The beginnings of Metallica - Metal Up Your Ass

Automatically when you consider the name Metallica, two associations come straight to mind: the first is the fortune accumulated by the band in their more than 20 years of history and the different paradigms broken by someone who invests in a heavy sound (the band still practices this Sound is another story but actually, at least until 1994, practiced).

The second association, using the hook, it's just all the changes that characterized the Metallica in recent years (or decade), his excessive flirting with MTV, their sound change, attitude, problems and infighting.

Write about Metallica is a great passion but also a hell of responsibility. Firstly because they are the guys who took me to Heavy Metal for about 15 years and follow unbeatable as the best metal band of all time, in my opinion. Not liking the band for what they do today is an understandable attitude but fail to respect them is foolish after all, "Kill 'Em All," "Ride The Lightning" "Master of Puppets" "... And Justice for All "and" Black Album "(not counting the" Load "I also think a lot of work) are at least the fundamental and revolutionary albums in its contexts.

To escape the common place, the goal of this matter is to put a little aside the controversial career of the band after the consolidation of success, after all this part of the story everyone knows and explore the early days of Metallica, their roots and the rapid ascension to the throne of Bay Area San Francisco until the release of "Kill 'Em All" in 1983. People who started with covers of NWOBHM and opened the door to the movement of one of the most important elements of Heavy Metal in the 80s: the Thrash Metal.

The story of Metallica, contrary to what many think, it started on the west coast of the United States but across the Atlantic Ocean, in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where he was born drummer Lars Ulrich on 26 December 1963, son reasonably successful tennis player Torben Ulrich.

Torben won numerous titles with less expression in the circuit and was ranked in 1976 at age 48, the best player in the category "senior". Despite the sporting life, the patriarch of Ulrich always enjoyed good music and maintained close links with the Jazz and Rock, both still in the 50 years he owned a home of jazz in Copenhagen where he also played with his own band.


Little Lars lived directly with both sides of the father as a child is showing very promising with the rackets and won some tournaments for children, ranging from numbers 10 and 15 ranking Danish children and adolescents. But his life would change completely in February 1973, when Torben hosted some hippies in their home and they decided to attend a presentation of Deep Purple in Copenhagen. One of the friends gave up on short notice and our Lars, then 9 years old, took the ticket that would change his life.

Of course, a 9 year old child do not really understand what is happening on stage in a show of Rock but Lars hypnotized by the way the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was playing his guitar in the air and did his solos.

In the days following the presentation, Lars began his personal collection of disks with the Fireball Deep Purple and soon became one of those fanatical collectors items Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy and any band who could put together the beginnings of heavy metal with the vein Blues. Whenever he could, Lars accompanied his father on trips the circuit court and, thus, also bought music records and increased the collection with specimens from all over Europe.

Despite all the growing passion for the Rock, the first attempt with musical instruments happened only in 1976 when the young Ulrich won a drum kit as a gift from their grandparents. At first he liked his new "toy", but over the months Lars committed itself (at will - or charge - the parents) to pursue a career as a professional tennis player.

As Denmark did not offer many opportunities for growth to his son, Lars Torben sent to train in the U.S. in 1979, first to a prestigious tennis academy in Florida.

Lars was dedicated to the sport with hard daily training of 8 hours, but did not forget the old passion for collecting records of Rock and took his journey to America to get some special releases that just came out in the land of Uncle Sam.

Upon his return to Denmark for the holidays, even in 1979, Lars met a guy named Ken Anthony, owner of a record store in Copenhagen and one of the big heads of the Danish Heavy Metal scene. Ken presented the album Survivors of Samson (former band of Bruce Dickinson) and awoke to Lars his fanaticism for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a popular revolution that had just begun in the late '70s. Since then, the future drummer became an avid collector of items of this very important phase of Heavy Metal and is still one of its greatest enthusiasts.

Some months later, in March 1980, Lars came back to America to play a tennis tournament in Florida and during a break, entered into a record store after the last launch of a band called Triumph. That's when he noticed a very interesting album, with a sort of skull on its cover and when they looked back, in his own words, "the illustration of Eddie could be any one of 100 bands that appeared at every moment but the pictures the live shows on the back cover really impressed me. " Of course, the disk in question was the first Iron Maiden. He bought the album but could not hear it until his return to Denmark in April because it had phonograph in its housing in the U.S..

Once he returned to Denmark, Ken Anthony brought another gem to the attention of Ulrich, the album Wheels of Steel of Saxon.

In September 1980, family hopeful Ulrich's brilliant tennis career (!) To his son Lars, decided to move permanently to the U.S. and bought a nice house in South Los Angeles.

Even away from the explosion of the Heavy Metal scene, Lars kept in contact by letter with their old European friends to find out the latest news and kept with him a kind of schedule where I noted the names of all the bands that emerged and their records, even though were only demo tapes, pirated shows or collections with a single song. On that list were names like Angel Witch, Blitzkrieg, Jaguar, Holocaust, Raven, Witchfinder General, Sweet Savage, Savage, Praying Mantis and Diamond Head, the latter probably your favorite band in history and one of the great influences of Metallica.

