Metallica: Enter Night (56 page)

Devised by a computer hardware company called RedOctane–partly responsible for an older arcade game named
Guitar Freaks
, a big hit in Japan, and now looking to produce a home-gaming version – the original
Guitar Player
game was made for around $1m. The inaugural edition had a metal-style logo on the box and a hand-held controller shaped like a Gibson SG – signature guitar of choice for AC/DC’s Angus Young and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi – and had been an immediate hit, winning awards and glowingly reviewed as ‘probably the greatest rhythm game ever invented’. Realising that the ‘magic source’ – gaming-industry-speak for the extra ingredient that made the product unique and must-have-now-able – was the guitar-shaped peripheral, the forty-seven playable songs the original featured was expanded to sixty-four for
Guitar Hero II
, the fifth-biggest-selling game when it was released in 2006. Now available for both PlayStation 2 and X-Box 360 platforms, the latter version came with a Gibson Explorer-shaped controller. The key this time, however, was the addition of real-life rock stars such as AC/DC and Aerosmith, Van Halen and Guns N’ Roses. ‘We’d hit the sweet spot,’ said developer John Tam. ‘[The bands] understood that we’re not going to embarrass their music, we’re going to actually pay homage to their music and get it to the point where people are going to understand their music in a totally different way than they’ve ever experienced it before.’

The franchise was now worth hundreds of millions of dollars; rivals were starting to spring up, most notably the MTV Networks developed
Rock Band
game. It wasn’t, however, until Activision bought RedOctane for $100m, specifically to acquire
Guitar Hero
, that the game took off outside devoted gaming circles: the extra edge that would power
Guitar Hero III
being the arrival of an instantly recognisable real-life rock star to front the franchise: Lars’ old pal Slash of Guns N’ Roses (and latterly, his offshoot group Velvet Revolver). Until then, although it featured real songs by real bands, the game had relied on a series of sound-alike avatars with faux rock-star names such as Axel Steel and Izzy Sparks. Slash was the first major real-life star to agree to have himself motion-captured and that image transferred directly into the game. ‘I’m not a real video game guy,’ Slash admitted to
Classic Rock
writer Jon Hotten. ‘When I signed on to do it, it was only the nerdy kid in me that made me say yes. Everything else about me said, no don’t do it.’

With Slash’s instantly recognisable avatar now front and centre, suddenly the game became an item of interest way beyond its natural demographic of gamers. Released in October 2007, it now featured seventy-three songs, and was available across not just PlayStation and Xbox platforms but also Wii, PC and Mac. It made $100 million in just its first week. A month later it was officially the year’s biggest-selling computer game. Activision could hardly keep up with the Christmas demand. Six months later, it had sold more than eight million copies. By the time the next version of the game was ready to go in March 2009 – with Metallica replacing Slash as the frontispiece – the existing version had exceeded one billion dollars in sales revenue and was said to be the second-biggest-selling computer game of any kind since 1995.

For Slash, who had received a generous but fixed fee and no royalties, the impact this had was about much more than money; already one of the most famous guitarists in the world, Slash’s image now extended far beyond the existing rock-buying audience. ‘I have a specific story that will sort of shine a big bright light on that fact,’ he explained. ‘A friend of mine who’s a producer, he’s got, I guess, a six-year-old little boy. I went over to their house, and I’d never met his little boy. I went over there, and the kid lost his mind. “You’re the guy from
Guitar Hero
.” He couldn’t get over it. A bit later on that night, he came over to me and went, “Hey, do you play real guitar too?”’ He laughed. ‘It’s definitely changed the way we look at selling records, because as the record business goes into decline, the gaming business has been selling a lot of music. That’s been an interesting development, for sure. If you’re in a band, the luckiest thing you can have is a guy from Activision or from the
Rock Band
people come along and say, we’d like to chronicle your career. There is a lot of money in it.’

Something Metallica – who had already contributed images and songs to
Rock Band
– had taken serious note of by the time they stepped up to the plate to take part in their own billion-dollar version of
Guitar Player
. Lars, smartly, played down the whole thing, brought it back to the level of simply entertaining the folks. ‘Our kids love playing
Guitar Hero
and
Rock Band
,’ he told
Rolling Stone
. ‘It’s awesome. There’s something really positive coming out of video games. It’s so cool to sit there and have your kids talk to you about Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and Soundgarden.’

