Two videos currently blowing my mind: the first is of Metallica playing “Enter Sandman” for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. The sound is shit and the band is far away, but you know what’s going on. Everyone is recognizable by body posture – Hetfield, Hammett, Newsted, Trujillo. Look at their audience: banquet tables. When I saw the Stones 14 years ago, the entire floor of the Astrodome was filled with chairs. This is many orders of magnitude lamer. Longtime Metallica friend (as in buddies before Cliff Burton joined) Umlaut, who took the video, recounted the occasion here. The picture of Cliff’s bass behind a glass case is chillling. John Marshall’s (Metal Church, Metallica guitar tech, occasional fill-in for Hetfield on guitar) perspective is here. He sat at the same banquet table as Jon and Marsha Zazula, Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, and friggin’ Jim Martin of Faith No More. Can you imagine the conversations at that table???
Here is a rehearsal video from one of the times when Marshall filled in for an injured Hetfield. First, note how tall he is. Next to him, Hammett looks like a child. Second, note Hetfield trying to teach Marshall the guitar part to “One.” His frustration is obvious. Finally – Metallica rehearsal! Your crappy band plays your crappy songs at practice. These guys play Metallica songs at practice. Several times a week, they get together and jam on… oh, what will it be today? “Creeping Death”? “Jump in the Fire”? “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”? Do they goof on “Enter Sandman” like every other band during rehearsal? Or do they do it it at full tilt each time? It’s not news that famous bands play their own tunes at practice. But what goes on in Metallica’s garage is much different than what goes on in yours.
“hey! HEY!” man, Hetfield takes charge, huh. We don’t usually see that side of him because he’s so soft-spoken in public but he’s just as well a little tyrant as Ulrich. Oh man, I shouldn’t be giving into these impulses to the cultist aspect of examining Metallica. Let it go, Helm. Let it go.
Hetfield’s Hey, HEY! has absolutely nothing to do with tyranny, it is a key feature of any band rehearsal for any band in the universe. As soon as one dude is trying to explain something to another dude, a third dude (usually the drummer) is immediately bored and will start fiddling with some unrelated shit and disturb the aforementioned two dudes. This gets boring very fast, and dude #1 has to start going HEY! to rectify.
I don’t disagree, my comment was more about the tone of the hey than of the necessity of it. I’ve been to plenty of rehersals.
Then again, who am I to claim anything about Hetfield’s approach to the world? Heh.
Let’s hope, for the sake of the rest of the band at least, that he really has mellowed along the years.
The HOF is pretty lame, in general. It’s kind of a no-win situation for a band…..obviously it’s an honor to be in the HOF with all the major and most reputed bands, from a historical perspective.
But on the other hand, let’s face it, the HOF is probably made up of the same demographic that gives Steely Dan the Grammy for “Album of the Year” or Jethro Tull the award for best rock record (ironically over Metallica’s “And Justice For All”).