Peter Yang for Rolling Stone Metallica on the awning of Rolling Stone's BIG Issue. This is a acclaimed occasion. On a contempo afternoon in their flat arctic of San Francisco, Metallica are arena the accomplished of their bigger album, 1991's Metallica, a.k.a. the Black Album, in arrangement for the aboriginal time. They are aswell arena it backward, starting with the emotionally busted finale, "The Struggle Within," and catastrophe with the exultant annoyance of "Enter Sandman." "It doesn't say anywhere that if you play an anthology in its entirety, you accept to play it foreground to back," bagman Lars Ulrich contends.
Ulrich, singer-guitarist James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo will accomplish the Black Anthology at their Orion Music + Added festival, to be captivated June 23rd-24th in Atlantic City. They'll aswell barge through 1984's Ride the Lightning, addition first. As the associates explain in these interviews, afore and afterwards practice, this is a summer of firsts. An eight-show run in Mexico City will affection an absurd new date that is a basic of the 3D cine Metallica are developing with administrator Nimród Antal. And with Orion Music + More, Metallica are ablution a alone aberration on the ceremony experience. Ulrich is programming a blur tent; Hammett is the host of Kirk's Crypt, adherent to his accumulating of horror-movie memorabilia. Everyone in the bandage had a loud say in the advanced ambit of acts on the draft of the bill.
"Do your festival, do your cine – it's all so cool," Ulrich raves. "Variety is the aroma of life."
Click through the afterward pages to apprehend interviews with ceremony bandage member, and watch a video beneath of Metallica's awning shoot for the Big Issue of Rolling Stone.
James Hetfield of Metallica performs at The Fillmore in San Francisco. (Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage)
James Hetfield
This is a active year for you, even afterwards a new album. If you arise to this studio, does it feel like your adaptation of an office? Not one bit. I attending advanced to advancing here. It feels safe. It feels real. I can be my absolute self. Out there, not so much. If I get here, I feel grounded. I feel OK.
There was a altered activity if we formed in added places. If we recorded in Denmark, we slept in the bandage [storage] room. We'd deathwatch up, go bench and record, afresh go admiral and go to bed. But this is the ultimate. If you're in a bedrock band, you ambition this. And we got it.
The abode area we wrote [1986's] Master of Puppets was over on Carlson Boulevard [in El Cerrito]. There was a barn area we never anchored a car. There was a boom kit, a few amps – the that appears to smell of that carpet... ugh! It was traveling to be broken down, that acclaimed little architecture [grins]. I capital to buy it and put it in there [points to the recording room]. Put the old barn in our new garage. I had to let that one go.
After 30 years, a lot of bands would alpha slowing down. A lot of bands would say, "I admiration what 30 years feels like. We never fabricated it." There's a lot of humans who ambition us to stop. This is a gold-plated problem. Why would you stop? There are so abounding air-conditioned things still. I don't ambition to say no to something and afresh anticipate afterwards on, "What an asshole. You absent out on something that is not advancing again."
Twenty years ago, a lot of those humans anticipation you absolved on water. It's mostly "They're not accomplishing the things I ambition them to. They fabricated an anthology with Lou Reed. I don't ambition that." They're in adulation with something that isn't. Or they're in adulation with something that morphs, that needs its own space. They can't accommodate it.
When you played the beforehand songs at your 30th-anniversary shows endure December at the Fillmore, did you admit your younger, angrier cocky in those lyrics? You're a altered man than the one who wrote "Of Wolf and Man." Or "Dyers Eve," which is authentic spite. [Pauses] I attending aback at pictures and see anyone who is blessed – smiling, goofing, application abhorrent accent at the amiss time, affectionate of obnoxious, but happy. But abaft bankrupt doors, there was a lonely, ugly, abhorrent person. Thank God for that music.
There's a adventurous allotment of those canicule that I miss. I attending at those photos and ambition to be that again. Afresh I attending at my accord with my band, my friends, abnormally my family, and I think, "I wouldn't accept this if I was that person."
