METALLICA Trivia — 11 Entries
11 sourced facts about METALLICA.
Trivia
The band's own history page puts a date on it: October 28, 1981. What brought Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield into the same room was a classified ad Ulrich had placed in the Los Angeles paper The Recycler. Ron McGovney — Hetfield's friend, and at the time his housemate — came in on bass shortly after, and Dave Mustaine on lead guitar. Only two of the four names the world would later know were in that first line-up.
The name METALLICA was not thought up by anybody in the band. According to their own history, it was taken up on the suggestion of Ron Quintana, a friend from the Bay Area metal scene. The band's name, in other words, was handed to them from outside and they kept it.
Master of Puppets sits in the National Recording Registry, the collection the Library of Congress preserves as a matter of national record. The announcement came in March 2016, and the album was one of twenty-five recordings added that year. The criteria are cultural, historical or aesthetic significance, and only recordings at least ten years old are eligible. On their own site the band noted how far outside the mainstream they had been sitting in 1986, and made no attempt to hide their surprise at the selection.
On December 8, 2013, METALLICA played a show on Antarctica, at the Carlini base. The venue was a dome beside the heliport and the audience was 120 people — the station's researchers plus competition winners. Ten songs went by in about an hour. The conditions were unlike any other gig: to keep noise out of the environment, no conventional amplification was used at all, and the sound was sent instead to headphones worn by every person present. The band called it their own silent disco. That night made them the first band to have played all seven continents inside twelve months.
To make their first album, Kill 'Em All, the band drove to New York in a rented U-Haul. The approach had come from East Coast metal dealer Jon Zazula, whose independent label Megaforce Records put the deal on the table in 1983. Shortly after they arrived that April, lead guitarist Dave Mustaine was out and Kirk Hammett, until then with EXODUS, was in. That was the line-up that started recording.
The second album, Ride the Lightning, was not made in America. By the band's own account they spent the summer of 1984 at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, working with producer Flemming Rasmussen. The relationship started there and held: Rasmussen was behind Master of Puppets as well, and returned for the fourth album, ...And Justice for All.
On September 27, 1986, during an overnight drive in Sweden, the band's tour bus went off the road and turned over, and bassist Cliff Burton was killed. More than forty auditions followed before the band settled on a replacement: Jason Newsted, until then of FLOTSAM & JETSAM. The band's own history describes what Burton had brought — a do-it-yourself instinct for jamming and experimenting, paired with a real grounding in music theory — and calls his effect on how the band grew enormous.
The 1987 covers EP The $5.98 E.P. - Garage Days Re-Revisited was made without booking a studio. It was recorded in Lars Ulrich's garage — and the work of converting that garage into a small studio in the first place was done by the band themselves, by hand. It came shortly after Jason Newsted joined.
The fourth album, ...And Justice for All, had to be restarted. The band first tried working with Mike Clink, known for his work with GUNS N' ROSES, and it did not come together. Flemming Rasmussen — who had made Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets with them — was brought back instead, this time at One On One Studios in Los Angeles. Released in August 1988, the album reached No. 6 on the US chart.
METALLICA did not make a music video until 1988, seven years after forming, and when they did it was for "One" from ...And Justice for All. Until then there had been none at all. Their own history describes the film as dark, monochrome, violent and emotional, and treats it as the thing that put the band's singularity in front of people.
With the self-titled 1991 album — the one everybody calls the Black Album — the scale of the band changed entirely. Bob Rock, brought in as producer, pushed them toward a fuller sound and more direct arrangements. It went to number one around the world on release and stayed there for a couple of years. By the band's own account it has sold more than sixteen million copies worldwide, and the tour behind it ran to close to three hundred shows in three years, including the co-headlining stadium run with GUNS N' ROSES.