studio in 2001, Newsted left the band, due to as he put it, “the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love”. Subsequent interviews with Newsted and the remaining members revealed that Newsted’s desire to release a CD and tour with his Echobrain side project - and Hetfield’s intense resistance to such an idea - was the primary cause of Newsted’s departure. Additionally, a Playboy interview revealed that the “hazing” that Newsted received since joining the band had not lessened over time. Finally, Newsted had never shared the songwriting partner status that Burton had enjoyed (in 15 years with the group, Newsted only received co-writing credit on three songs: “Blackened” from …And Justice for All, “My Friend of Misery” from Metallica and “Where The Wild Things Are” from ReLoad). The 2004 documentary, Some Kind of Monster provided more insight into the reasons for Newsted’s departure. In the film he says he felt his former bandmates’ decision to hire a therapist to help solve their problems was “really fucking lame, and weak”. In July, 2001, Hetfield entered rehab due to “alcoholism and other addictions”. For nearly a year, Metallica ceased to function in any meaningful way. Ulrich and Hammett, for the first time, seriously considered the possibility that Metallica might be finished. Hetfield eventually returned to the band following his rehab hiatus and was required to work only four hours a day and spend the rest of his time with his family. Metallica continued slowly as a three-piece throughout the writing and recording of their next album. Longtime producer Bob Rock handled bass duties for the sessions. The making of the album was documented for the movie, “Some Kind of Monster“. The film also exposed to fans that Metallica had sought the guidance of a therapist, Phil Towle, to deal with a vast amount of the band’s inner turmoil. Following the album’s recording, Metallica held auditions for Newsted’s permanent replacement in early 2003. Among the auditioning bassists were Pepper Keenan, Jeordie White, Scott Reeder, Eric Avery, Danny Lohner, and Chris Wyse. Robert Trujillo formerly of Suicidal Tendencies, and Ozzy Osbourne’s band, was eventually chosen as the new bassist. Robert’s resume also included Infectious Grooves as well as a stint with Black Label Society on their Boozed, Broozed, and Broken-Boned DVD. As Metallica moved on, Jason Newsted also found a new musical home joining Canadian thrash metal legends Voivod in 2002. In an interesting turn of events, Jason also became Robert’s replacement in Ozzy’s band during the 2003 Ozzfest tour (which included Voivod as part of the touring bill). While preparing for the Download Festival in England, Lars was rushed to hospital with a mysterious illness, and was unable to perform. Hetfield searched for volunteers at the last minute to replace Ulrich; Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo and Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison volunteered, with Lombardo performing the songs “Battery” and “The Four Horsemen“. In June 2003, Metallica’s eighth full-length recording, St. Anger, debuted at number one on the album charts. Being an intentionally raw and unpolished album, harsh criticism from fans followed. The record’s under-produced sound, Hetfield’s “flexible” sense of pitch, Ulrich’s steely sounding snare, and the absence of any guitar solos received particular criticism. Despite this, the album won the best metal performance at the 2004 Grammys. The song “St. Anger” was used as the official theme song for WWE’s SummerSlam 2003. Having toured extensively for two years in support of St. Anger on the Summer Sanitarium Tour 2003 in festivals featuring Mudvayne, Deftones, Linkin Park, and Limp Bizkit and then the lengthy Madly in Anger with the World tour with Godsmack (in which nearly every performance was professionally recorded and sold on livemetallica.com) Metallica took a break from performing and spent most of 2005 with friends and family; however for two historic shows on November 13, 2005 and November 15, 2005, the band opened for the Rolling Stones at AT&T park in San Francisco. On February 16, 2006, Metallica announced on their official website that after their 15+ year relationship, longtime producer Bob Rock was stepping down and would not be producing Metallica’s next studio album. Rock had produced every Metallica album since 1991. Metallica is currently working on a studio album with producer Rick Rubin who has produced albums for other prominent rock and metal bands such as Slayer, System of a Down, Slipknot, Beastie Boys, Audioslave, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine and Linkin Park. Metallica and Rubin go back a long way, in the eighties as Danzig friends and fans, James Hetfield doing backing vocals on the self-titled Danzig album (1988), also produced by Rubin.
Metallica debuted an untitled song nicknamed “The New Song” in Berlin, Germany on June 6, 2006 on the European leg of the Escape from the Studio ‘06 mini tour. On August 12, 2006, Metallica debuted another song in Tokyo, Japan on the Asian leg of the tour, nicknamed “The Other New Song”. They have also supported the Summer Sonic tour in Tokyo and Osaka, along with Linkin Park. The band had previously unveiled new songs throughout the years prior to their release. It was during this time on tour that the band finally bowed to fan pressure and decided to make each of their albums available from the iTunes Store - though strictly in the U.S. and Canada until issues with their European label are resolved - allowing individual tracks to be legally downloaded for the first time. Exclusive tracks from the Seattle ‘89 shows were added to the band’s first four albums. On October 13, 2006 Metallica announced that they would release a DVD containing all their videos from 1989 to 2004. The DVD, The Videos 1989-2004, was released on December 4, 2006 worldwide and on December 5 in North America. The Videos 1989-2004 eventually became available on the iTunes Store. Metallica also released a cover of “The Ecstasy of Gold”, a song by Ennio Morricone in an album entitled We All Love Ennio Morricone released on February 20, 2007, in which other artists honor the composer. The Ecstasy of Gold has been the opener of Metallica live shows for over 20 years - but it has always been the original instrumentation and arrangement, played from a recording. This new version features the band itself performing it, giving a new guitar-based interpretation to the song. On February 9, 2007 Metallica confirmed that pre-production on the new studio album had been completed, and recording of the new album would begin on March 12, 2007. The band also announced that a summer tour, later named “Sick of the Studio ‘07″, was in the early planning stages. Eleven dates of this tour have been announced so far.