Are there songs on the Black Anthology that you acquisition difficult to sing now? Lyrically? No. It just solidifies what I was traveling through. I can see it clearer. "The Struggle Within" – I'm no psychiatrist, but it's appropriate there. "Don't Tread on Me," "Sad but True," "My Acquaintance of Misery" – it speaks a lot of what's to come. If [the artist] Pushead did the aboriginal [sleeve] art for "Sad but True," with the skull searching at itself, I had no abstraction the duality was so arrant in that song. He best up on that: acceptable and evil; the abstruse me and the accessible me. I'm animated I'm a little added cellophane than I anticipate I am. Humans accept helped me added because of that.
How do you address affronted metal lyrics now if you've larboard the acerbity behind? Ask my wife why I get pissed off and ambition to accident the car into pieces. It's still there. I ambition it wasn't. But why run from it? Just accept it. Use it. If I'm activity like that, aces up a pen and paper. Aces up the guitar. Alpha accomplishing it. Because it's not gone. My ancestors wishes it was. But it's not.
Do you accept a brainy or affecting dieting to administer that? Obviously the 12-step meetings. Meditation. Prayer. They all advice me at atomic apperceive that what I'm activity is advancing from about for a reason. It's compassionate my cycle: activity insecure, application acerbity to prove who I am and get what I want, afresh depression. And afresh it goes aback to insecurity. It's a cycle, not clashing bubbler – all or nothing. History tells me it will not endure forever. But if I'm in it, I'm in it.
How far accept you gotten into autograph for a new album? I alone accept 846 riffs.
Is that an exact figure? In iTunes, you can see how abounding things you've got. And that does not cover the soundchecks, the accepting we fail about with here. You bung in an amp. Suddenly it makes you feel acceptable – you arise up with a riff. "Dude, did you get that?" You can't get abroad from accepting recorded here.
But Lars, the hoarder of Metallica, is bedeviled with revisiting every stone, axis it over: "That could be great!" Yeah, it could all be great. But I've got a new one appropriate now. That's the Catch-22. You've got a riff from 5 years ago on bout that's amazing. Do I still feel it? Don't worry. Something bigger will appearance up.
Are there too abounding distractions – tours, the festival, the cine – that yield you abroad from the primary business of... Writing songs? Absolutely. This ceremony is interviews, photo shoots, cutting videos for things. If are we traveling to alpha writing? "We've got to rehearse the Black Album." I would adulation to sit and address a almanac afterwards accepting to anticipate of added stuff.
What is your yield on 3D movies? If I apprehend that phrase, I get worried. You anticipate Pixar. You anticipate hokey-ness. Our ambition is to accomplish something that is absolutely batty and assault minds. I aswell ambition a adventure line. I ambition this to be a cult-type film. It's affectionate of silly, talking so all-embracing about it if I don't apperceive what it even is yet.
Whose abstraction was it? [Co-manager] Peter Mensch. It came from capturing the best accepting from all of the accomplished tours. A lot of kids didn't get to see the abolition arena [on the...And Justice for All tour], or the Snakepit [on the Metallica tour]. Put it all into a best-of. And hey, why don't we blur it in 3D?
Do you accept a budget? Yeah. It's ungodly. It's our activity savings, basically. We don't apperceive what the hell we're doing. But we apperceive we ambition to try.
I'm afraid that afterwards your 2004 warts-and-all documentary, "Some Affectionate of Monster," you would accomplish addition movie. Maybe anyone abroad will go into adjust for this one. [Laughs] Adjust – in 3D!
Lars Ulrich of Metallica performs at The Fillmore in San Francisco. (Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage)
Lars Ulrich
Whose abstraction was it to play the Black Anthology in reverse? If you like the idea, it was mine. If you don't, it was James' [grins]. For bigger or worse, I'm the set-list guy. This is all accountable to change if it doesn't work. But the abstraction of starting off with the lesser-known songs active down there and catastrophe up with "Sad but True" and "Enter Sandman" seems like a winner. You accomplishment with the money shot, which is the aboriginal song.
That album's about-face abroad from acceleration metal to shorter, simpler songs set the accent for the draft of Metallica's career – a alertness to agreement that still confounds even humans who like you. I'm a big accepter that the annal all cilia together. That straighter, four-on-the-floor affair was present on beforehand records, in "Harvester of Sorrow" and "Ride the Lightning." But we went absolute because there was boilerplate abroad to go. Area do you go afterwards "Dyer's Eve"? You can't get faster. You can't get added pissed off than Hetfield barking at his parents. That was the end of the Eighties for us.
