Birth School Metallica Death - Vol I

by Paul Brannigan

  ‘All I could think of at the time was, “James wrote a fucking love song to his girlfriend?” That’s just weird,’ Kirk Hammett recalled. ‘James always wants to be perceived as this guy who is very confident and strong. And for him to write lyrics like that – showing a sensitive side – took a lot of balls. Lars, Jason and I were going through divorces. I was an emotional wreck. I was trying to take those feeling of guilt and failure and channel them into the music, to get something positive out of it. Jason and Lars were too, and I think that has a lot to do with why [the album] sounds the way it does.’

  ‘When I went to write lyrics, I didn’t know what the fuck to write about,’ Hetfield admitted. ‘I was trying to write lyrics that the band could stand behind – but we are four completely different individuals. So the only way to go was in.’

  If Metallica were changing the way they wrote songs, the same could also be said for the manner in which these songs were recorded. Whereas previously the emphasis had been on precision and technical proficiency, now the onus was placed upon such intangible qualities as ‘vibe’ and ‘groove’. In search of this, the band had AC/DC’s indefatigable and timeless Back in Black album as their creative template, a body of songs of such authority as to appear to have been made entirely without effort. Metallica would soon enough learn that this appearance was a trick, and the truth could barely lie further away.

  Each day at One On One Studios the band would gather to practise together the songs they were set to record. Bob Rock desired that the quartet coalesce into a fluid and supple band rather than the mechanised juggernaut featured on the group’s previous works. Seated together in the studio’s sound room, the quartet would trudge through their new compositions, time and time again. Tempers flared as dog days became dog nights. On one occasion Hetfield was nursing a sore throat, Lars Ulrich continued to nag the front man to sing the song the group were playing (‘The Unforgiven’). With a terseness some way north of irritation, Hetfield told his band mate that if he desired to hear the vocal line to the track he should ‘go sing’ it himself.

  Watching Metallica stretch their limbs over the first few weeks of what would be a nine-month recording schedule, Rock might have wondered what kind of fresh hell he’d wandered into. In order to record this stubborn and sometimes fractious group of musicians, he had declined to produce a solo album by his friend, and Bon Jovi lead guitarist, Richie Sambora. Along with this, and against his better judgement, the Canadian had agreed for the first time to relocate himself from Little Rock Studios in Vancouver to North Hollywood for as long as the recording of Metallica’s fifth album might take. Rock had originally decided to sign up for the job when during a visit to the Grand Canyon he had in the same day heard one of the group’s tracks on the radio (itself a rare enough occurrence) and seen a native American teenager wearing one of the band’s T-shirts – these two events equating, presumably, to some kind of divine providence. But as he surveyed the task at hand in the windowless rooms of One On One the Canadian must have wondered what he had done. It was not even as if the band that had hired him seemed particularly grateful for, or even respectful of, his services.

  ‘We really put him through the ringer,’ recalls Hetfield, a man that Rock quickly dubbed ‘Dr. No’, given the guitarist’s refusal to entertain almost all of the producer’s suggestions. ‘[But] he survived. We were testing [him] and shit, making sure that this guy can drive the Metallica train.’

  ‘It was the first time an outsider had been allowed into the inner circle and there was some butting of heads,’ recalls Jason Newsted. ‘The first weeks were filled with posturing – people wanted to get respect and show their integrity – but when we saw that Bob’s ideas flowed there was more trust.’