Lars was as addicted to the band that began exchanging letters (remember that we had no Internet to make life easier) with the mother of singer Sean Harris, Linda Harris, co-manager of the band, about the latest news. For completeness, when Lars knew that Diamond Head would make a European tour in the summer of 1981, it became clear: thanks to good financial health of Torben, flew to attend all performances of the band on English soil. Still not satisfied, after watching the first show, Lars got access to backstage with Linda and impressed everyone with information that not even the members of Diamond Head knew (thanks again to the owner Linda). The result is that the future drummer spent a week at the home of singer Sean Harris and another week at the home of guitarist Brian Tatler. Moreover, the two went together to attend the famous festival Heavy Metal Holocaust headed by Motörhead.

This proximity was very important in the life of the creative future of Metallica, Lars after the first time, had no idea how it worked in a band, the internal discussions and work of songwriting. Brian still remembers what it was like the young Ulrich: "One thing that struck me was how he spent money on discs. There were hundreds of pounds, even though only a child, he went to record stores and bought stacks and stacks of things (...). NWOBHM The funny thing is he never mentioned forming a band and I'm not too sure if he could play drums so far. "After weeks living with their idols, Lars visited his hometown where he still had time to meet some people at the scene, Mercyful Fate, and returned to the U.S. with a fixed idea of assembling his own band.

The story of James Alan Hetfield is quite different from the dream lived by Lars Ulrich. Born August 3, 1963 in Norwalk, Los Angeles, James grew up in a family's traditional middle class American, except for the fact that his parents divorced early.

His father was a truck driver and his mother, a traditional housewife who in youth stood out as an opera singer. Both were strict Protestants, those who never miss a Mass, and it angered the young James was beginning to wonder about the veracity of their values, primarily through an event to happen some years later.

Like Lars, James was also a fan of Deep Purple, and was greatly influenced in the beginning by his brother 10 years older brother, David, a drummer in a cover band Hendrix - The Bitter End - in the early '70s. David used the garage of his mother's house to rehearse with the band and when nobody was looking, there would be a little James to play with the keyboards.


Under the influence of the mother, hopeful of seeing his son become a classical pianist, James had two years of piano lessons in high school until she give up her dream and bought for his son an electric guitar for $ 15, after the second the words of the future guitarist and singer: "I wanted to make noise, not to study theory."

The disappointment in the church and approach with heavy metal, especially Black Sabbath and their lyrics, have caused major problems in adolescence James, particularly his father, a traditionalist is not satisfied to see the child from the path of religious faith. But the worst happened when James's mother got cancer some time later. Relying on faith and prayer as the only salvation, the family disowned all kinds of medical treatments and the result was the most devastating possible: James lost his mother, by sheer neglect family, 15 years of age.

The shock of the loss was enormous, especially for the problems already faced with his father on such a belief. James was isolated from their family and friends for a long time and the relationship with the father never returned to normal. Good perceivers are references to the event in several letters of Metallica in the following decades, especially "The God that Failed" and "Until It Sleeps", explicit lyrics about it. The tragic event also created a nickname for James at school for his attitude alone: the child more angry the world.

As soon as he could, James left home and went on to dedicate the song still in the 70s. The first concert he attended was the famous Long Beach Arena in 1978 to see Aerosmith and AC / DC with his brother. At the same time, James has assembled a first band called Leather Charm with some school friends, then changed their name to Obsession and played in the colleges of the city, without major repercussions.

The Obsession, James wrote his first letter but the small audience who attended the presentations always preferred the covers, which rather annoyed the young Hetfield, out to top flight. The others (in the Veloz brothers on bass and drums and Jim Arnold on guitar) preferred to remain as a cover band, after all was what pleased the fans. A curiosity of Obsession was their roadie main: nothing more and nothing less than Ron McGovney, the future first bassist of Metallica.

Moved from district and school, James formed his third band with new colleagues, the Phantom Lord, Hugh Tanner (chosen for being the only kid in the neighborhood to have a Flying V guitar), Jim Mulligan on drums and, later, Ron on bass. Many of the riffs from Metallica's early songs were born in this phase of the Phantom Lord. The band has even been the first where James sang and played guitar at the same time.

Over the months, the Phantom Lord changed his name and came to be called Leather Charm with James leaving the guitar aside to focus solely on vocals. Among the songs played by the band, the favorite was the cover of "Remember Tomorrow" from the first Iron Maiden album.

The Leather Charm has recorded a demo before the end of the beginning of 1980, but this recording of those items is almost impossible to find and worth a few thousand dollars.

In 1980, finally the ways of James and Lars when they crossed the future drummer, before his trip to the tour of Diamond Head, placed an advertisement in a newspaper called the Recycler, looking for headbangers to form a serious band, which value the Heavy Metal and a career in the genre. Without hesitation, James Hetfield and his friend Hugh Tanner responded to the ad and marked a first jam at the home of Lars. James was so excited about the possibility of a career that ponder the possibility of incorporating the work of Leather Charm with Lars on drums depending on the outcome of a match.

Unfortunately, this first contact was a real fiasco as Lars, the drummer, was still a nice player. Totally disillusioned, James Ulrich advised the speaker to leave the sticks for their own good, turned and walked away. The two would meet again almost a year later.