METALLICA FROM THE GARAGE AND BACK AGAIN

"Well, a lot of bad luck has struck us over the years,” Metallica’s thrash renaissance guitarist James Hetfield understates. “It’s really been heavy. We’ve had equipment stolen, arms broken—but, of course, nothing as devastating as what happened to Cliff last year. That was the absolute worst.”

Hetfield refers, of course, to the tragic and untimely death of bassist Cliff Burton, who was crushed to death when Metallica’s tour bus took a treacherous tumble down a Scandinavian hill, throwing the unlucky Burton out an open window. Hetfield, along with founder Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett and newcomer Jason Newsted, are only beginning to recover from the grotesque calamity.

“I wasn’t hurt in the accident,” Hetfield continues sadly. “I was sleeping in the back because I couldn’t sleep in those bunks. I usually slept in the one next to Cliff! But that night I couldn’t because it was too drafty. It was screwing up my voice and I was getting sick. It was horrible, like losing a family member. At first, it was like. . . ooohhhh! What were we going to do? There was no way we could ever really replace someone like Cliff. We knew we weren’t going to even ge anyone who was close to the way he played. He had such originality and he was such a character. We knew we needed someone who was a strong personality like him, but not in the same way. The new person would have to come in wirh his own style and magic.”

Fortunately, the process of finding a bass player to replace Cliff took up most of Metallica’s spare grieving time. Otherwise, the band feels they might have truly fallen apart.

“I think the reason we got through that awful time was that we went straight into auditioning bass players,” drummer Lars Ulrich insists. "In the beginning, it was unbelievable. We couldn’t believe it had happened to us. But then, just when it started to sink in, we got very busy. Our minds were always occupied with something during the most difficult weeks after the accident. And I don’t mean this to be disrespectful to Cliff in any way, but we were glad to have something to make those weeks go by. Today we think about him a lot and talk about him, even joke about him. I often think—now more than ever—how much of a character and a personality Cliff actually was. He was just one in five billion people on this earth, and we will never, ever even be tempted to come up with anyone like him.”

Instead, Metallica came up with exFlotsam & Jetsam bassist Jason Newsted. A long-time Metallica fan, lason says they are literally the one arid only Dand that’d induce him to leave Flotsam.

“I put about five years of my life into Flotsam & Jetsam,” the Michigan-born Jason sighs. "It was my whole life. We had an album out on Metal Blade Records and now they’re signed to Elektra. That band was my baby. I did all the business, half of the music and all of the words, If it hadn’t been Metallica, I wouldn’t have left Flotsam. It was weird to leave, because the drummer and I had been together the whole time; we’d been through a lot. There were a lot of obstacles that we went over together. So it was a touchy situation. At first, they were real mad at me, but now it's OK. They have a new bass player, a big label, things are fine.”

Coming into an established, blockbuster band like Metallica—especially under such freakishly tragic conditions—wasn’t the easiest feat in the world. There were certain unacknowledged ghosts that everyone involved wrestled with.

“There was a kind of buzz going around the business that maybe I was the guy who was going to be with Metallica,” Jason remembers with awe. “So when the auditions did come around, I played and we clicked pretty good. I was overwhelmed with the chance to play with them. It was such a big deal to me. I’m just now adjusting. I joined Metallica in October of 1986, exactly a month after the accident.

“I didn't know Cliff personally,” he continues. “But I knew him through his playing. It’s kind of a weird thing to take the place of someone I’d looked up to so much as a musician. I’m not trying to copy him. I’m just trying to do his work justice. As far as bass soloing—he was god of bass soloing. I’m not even trying to touch anything he did in his solos. I’m just trying to create my own thing, you know?”

To help ease the stress of bringing a new member into their family, Metallica enjoys “tricking” and “teasing” Jason as much as they can.

“I’m the guy who gets picked on!” Jason laughs. “It comes with the job I guess.”

“Ohh, poor Jason!” Lars moans. “It’s good-natured fun, really. In the beginning, we didn’t know him very well and we wanted to make sure that Jason didn’t feel he was more than he actually was— which was the new bass player in Metallica. We gave him a lot of shit in the beginning to make sure he didn’t go overboard in the ‘I’m in Metallica, so now I’m someone special!’ department. This band has always been about keeping that kind of stuff to an absolute minimum, like non-existent! We have a very special kind of humor in Metallica, and I’m not sure that Jason is 1,000 percent there yet. He’s a little gullible at times, which makes it kind of fun.”

But, despite the endless initiation Jason is currently riding out, all members are quick to insist that their new member is a pulsatingly supreme bass player and a very compatible writer.

“As we talk right now, we have zero new songs written for our next album,” Lars confides, “but the stuff that Jason has come up with so far—the riffs, the ideas—are definitely really happening. It fits perfectly with what’s going on with the rest of the band. I think Jason will definitely come through very well.”

Jason agrees: “It’s getting more comfortable for me to offer up ideas to Metallica. James Hetfield especially is really a genius when it comes to writing. It really amazes me sometimes. He can come up with the heaviest, chunking riffs, and then turn around and do something so pretty it makes you tingle. These guys are all the upper sect of classy musicians.”

Knowing that it would be months before fans would actually be able to get their hands on new Metallica material, the band decided to retire to their recently installed garage in San Francisco and pound out some interesting cover versions of old rock songs. Calling the effort Garage Days Re-Revisited, the boys seem rightfully pleased, worrying only that there could be confusion over the songs. Lars explains:

“We don’t want people to run out and think: ‘Oh, the new Metallica album? This sucks!’ I want to make sure that people know these are cover songs—which means we did not write them. This is not a continuation of Master Of Puppets—it’s just a little fun thing while we disapoear to work on the new album.”

Adding a compilation home video (featuring the years with Cliff Burton) to the Garage EP, Metallica hopes their fans will continue to hang in and hang on while they get busy doing what they do Jest: writing, recording and playing live new Metallica material.

“Yeah, there could be a bit of a wait here...ha, ha, ha,” James Hetfield jokes, referring vaguely to the umpteen months it took to produce the band’s latest album. “But it’ll be worth it!”

When confronted with questions about ex-Metallica member (Megadeth’s) Dave Mustaine’s non-stop assaults on his exband members for everything from headaches to song-stealing, Lars is brief:

“Don’t ask me what his problem is! I don’t want to say much because it’s better that all the shit comes from him. Keep it one-sided: all it does is make him look stupid. All I want to say is that it’s just fabrication, direct lies. We think it makes him look kinda dumb, really. It’s just a onesided fight and it makes him look iike a dick. I prefer to keep it that way.”