  Metallica, though, did not just have one new pupil on to whom they might project their pointed but never pointless brand of hazing – they had two. As work began on the album, the group permitted inner-circle access to a second outsider, this one armed with a film camera. In mid-October, with band and producer still tentatively attempting to broker an entente cordiale, Q Prime extended an invitation to twenty-six-year-old Adam Dubin to meet with Hetfield and Ulrich to discuss the possibility of documenting the recording sessions for a possible long-form video release (a revenue stream often bafflingly bountiful during the Eighties and Nineties). At this point in the young film-maker’s career, Dubin had co-directed just two music videos. But despite a film-reel shorter than ten minutes in length, the two promotional clips to which Dubin had placed his name – the Beastie Boys’ ‘(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ and ‘No Sleep ’Til Brooklyn’ (the latter track featuring an impromptu appearance from Slayer’s Kerry King, who also played lead guitar on the track) – were among the two most requested videos in MTV’s then nine-year history. As if this were not quite enough, the director came with a spotless reference from his former New York University film school room-mate, one Rick Rubin.

  ‘My manager was Juliana Roberts,’ explains Dubin, ‘a very well-connected music video producer, and she and Peter Mensch had been talking: everybody knew Metallica was going back into the studio to record and the idea came up, from Peter Mensch, like, “We should put a camera in there with them” and Juliana said, “Well, I’ve got the guy.” So then I got a phone call in October 1990 where Juliana said, “How would you like to film Metallica in the studio?” I said, “Yes, of course” and she said, “Okay, great, can you be in California to meet the band?” I said, “Sure, when?” and she said, “Tomorrow.” So then I get a flight and Juliana drives me directly to One On One Studios, and on the way she said, “By the way, the band is not really sure they want to do this film.” And I was like, “But I’m here to talk to them!” She said, “Yeah, you have to convince them that filming is a good idea.” And I’m like, “Oh my God!”’

  Before Adam Dubin could ask, ‘What kind of merry hell is this, and how do I get out of it?’, the young director found himself in a room with Lars Ulrich. Innately charming – especially to those he suspects might be capable of doing his band a solid favour – Ulrich chatted happily to Dubin about films and about Rubin, whom Ulrich (of course) also knew. The sense of security into which the film-maker had fallen lasted until the arrival in the room of Hetfield, who on this day had decided to wear his awkward hat. For a man whose sense of inner conflict and often glowering disgruntlement is of a size sufficient to be visible from space, Hetfield also carries with him an aura of quiet patience that, while begging never to be tested, is rarely discarded in the face of those he feels undeserving of his scorn. In the presence of fans who have placed food upon his table, the front man is almost without exception gracious and kind, even gentle; he understands that for such strangers the image of him as a man of worth is not something that should be regarded lightly. Even in the face of music journalists armed with a notebook filled with questions the inanity and repetitiveness of which would test the patience of a tour guide, Hetfield presents himself with an air that is as unflappable as it is laconic. These character traits, however, are qualities that have been learned rather than accepted as instinct, and have been positioned in order to cover his essential shyness. When the mood took him, or when circumstances required nothing else from him, Hetfield could be as disagreeable as the worst drunk in the worst bar in the sketchiest part of town. This was the sight that greeted Dubin.

  ‘James is a great guy once you get to know him,’ Dubin insists, ‘but then, and now, he has this wall of defence up. If I was just a fan, he probably would have been really, really nice, but I’m not a fan. I’m somebody coming in here possibly to film, so I’m a working person now. I represent business. So he has his game face on, which is not necessarily a friendly one. It’s a guarded face. And so he just kinda grunts a “Hello” and sits down in this chair that looks like a throne when he sits on it – kinda like the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial – and he’s looking down at me and I’m becoming microscopic as I’m sitting there. And it’s jus
t becoming more and more terrifying.’

  ‘So now I realise it’s game time. So we start to talk about film and documentary film and I go through explaining the process, how, like, we’d use 16 mm for the classic documentary look. And I say, “What kind of lighting do you have in there?” And James goes, “Candles.” And I go, “Okay, well, that doesn’t sound like enough light” and he just grunts. I realised, at a certain point, that he’s messing with me – like later I came to know that they do this, they haze people, they want to see what you got – so he was kinda being difficult to see if I could keep up. And I said, “I’m going to need a sound man, because if we shoot film you need somebody running sound, because film and sound are separate, not like a video camera where they’re together”, and he’s like, “You need another guy?”