We played a appearance in Toronto with Aerosmith in the summer of 1990, appropriate at the time we started autograph the Black Album. I bethink sitting beneath the alarm with [co-manager] Cliff Burnstein. He said, "The Misfits are a huge allotment of your access – 'Last Caress' is a minute and a bisected long. [The Rolling Stones'] 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' is allotment of who you are. You just haven't arise it yet."
I went aback to San Francisco, and there was a riff on Kirk's riff bandage [hums the "Enter Sandman" lick]. The accomplished song is just that riff. "Enter Sandman" was the blueprint. The draft of the almanac appeared over two months.
How abundant will arena that anthology reside affect your next album? I've been sitting with these songs for a ages now, alert to them while I'm driving, immersing myself afore we play them: "Why did we go one key up there? Why did we echo that affair four times instead of two?" I was cerebration about it afresh today. There was a moment in "Sad but True" with that half-chorus in the middle. Afresh it went aback to the guitar solo, and there was that little breach afore it goes into the third verse.
I couldn't advice thinking, "Why was it put calm like that? Maybe we can hardly borrow that?" If you can't rip yourself off, what's the point? It will be absorbing to see, already we yield this anthology out to humans in altered countries, what we'll arise aback with for the autograph sessions in the fall.
You do accept a lot of projects that get in the way of authoritative new music.I don't ambition to be that bandage that just does record, tour; record, tour. I will say to my dying day, "Who wouldn't ambition to accomplish a almanac with Lou Reed?" They are adventures, alien territory, places area you do added than just use beef memory. I ambition to get abroad from that model, that the sole acumen for a bandage to abide is to just accomplish addition record.
You don't accept on or off years now. They're all animate years. I accept an adverse acknowledgment to the chat "work." Advancing down to HQ, arena music and afraid – this is fun. We adulation this too much. We survived all of the pitfalls and accessories we were in, all that absurd accepting you see in Some Affectionate of Monster. This accomplished affair seems to accept begin a rhythm. It's not like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They accomplish their record, they tour, afresh go abroad for three or four years. That's not our destiny.
What locations of the Orion ceremony can you yield acclaim for? I came up with the name [laughs]. For me, accepting the Arctic Monkeys on there is big. I anticipate they're a heavy-metal bandage bearded as an indie band. If you accept to a song like "Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But...," there's about a Rush aspect in there. Avenged Sevenfold are abreast and baby to me. They were on the fence about it. They were demography the summer off. I alleged one of the guys and said, "It would absolutely beggarly a lot to us." The Black Angels are just cool. A acquaintance of abundance said, "Check them out," and I was like, "Wow, it's the Doors meets something abroad in 2011."
Were there any bands you arrive who said, "No way, we'll get dead by your fans." The affair isn't with the bands. It's added if this blazon of ceremony can abide from the fans' point of view. Because we're accomplishing it, it gets branded as a accurate thing. We accept to plan harder. If Radiohead does it, it's cool. If we do it, it's not.
I'm abashed that humans are abashed by us accomplishing these things. It's our DNA.
The 3D cine is a awe-inspiring leap, even for you. It has elements of documentary, fiction and reside performance, on this crazy stage. This has been ambit for two years. It's time to life-size it, get it out of our minds and on the screen. And if it's done right, it can be sensational. You're not watching Metallica onstage. You're onstage with Metallica. In IMAX, James Hetfield is 38 anxiety tall, snotting on you, spitting on you. It's 2,000 decibels. If there is an convulsion outside, you wouldn't notice.
But you can't do that for 100 minutes. It loses its appeal. There is addition aspect in there – intimate, small, a adventure that takes abode over the aforementioned aisle as the concert. The catechism is, "Where do they braid in and out of ceremony other?" But you accept to cut abroad from the concert to adore the concert.
Even at a Metallica show, you gotta yield a breach for a beer or a leak. This abstraction goes aback to the Nineties, if IMAX movies started advancing out. We were in talks with them. That's if an IMAX camera was the admeasurement of a house, and they alone had 12 account of film. You had to stop to reload. But seeing Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in IMAX, which I did the ceremony it came out, and afresh if we advertisement the Big 4 appearance [with Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth] from Sofia, Bulgaria, to cine theaters in 2010 – that's what closed the deal.
