Martin Popoff - Metallica - Updated Edition: The Complete Illustrated History

UPDATED EDITION

THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

MARTIN POPOFF

With

RICHARD BIENSTOCK

DANIEL BUKSZPAN

NEIL DANIELS

ANDREW EARLES

KEVIN ESTRADA

GARY GRAFF

WILLIAM HALE

BOB LEAFE

JAAN UHELSZKI

MICK WALL

FRANK WHITE

The guys in the band are genuinelyand quite incredibly, given their crazy liveslikeable dudes

First off, I must express how much of a challenge it is writing a book this concise on Metallica, wishing I could go on and on into a six-figure word count. No, the idea with the trunk of this book is to provide the story of the band using a level of detail that doesnt overpower Elements II and III of this headbanged trip, namely, the reviews of the bands catalog by top music journos and them yummy visuals.

To my mind, these components are equally important to the bands narrative, and in fact the book that will most satisfy the fan who fancies himself any sort of expert on Lars & Co. Youll laugh, youll cry, youll hurl, as our army of strong-minded smarty pants rave on about records that range from towering classics to mediocre to wildly controversial. I mean, sure, there have been many fine books and other sourcesthe net, film documentaries, DVDsfrom which to learn the bands history, but this heavy, heavy writing... its all new and its all bloody interesting.

And then there are the visuals, the good doctor Dennis Pernu and Voyageur Press continuing to do this series of books proud (seek them out) by assembling a feast for the eyes. Bottom line, the book you hold in your hands is the bestest place to peruse Metallicaall the bits and pieces and a bunch of fine photography in a perfect balance further steadied by the visuals relationship to our two types of text.

Now lemme just tell you how the magic of Metallica has affected me personally. First off, the guys in the band are genuinelyand quite incredibly, given their crazy liveslikeable dudes. And even more significant than their disarming nature on me personally, they are all essentially my age and got into metal for the exact same reason that I did, or any of my buddies (like Brian Slagel for instance) who wound up something other than players. Thats obviously not to say I can compare my accomplishments or lot in life to any of those guysIm just some idiot. Just sayin this because theres a weird commonality of experience, especially with Lars (and Slagel), that makes us and a bunch of our mutual acquaintances part of an easyspeak tribe, sorta fans first, with everything else we get to do in the industry just gravy.

Dont want to ramble much more, but I just want to mention both my first and second impressions of Metallica, and then we will be off like metal militia with whiplash. Snap yer neck like Newsted (ouch) back to 1983. No, I was not a tape trader, but I did know bloody everything about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) and, for that matter, every metal record on the planet (the full-length ones, anyway).

Then Kill Em All arrived. I can remember it like it was yesterday. Like I said, these guys were basically us, but they got to make a record. And they got to use all that this week and last week in metal knowledge that we would also use to make up songs (or mostly riffs for songs) in our own professional bar band, the mighty Torque, for one summer. All too evident to anybody inside this music, Kill Em All was straight to the point, the kind of thing a NWOBHM fan might make if he wanted to kick that musics ass, make it nastier, find better riffs than any on Angel Witch or The Nightcomers. But at the same time, Kill Em All was not my favorite albumit just seemed too soiled, nasty, street-level, barked into the mic, and... I dunno, rigid and obsessed with the riff at the expense of everything else. Still, it was most definitely way up the lists of great albums of 1983 that we would churn out while sitting at my buddy Fivers kitchen table while the Bose 901s blasted in the living room, powered by Yamahas monster 160-watts-per-channel CR-3020 receiver, all eighty-two pounds of it wrapped in teak.

All author collection

Flash forward to 1984. (This story has been in some of my previous books and, alas, I got the facts a bit wrong. Here it is fixed, thanks to a recently located notebook in which I recorded all my record purchases.) On June 17, I had gotten back from Spokane, Washington, with Savatages Sirens ($7.99 at Strawberry Jams) and Savages Loose n Lethal ($8.99 at Mirage) and was just beside myself with how the latter was one of the greatest albums ever made and the former had quite possibly just taken over actual top spot (my favorite part of this whole damn book is having Jonny Z tell me they almost recorded Ride the Lightning at Par Studios in Florida, where Savatage got such a massive sound).

I always needed a quiet lie-down whenever the best album list got a new No. 1, but this time there would be no rest because on August 3 I got Ride the Lightning, the U.K. issue, for $14.39 at Lyles Place in Victoria, British Columbia. Savatage was whacked, ending the shortest reign at No. 1 ever. I remember putting the needle down on Fight Fire with Fire and... the inhumanity. This was clearly music made by immortals, the greatest song ever. You could barely even process how James and Kirk could play that. The rest was almost as good, especially the title track and For Whom the Bell Tolls, which, if youre sitting on the edge of your bed and the first three songs in a row are that good... I was just losing my mind. This had only happened with me an my buddies twice before: Priests Sad Wings of Destiny and Stained Class, and the next time would be Mercyful Fates Melissa (which, Im just surprised to see, I only got three months after Ride the Lightning, same day as that Danish quints Dont Break the OathOctober 26, A&B Sound, $5.88 and $6.99, respectively).

Anyway, thats it. Thanks for indulging me that trip down Headbanger Alley, all to illustrate how upsetting of the apple cart James, Lars, Kirk, and Cliff were to my metal world, and thats without even getting into how Master of Puppets outright won the endless polling I conducted to write my book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time