  ‘The whole thing they keep talking about is the vibe: you can’t disturb the vibe in the recording studio. Which, as a documentarian, I completely agree with. And I made a promise that I’d be like the fly-on-the-wall, that they wouldn’t see me or hear me. But to James it still sounded like interference, it sounded like two extra guys in their recording studio. So James said, “Let me get this straight: you want to record us as we are, but you want to come in here with lights and recording equipment and cameras and you’re going to have all this stuff, and that’s supposed to capture the way we are without all this stuff.” And I said, “Er, well, yeah, kinda.” And at that point I just felt like the size of an ant, like, “Boy, I am not getting my point across here.”’

  It was with a certain amount of surprise, then, that two weeks later, Dubin received word that consent had been given. Thus began a period in his life that the young director is unlikely to forget. Instructed to pack his bags for a four-month residency in LA, it would in fact be eight months before Dubin was granted leave to return to his native New York. Despite being on hand only to film the often dysfunctional workings of the group’s inner circle, Dubin’s presence was greeted as if he were an inductee at boot camp – which in a sense, was precisely the case. At one point during his time within the confines of One On One the director recalls that someone in the band or their inner circle had brought to the studio a stun gun or Taser – ‘one of those things that if you hit somebody with it they’re going to go down into a pile of human jelly’ – the purpose of which was not apparent. Not immediately, at least.

  ‘One day I’m filming in the studio and I hear this electrical crackling behind me and the guys are cracking up,’ continues Dubin. ‘And I turn around and James was behind me with this stun gun. I mean it’s within, just, an inch of me, and it’s crackling away and [they] were just laughing. He so badly wanted to hit me with that thing. He just wanted to see me go down with my camera on my head. That would have been a big joke, and probably would have wound me up in the hospital for a week.’

  For a band who in time would become celebrated for washing their linen on public thoroughfares, even in the early years of the Nineties this was a collective that did not cower from the scrutiny to which they were now being subjected. Neither, for that matter, did Bob Rock, a man whose counsel was not sought on the wisdom of bringing a film crew into the studio. Throughout filming, Rock exudes a quiet charisma and a sense of stoic humour capable of withstanding the mockery of the men he was attempting to shepherd. At an early stage of the recording process, the producer incurs the disdain of Hetfield and Ulrich following the discovery by the pair of an old twelve-inch vinyl record by the Payola$. As the members of Metallica regard the item, their attention becomes focused on a picture of Rock on the release’s inner sleeve. Tousled and groomed in a manner entirely typical of a band performing the kind of radio-friendly pop-rock fare common in the early Eighties, Hetfield surmises the image of his producer as a younger man with the put-down (and stay-down) ‘Bob used to be a woman.’ Such is the clamour of both guitarist and drummer to mock their new producer that the line is barely allowed to breathe before it is smothered by fresh insult.

  ‘The whole first three months of pre-production were very difficult,’ recalls Rock with a equilibrium worthy of a statesman. ‘They were very suspicious.’

  ‘Our reaction to [the producer’s] proposals was initially negative,’ admits Ulrich. Elsewhere the drummer noted that the union between band and producer was an occasion where ‘all hell broke loose’, the reason for this being that Rock ‘really started challenging us and pushing us and arguing with us and he didn’t take any of our bullshit. It was tough.’

  For Rock the process of recording Metallica took the form of a war of attrition. As happens in politics, he had been given the role of realising the art of the possible. The producer understood immediately that he would gain no traction in the field of musical arrangements. Rock, though, was no pushover, and even in matters where his opinion seemed certain to be ignored the Canadian still proffered his point of view. Occasionally the force and sense of the outsider’s outlook was sufficient to knock holes in Metallica’s brick wall, as was the case when the producer wondered aloud why ‘Sad But True’ was written in the key of E. Rock’s recollection of the answer to this question proves that while he regarded Metallica as often bullet-headed in their sense of self-assurance, in his eyes they could also be loveably naive.