How do you attending at your abiding future? You just acclaimed your 30th anniversary. Addition 30 years ability be optimistic. I still don't feel we've challenged ourselves enough. We still allocution about "the next album." We can do whatever we ambition with our music. "We've hidden a new Metallica CD in ceremony ZIP cipher in America. Go acquisition it!" There's annihilation but options.
Just don't acknowledgment the chat "work." The a.m. grind, accepting my three kids accessible for academy – that is the plan allotment of my day. If I arise in here, that's if the fun starts.
Kirk Hammett of Metallica performs at Sonisphere in the United Kingdom. (Photo: Neil Lupin/Redferns)
Kirk Hammett
What are you acquirements from arena the Black Album? For the longest time, I anticipation "My Acquaintance of Misery" was an instrumental. In 1990, if we were accepting it calm for the album, we consistently played it as an instrumental. Afore we finished, we absitively James should address lyrics. If we were talking about arena the Black Anthology live, I listened to it, to relearn it, and went, "My God, it has words." If we apposite it this time, it was the aboriginal time we'd played it with James singing.
But the artlessness of that album, the anatomy of it, verges on the poetic. A acceptable composition has the appropriate chat in the appropriate atom at the appropriate moment. The Black Anthology has all that. The guitar solos about wrote themselves.
It wasn't like you slowed down and simplified to become added successful. But a lot of your admirers advised the Black Anthology a betrayal of your speed-metal origins. Metal is one of the a lot of bourgeois forms of music. The brain-teaser is that it's aswell alienated music. It's declared to be extreme. It's not annihilation anybody talks about. You just apperceive what the agreement are. Is that metal? Yes, it is. No, it's not. And if it's questionable, it's apparently Metallica [grins].
But like at our ceremony – I am actual aflame to see [blues guitarist] Gary Clark Jr. There hasn't been a guitar guy in a continued time who has been this absorbing to me. I admired the actuality that if we did Lollapalooza [in 1996], we were arena with the Cocteau Twins, the Ramones and Cheap Trick. I admired that dichotomy. If you're just traveling to bandy the aforementioned ice chrism at me, I'm outta here.
Your Orion ceremony is a huge undertaking. Do you apprehend to accomplish money? Let me let you in on a little secret. Whenever we go on these kinds of endeavors, it's never to accomplish money [laughs]. We ambition it to be fun and exciting. Maybe we breach even. Or lose money. Whatever. It's not a banking thing. We're aggravating to arise up with something cool.
So what supports aggregate you accept in this flat – touring? Yeah. The merchandise. We basically yield funds from wherever we can. This is a absolute luxury. But abundant things arise out of this. We accept a abode to rehearse, to address songs, to arise up with new ideas. We don't necessarily save money accepting this place, because of the way we work. We yield our time, accomplishing what we charge to do, and do it until it's done.
Do you accept years area you accept to go on the alley to pay the bills? That's every year. The cycles of demography two years off don't abide anymore. We were able to do that because we had almanac royalties advancing in consistently. Now you put out an album, and you accept a asset maybe already or alert but not the way it acclimated to be – a analysis every three months. We accept to go out and play shows, and we're absolutely accomplished with that. We're a abundant reside bandage that enjoys bringing the music to the people. I never anticipation it was enough, just giving them a CD.
That aswell agency you've collapsed way abaft in authoritative new music, because you're so active with touring, the ceremony and the 3D movie. We've accepted for at atomic two years that we accept to alpha autograph songs. It feels like I'm continuing on the ancillary of a hill: There's this big bedrock at the top that I apperceive is traveling to alpha rolling one of these days. And if it does, we will not be able to stop it. But it hasn't started rolling yet.
It's on everybody's mind. If we accomplished at the Fillmore endure year, I thought, "A year from now I'm traveling to be 50. At this rate, does that beggarly I accept two albums larboard in me? Three?" But if we run at a altered rate, who knows? Five? The one affair I've abstruse is you can't be too prophetic in this band, because something happens, and things absolutely change.
You aswell accept a funny faculty of timing. You're assuming the Black Anthology on its 21st anniversary, not the 20th. It was alone bygone that I accomplished that my 29th ceremony with the bandage was endure week. I absolutely forgot about it. I abutting Metallica on April 12th or something, 1983.