As ever, though, the real business of Metallica took place out on the road. The World Magnetic tour would actually find the band out on the road for the best part of the next three years, but the schedule was now built specifically to combat the stresses and strains that would otherwise be placed on the four husband-and-fathers who now populated the band. ‘We do two weeks on and two weeks off,’ Lars told me, the band flying home to California wherever they were in the world, literally going straight from the stage of the final show into a limo and onto a private jet. Nice work if you could get it, the 2009 year-end issue of US trade bible
Billboard
reported that the World Magnetic tour had earned a total ticket-sale gross (so far) of $76,613,910. The same issue calculated that between 2000 and 2009 Metallica had earned a total ticket-sale gross of $227,568,718. Astonishing figures, but giving only a fraction of the true financial picture, once profits from record and merchandising sales had also been factored in, possibly doubling or even trebling that final figure.

The show itself was initially built around the new
Death Magnetic
album, as would be expected, but would go through various changes as each new phase of the tour unfolded. The Metallica live show has always been a purist experience, the band all dressed in uniform black whatever phase of their twisting career they happened to be going through. So it had been with the first phase of the World Magnetic tour: a show staged in the round and built around a faintly ludicrous circle of coffins, concealing the lighting rig, but with the emphasis firmly on what can fairly be termed all-round family entertainment. As I watched from one of the high-price boxes at London’s O2, I marvelled at the diversity of the 20,000-strong crowd. Below, surrounding the stage, were the sorts of rabid, devil-horn-saluting fans one might have encountered in their true heyday twenty years before. To my right and left were other boxes full of young female fans, the kind normally only found at a Robbie Williams show, dancing as though listening to Michael Jackson, making sexy such previously thought impregnable musical edifices as ‘One’ and ‘Sad but True’. Thanking those Metallica fans each night who had ‘stayed loyal’, James added for those kids present too young to have seen the band play before, ‘You got some cool parents.’ It was a comment he would make a habit of somehow working into those shows, tossing guitar picks out to the crowd whenever he spotted anyone young enough to warrant one. He still strode the stage like a lone gunman, spitting copiously and growling into the mike, but James Hetfield the proud husband and father was no longer buried so far below the surface you couldn’t see him. Indeed, he was now all but impossible to avoid.

Robert Trujillo, his bass slung low between his bare knees, stalked the four corners of the stage as though on patrol, carrying a machine-gun through a jungle swamp. Lars and Kirk did as they always had done, the latter hunched over his guitar, the first signs of middle age, perhaps, creeping up on his steadfastly laid-back demeanour, trotting around the stage perimeter with just a little more care; the former still leaning over his kit, standing and gesticulating wildly to the audience as he always had, making it clear should anyone still be in any doubt that he had never been just the drummer, but a frontman in his own right. Most amazing for this ancient survivor from their now golden past was the sight of the band remaining on stage long after the houselights had gone up, as silver inflated balls emblazoned with the Metallica logo rained on the audience and the four band members walked around, casually chatting to their fans, kicking the balls their way and throwing out guitar picks, leaning over to touch hands. Mainly just walking around and talking to them; a welcoming echo of the days when they stood at the backstage doors of the tiniest shit-holes and waited for the dozen or so most curious fans to come and tell them where they’d gone wrong that night. It went on and on, ten minutes, twenty minutes…Never having seen any artist do such a thing – particularly not when playing in the round, when getting away from the stage at the end is usually a matter of concealed exits and absolutely no returns – I found it all quite moving.

A few weeks later, on 4 April, Metallica was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. ‘It’s still somewhat surreal,’ said James, emanating pride and well-being, before adding: ‘The other part of it will be us kicking in the door a little bit. We’ve got a lot of other friends that we’d like to bring in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There’s a lot of heavy music that belongs in there.’ Other artists being inducted that year included rap pioneers Run-DMC, virtuoso guitarist Jeff Beck, soul singer Bobby Womack and R&B vocal group Little Anthony and the Imperials. Headlining, though, would be Metallica, who flew in straight from two shows in Paris. To help them celebrate, the band also personally invited several hundred family members, friends and associates who had had some influence over their career, purchasing six tables for the event – held in the Public Hall Auditorium, a historic venue where The Beatles had performed in 1964 – at a cost of upward of $50,000 each. ‘They are the gold standard for contemporary metal,’ said Hall of Fame curator Howard Kramer. ‘Despite their fame, they’ve never made an effort to cash in. People believe in them. That’s why they’re still there.’