  ‘They said, “Well isn’t E the lowest note?”’ recalls Rock. ‘So I told them that on Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood, which I produced and Metallica loved, the band had tuned down to D. Metallica then tuned down to D, and that’s when the riff really became huge. It was just this force that you just couldn’t stop, no matter what.’

  It is possible, however, that the producer may have misremembered this exchange. Metallica had already experimented with down-tuning their guitars at Sweet Silence five years previously, in order to create the lurching, dread-drenched guitar tones of ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’ on Master of Puppets. Given Hetfield’s technical proficiency, it seems unlikely that the musicians would have forgotten such a detail. One thing upon which all parties were agreed, however, was that the task of recording their new album was a gruelling job of work. While the demands placed upon each participant were significant, none felt the strain quite as acutely as Bob Rock. It was the Canadian’s job to orchestrate the band’s schedule, the movements of which often resembled ships passing in the night. Following years of living his life on the far side of midnight, Hetfield was discovering a taste for working during daylight hours and for sleeping during periods of darkness. In this, as in much else, Ulrich was his band mate’s exact opposite. On occasion the drummer would treat himself to a power nap and emerge in One On One’s recording room at two o’clock in the morning, ready for his working day to begin.

  ‘James was pretty diplomatic about it at the time,’ recalls Jason Newsted, ‘but it was difficult. James was the most frustrated, and Kirk and I had to be there as a kind of support system.’

  For anyone that has witnessed a band at work in a recording studio, the level of commitment and attention to detail required in such surroundings is revealing. Nonetheless, many albums released fail to reach the level of their own potential, and too often those involved in the making of such albums are aware at the time that this is the case. For Bob Rock, however, the squandering of opportunity and talent in the face of hard work was an act of sacrilege. For those whose efforts failed to match this standard, the producer was capable of scalding scorn. During the recording of the guitar solos, the producer’s opprobrium fell on the bewildered head of Kirk Hammett. One song in particular demanded a contribution from the group’s lead guitarist that required the unification of two often incompatible bedfellows: grandiosity and tastefulness. This song was the epic ‘The Unforgiven’. To give the musician his due, Hammett had invested much energy in composing a guitar solo he believed would suit the ebbs and swells of the track’s middle section, the only problem being that everyone who heard the solo hated it. As the guitarist fumbled and dallied in his efforts to conceive a suitable replacement, Rock lost his temper – if not his s
ense of control. ‘Cut to the chase and fucking play, man,’ snapped the producer. ‘Now that you’ve warmed up, let’s hear the fucking Guitar Player [magazine] guitarist of the year play.’ Appearing both alarmed and not a little wounded, Hammett replies, ‘All right’, and with hurt at his fingertips performs in just one take a guitar solo the magnificence of which would be heard by more than 20 million listeners.

  In making an album that sounded like a million dollars – and for reasons other than the fact that it cost a million dollars – Bob Rock bullied, probed and seduced Metallica into realising a version of themselves that swelled to its fullest parameters. In order to achieve this aim, the producer first had to plunge the detonator on years of bad habits. Surveying the rubble, he then replaced this construct with a more unified and purposeful whole. Nowhere was this task more evident than on the performance coaxed from the larynx of James Hetfield. With the exception of the uncommonly carefree ‘Enter Sandman’, Hetfield’s lyrical contribution to his group’s fifth album took the form of unvarnished truths concerning the human condition. The words written were not so much subject-led as they were driven by the kind of emotion its author would surely struggle to express in conversational form. Because these words did not come without cost to the man who had authored them, the producer understood that in recorded form such sentiments required from their singer a performance of authority, nuance and depth.

  ‘The word “Bob” strikes fear into all metalheads,’ was Hetfield’s opinion, a case of many a true word being spoken in jest. ‘But a producer isn’t meant to make you sound like him, he’s meant to make you sound like the best version of yourself that you can possibly be.’