Happy anniversary. Thanks. I don't apperceive if anyone abroad in the bandage noticed. Nobody said jackshit.
Robert Trujillo of Metallica performs at The Fillmore in San Francisco. (Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage)
Robert Trujillo
After nine years in Metallica, do you still sometimes feel like the new guy? Yeah. I was so absorbed in and challenged by every song we played at those ceremony shows at the Fillmore. The funny affair is, in "Phantom Lord," the next-to-last song of the endure night, I absent the key change. Lars was searching over at me with the semi-stink-eye; there's a assertive attending Lars will bandy you that you don't ambition to see. I bethink going, "Man, afterwards all this, I draft it appropriate at the end."
I went up to the bathrobe allowance and said to the guys, "Man, I'm so sorry. I got lost." And they said, "Oh, you too? So did we!" But at that moment, I acquainted like the new guy that blew it.
How would you characterize your role in Metallica? I'm the guy who all-overs advanced a bit and dissects the music – the breadth of assertive sections, the notes, a lot of the foundation stuff. It's bigger for me to be 10 accomplish advanced than two accomplish behind. They wrote the songs. They recorded them. It's a allotment of them. But I ambition them to be able to angular on me.
At the beginning, it was abhorrent to be the guy who didn't apperceive the song central and out. I started animate on "The Call of Ktulu" [on Ride the Lightning] a year afore we anytime played it live. I hoped, as a fan of Metallica, that anytime we would play it. I'm still aggravating to get them to play "The Frayed Ends of Sanity" [on 1988's ...And Justice for All]. But that hasn't happened yet.
Is it allotment of your job to accumulate the spirit and standards of [the backward bassist] Cliff Burton animate in the room? I absolutely accept that, abnormally now that we're accumulation songs like "Orion" [on Master of Puppets] and "The Call of Ktulu." That was a above footfall forward, because those songs hadn't been performed live. It was a claiming to attach it and to spiritually affix with that material. Every night we play those songs, I feel like, yeah, Cliff is appropriate there with us.
Did you anytime accommodated him or see him reside with Metallica? No, and it's the weirdest thing. Cliff's best acquaintance is aswell my best friend, [drummer] Mike Bordin from Faith No More. We played in Ozzy's bandage together. If I went through the audience action with Metallica, I was blockage at Mike's house. I'd be in the bedfellow allowance at 2 a.m., acquirements "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and there would be this big account of Cliff on the wall, searching at me as I'm acquirements his song.
Were there any bands on your ambition account for Orion Music + Added that you couldn't get? I anticipation it would be air-conditioned to accept [Trujillo's above band] Suicidal Tendencies. I had [flamenco duo] Rodrigo y Gabriela on my list, but they couldn't accomplish it. If it were up to me, Bootsy Collins and Parliament-Funkadelic would be there.
We accept assorted interests. Lars does not like hot-rod art. He's added abstract, modern. Kirk leans added Buddhist. The ceremony is an addendum of that. But at the end of the day, humans will get "Master of Puppets" and "Fight Fire With Fire." That's what we enjoy, too.
You've been in Metallica back 2003 and arise on absolutely one flat album. Is that arresting for you, not to be affective advanced faster? Sometimes. But we've done so abundant in that time. Yield the Fillmore shows – so abundant plan went into that. And authoritative a almanac is huge: advancing the songs, locking them in. Aggregate is about nurturing, like vocals. There are a lot of possibilities, and James brand to try them all. Guitar solos yield time in this band. Lars consistently has to be a allotment of that.
How abundant accept you written, riff-wise, for the next record? I accept about 20 account I feel absolutely acceptable about, admitting on Death Magnetic I had one or two. But one of them concluded up accepting "Suicide and Redemption." Hetfield – he's a autograph machine. Kirk has over 300 ideas. There's so abundant accepting from the tuning-room jams, from all of those years of touring. I like to anticipate I accept 20 account I accept in.
What's the best one so far? [Grins] There's one that reminds me of something off Black Sabbath's Vol. 4.
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• Metallica Announce Orion Music Festival
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• Metallica Wrap Up 30th Ceremony Shows With Monster Sets, Special Guests
This adventure is from the Big Issue of Rolling Stone.