Among so many familiar faces from their past, all flown in at the band’s expense – including Ron McGovney, Jason Newsted, Bobby Schneider, Jonny and Marsha Z, Martin Hooker and Gem Howard, Xavier Russell and Ross Halfin, Michael Alago and Flemming Rasmussen, Bob Rock and Rick Rubin, Dave Thorne and Anton Corbijn, Torben Ulrich and Ray Burton, to name just a few – there was one notable exception: Dave Mustaine. Dave had been invited but had declined once he’d been informed he wouldn’t actually be inducted himself. As he sardonically told Dave Ling of
Classic Rock
: ‘Lars Ulrich called me up and offered the chance to come and not be inducted – to sit in the audience. “It’s only for people who’ve been on the records,” is what I was told. That would have been awkward.’ He added: ‘I’m no longer struggling with past demons – that game has ended. But you know what? If God wants me in the Hall of Fame, I will be there.’

A pity, as it might have offered the band a chance to include one of their earliest classics in the short set they performed live that night. As it was, both Jason and Rob played bass during ‘Master of Puppets’ and ‘Enter Sandman’, while Cliff Burton’s father, Ray, accepted the honour on his son’s behalf. Unlike Mustaine, Jason Newsted had learned enough to make his own peace with the band. As he’d put it earlier, ‘We’re business partners for the rest of our lives.’ He had been ‘depressed for about six weeks’ after he left the band, then he’d toured with his band Echobrain, spent some time playing with Canadian thrash iconoclasts Voivod, even, bizarrely, filled Rob’s shoes for a while by joining Ozzy Osbourne’s backing band. Mainly, Jason said, he had ‘enjoyed life. No one can tell me what
not
to do any more.’

Just before the event, I had asked Lars a final word on the subject of Jason. He said: ‘It sometimes got a little difficult because there were times where there [were] personality issues within the band. Where his dedication – and I mean this in a positive sense – to perfection and the pursuit of everything being next-level, sometimes clashed a little bit with the rest of us because it’s still rock ’n’ roll, at the end of the day. And sometimes it felt like it got dangerously close to something more in the direction of athletics or something akin to troop movements, or military position-level strategies and stuff. Once in a while you just wanna go, “Fuck! We’re in a rock ’n’ roll band!” although a fairly hard and heavy one.’ He added: ‘I wanted to be in music because I wanted to be away from living these incredibly structured lives and have a little bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants energy to it also. Do you know what I mean? So I think that sometimes it got a little too next-level serious, and sometimes there were some personality clashes. But I got nothing bad to say. Jason was an incredibly loyal and dedicated member, and always gave his all.’

The final plank in the new foundation as classic rock untouchables came in the summer of 2010 and a return to Britain and Europe for the Big Four tour. That is, eleven outdoor festival shows headlined by Metallica but also featuring on the bill Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax – climaxing with a massive show to over 100,000 people at Knebworth, the 500-year-old stately home that has staged some of the most historic rock festivals of the past forty years. Following in the footsteps of such giants as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, Metallica had already headlined their own show there in the summer of 2009. Now, in August 2010, they would do so again with the Big Four, as part of that year’s travelling Sonisphere weekend, another guaranteed 100,000-plus sell-out.

Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax had never played on the same bill before, despite their shared histories. As a result this would become the most anticipated live event in the European rock calendar that year. The tour kicked off with a sold-out show to 55,000 people on 16 June at Bemowo Airport in Warsaw. Over the next few weeks they would repeat the experience in Holland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria (where the show was simultaneously broadcast in HD to various cinemas around the continent), Romania, Turkey and England. The most anticipated tour of the summer, the question was how the four bands would get on. As well as the well-aimed barbs sent their way by Dave Mustaine, Metallica had also endured taunts from Slayer over the years. Guitarist Kerry King had called them ‘fragile old men’ after seeing
Some Kind of Monster
. ‘Oh, listen,’ joked Lars, ‘the reason we did that movie was to piss Kerry King off. Being the source of his amusement, that’s great!’ But then it was easy to set aside differences when there was so much at stake. Where once Lars would feel ultra-competitive in the company of Slayer and Megadeth, in particular, calling up to get the merch figures each night on their joint Clash of the Titans tour in 1991 (which had also featured Anthrax), he now professed to merely ‘feeling supportive’ to Metallica’s fellow travellers. ‘I don’t feel the need to prove how big my dick is any more,’ he told me.