for their “Sick of the Studio ‘07” tour. The winners from the METALLICA: THE VIDEOS 1989-2004 DVD radio and online contests were treated to the HQ VIP treatment with a BBQ, a few autographs, and an intimate performance from the band in the jam room. Metallica’s 2007 tour began in Lisbon, Portugal at the 13th edition of mega-rock festival Super Bock Super Rock in which they played the song “…And Justice for All” for the first time in eighteen years. Metallica played to a crowd of more than 50,000 fans. The tour will run through July 2007. On July 3rd, 2007, Metallica performed at ?erra Vibe as part of the 11th Rockwave festival in Athens, Greece. On July 7th, 2007, Metallica performed at Wembley Stadium as part of Live Earth. At “Live Earth” Metallica played the songs “Sad But True”, “Nothing Else Matters” and “Enter Sandman”. BBC, who were broadcasting the event from the UK, were flooded with complaints after they missed the beginning of “Sad But True” and then cut off before “Enter Sandman” during the set, to a pre-recorded Crowded House performance from the Sydney show. “Enter Sandman” was highlighted on NBC’s “Live Earth” presentation. They performed at Wembley Stadium the following day, as part of their tour “Sick of the Studio ‘07″, with support from Mastodon, Machine Head and HIM. On the 10th of July they performed at Valle Hovin Stadion in Oslo, Norway in front of 40.000 people. Stockholm, Sweden on the 12th of July, Aarhus, Denmark on the 13th, Helsinki, Finland on the 15th and finally on the 18th they did a show in Moscow, Russia in front of 62,000 people. On Metallica’s “livemetallica.com” download site, the show in Denmark only has the latter part of the concert due to a massive power failure, so as a result, the show is available for free. At E3 2007, Harmonix announced the song “Enter Sandman” will be featured on the video game Rock Band due out November 2007. A month later, it was revealed that the song “One” will be featured on the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock video game, due out in October 2007. In the July issue of Q, a music magazine in the U.K., Metallica was featured on the cover and it included the band members telling their whole story on the band’s 26-year relationship. Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum said in an recent interview, “Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] is a good friend of mine. He played me the demos from San Francisco, and I turned and looked at him and I said, “Master that shit and put it out.” It’s ridiculous. The demos were sick. Eight-minute songs, all these tempo changes, crazy fast. “It’s like, ‘Dude, don’t get slower when you get older, but don’t get faster! How are you gonna play this live?’ And then me and Lars were out partying all night, and he had to go in the studio the next day and do this stupid like nine-or ten-minute song, and I was laughing at him — because he played me the demo of it, and it was [sings really fast drum part], so fast.
Metallica has won seven Grammy Awards: Bammies: Governor’s Award: Metallica were ranked by MTV the 3rd “Greatest Heavy Metal Band in History”, and was listed at #5 on VH1’s “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” and at #1 on VH1’s “20 Greatest Metal Bands.” The band will be eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
Due to the album’s new style of sound, more charges of selling out would be aimed at Metallica throughout the 1990s, to which the band often joked that they did indeed sell out - each and every date of the tour (as stated on Behind the Music: Metallica). In 1992 during a hugely financially successful co-headlining GNR-Metallica Stadium Tour with Guns N’ Roses, Hetfield suffered severe second and third degree burns to his left arm due to pyrotechnics during the opening of “Fade to Black” in the Olympic Stadium (Montreal), leaving him unable to play guitar for a portion of the tour. Former Metallica roadie and Metal Church guitarist John Marshall filled in for the rest of the tour on guitar while Hetfield continued to sing.
songs and the concerts featured broad selection of songs dating as far back as Ride the Lightning. Metallica also wrote two brand new Kamen-scored songs for the event, “No Leaf Clover” and “-Human“. The audio recording and concert footage were released later that year as the album/concert film S&M, in November 1999, on CD, VHS, VCD, and DVD.
University, University of Southern California, and Indiana University for not blocking Napster from their campuses. In 2001, Metallica and Napster agreed to an out-of-court settlement which led to Napster user accounts being locked out (the band did not take legal action against any individuals for copyright infringement).
In retaliation to the controversy, Ulrich appeared during the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, in a skit with that year’s host Marlon Wayans, that blasted the idea of using Napster to share music. Marlon played a college student sitting in his dorm room, listening to Metallica’s “I Disappear”. Ulrich, playing himself, walked in and asked for an explanation. Upon receiving Wayans’ excuse that using Napster was just “sharing”, Lars retorted that Marlon’s idea of sharing was simply borrowing things that were not yours without asking. He called in the Metallica road crew, who proceeded to confiscate all Wayans’ belongings, leaving him almost nude in an empty room. Napster creator Shawn Fanning responded later in the ceremony by presenting an award wearing a Metallica shirt, saying “I borrowed this shirt from a friend. Maybe, if I like it, I’ll buy one of my own”.
