Mick Wall - Enter Night: A Biography of Metallica

This book could not have been written without the invaluable aid of the following people, to all of whom I owe the utmost thanks.

First and foremost, my wife Linda Wall, who journeyed with me there and back. Also my agent and good friend Robert Kirby of United Agents and Malcolm Edwards at Orion, in whom resides the true spirit of gentleman publishing. Sincere gratitude also to Elizabeth Beier at Saint Martins Press. Also Charlotte Knee, Ian Preece and Stephen Fall. Class acts. As, too, are Michelle Richter, Katy Hershberger, Brendan Fredericks, Gemma Finlay and Angela McMahon.

Heartfelt thanks also to two people whose researches on my behalf went beyond the call of duty: Joel McIver and Malcolm Dome. Then there are those whose input was less specific but who, again, were there for me, often just in the nick of time. They are: Diana and Colin Cartwright, Damian McGee, Bob Prior, Chris Ingham, Scott Rowley, Sian Llewellyn, Ian Fergusson, Russ Collington, Alexander Milas, Megan and Dave Lavender, and Yvonne and Kevin Shepherd. Most especially, though, Evie, Mollie, Michael, Tad and Ruby, who always helped as best they could, bless them.

And finally, of course, Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, for the memories and the music

Just Before The Dawn

It was cold that rotten dark morning, the temperature dropping to just below freezing as the dirty-white tour bus trundled along the old single-lane highway. Still only late September but in Sweden, where in summer the sun never sleeps, the nights were now growing long again. Soon the heavy snows would come and there would be twenty-four-hour darkness, that bleak mid-winter period when the national suicide rates went up, along with the consumption of drugs and alcohol. For now, though, the road ahead lay clear. It was cold and dark out there all right, but there hadnt been rain for days, the ground beneath the spinning wheels of the vehicle dry as old bones.

Only the driver was awake so he later said. Everyone else the four-man band, their tour manager, three-man backline crew were all sleeping in the thin wooden bunks bolted into the sides of the bus at the back, cardboard placed over the windows to keep out the draught. The bus, an English model with the usual right-hand drive, was not ideal for long night journeys across non-English roads where traffic drove on the right, not the left. But both it and the driver were experienced. Unlike the young band they were carrying, they had travelled these roads many times before. Nothing had ever gone wrong; nothing would go wrong now, either.

And then it did.

They argued about it afterwards. They argue about it still, a quarter of a century later. Was there ice on the road? It was certainly cold enough, and yet there had been no rain no snow or ice particles in any of the days leading up to it. Had the driver fallen asleep then? Or was he drunk, perhaps, or stoned? If so, why did the police, who arrested him at the scene, later let him go, free of all charges? Could there have been something wrong with the bus? Again, forensics said no. Mechanically, when they came to examine the wreckage, everything checked out fine. All anyone knew for sure afterwards was that the bus got into trouble when the road took a slight left bend. The first the driver, seated on the right, knew about it was when he realised the bus had slipped over the hard shoulder and was headed onto the hard gravel along the side of the motorway, its right-side wheels careering over the dirt.

Fully alert now, eyes wide open, the driver swung the steering wheel hard to the left, willing the bus back onto the road. For a moment, he thought he had it. But the back end of the bus skidded to its right, the huge back wheels unable to gain purchase as they now also left the road and began bumping along in the dirt. The panicking driver fought to control the situation.

No good. People were beginning to wake at the back, falling from their bunks, crying out. The bus continued its lurching, backwards skid. Within seconds it had turned itself fully around, facing back the way it had come, its wheels finally stopping as they thumped sickeningly into the kerb on the opposite side of the road. There was the sound of breaking glass, more shouts and cries and then the most terrifying moment as it keeled over onto its side and hit the ground with a thunderous crash.

Of the nine people onboard, two lay trapped beneath the bunks, which had collapsed on top of each other, left to right, as the bus turned over. Five sustained minor injuries a broken toe, something else and one lay dead beneath the stricken bus, his legs poking out from under its side. The driver was lucky. He would jump free with only minor cuts and bruises.

Dawn lay just across the horizon but the hour was still dark, still freezing cold. One of the first to leap from the wreckage had been the drummer, a short skinny kid with long tea-coloured hair who now took off, sprinting down the road, not knowing where he was going, just that he was fucking gone, so freaked out he couldnt even feel the pain of his broken toe, the smart young schemer so used to seeing round corners yet never seeing this. No way.

Behind him came the guitar tech, a six-foot seven-inch giant of a man who had crawled from where hed been thrown out of his collapsing bunk towards the front left exit, now a hatch in the ceiling through which he climbed, clothed only in his underwear, his giants back in agony where he had thumped it against the lip of his bunk as the crash of the bus had thrown him sideways and down.

From the rear emergency exit came the singer, tall, deranged, also just in his underpants and socks, yelling and screaming, bloody of mind, followed by the guitarist, another short skinny-arsed figure, coughing and crying, his large dark eyes brimful of night sky and ashes. Everyone was shouting and screaming, no one knew what was going on, what to do, what was happening. It was still dark, freezing cold, and no one was prepared for it, for this, whatever this was. All they knew was that it was bad, fucked-up bad. Big time fucked-up bad

By the time the second tour bus carrying the rest of the crew turned up over an hour later, the first of seven ambulances had also arrived but only the tour manager seemed to know what had actually gone down, and he was in such shock he had no idea how to convey it to the rest of them. That, as they climbed aboard the ambulances and headed for the hospital, they would be leaving behind one of their own. Not just anyone, either, but the one they all felt carried with him most of the luck. The one they all cherished above the rest, above each other, that they always looked up to, even as they made fun of him, or chose to disregard his advice, his sense of integrity and of right and wrong, always that little bit too much for the rest, just young fucks not always into what was right but what was fun right now.

The darkness lifting, grey dawn sky blurring over their heads, they climbed into the ambulances and drove off, not knowing yet that they were leaving behind not just their past but their future. The one they had all dreamed of and shared with each other, spoken and unspoken, right up to the moment the bus hit that invisible patch of ice, the fucking driver if not asleep then not awake enough to follow the bending road; the map to the treasure they all knew was theirs to share right up till the moment the devil took a hand in things and changed their lives for ever.