[...]
Celebrity and the recognition accompanying it are highly addictive narcotics, and all three of
the thrash units sense of self-importance became so big that childish tiffs erupted during photo shoots,
tour buses and hotel rooms were transformed into fortresses of solitude, and members of the bands
belittled one another in the press. 8 On one of the few occasions when Dave Mustaine, Jeff Hanneman
and Scott Ian managed to set aside their differences for a joint interview “after many bitter
protestations,” the only thing the three could agree on was the need to make themselves seem superior
to every other thrash band in existence. None of the guitarists would own up to playing thrash, because
it was a “limiting term” and, according to Ian, you “could just turn on a speed drill and record it” to
make the “ultimate thrash album.” Testament was the only group mentioned by name, but the “titans”
spent the majority of the interview ridiculing the efforts of the innumerable “Slayer babies” or
“Metallibabies” and refused to name a single thrash band that they considered to be good. Hanneman
maintained that thrash was stale and unoriginal because the people aping his band lacked “self-worth,”
but Mustaine provided the real motive for the all-out assault on thrash bands when he flippantly
claimed the only thing separating Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth from their less-well-known peers was
that “[w]e’re making money.” 99
The Clash of the Titans was never about the fans, the music or metal. The tour was a calculated
marketing venture that enabled the bands to tolerate one another to achieve a larger goal: padding each
band’s pockets and publicity portfolios at the expense of others. When asked about the purpose of the
tour, Dave Mustaine, never one to mince words back in the day, had a mission statement prepared:
“We can give credibility back to this scene and prove that this music is marketable.” Words Tom
Araya would have found comforting, since he was exasperated that negative coverage was “the only
publicity [Slayer] got” in the mainstream media. Obviously, none of the “titans” cared about the
“scene,” the bottom line was all that mattered, and Mustaine predicted that the absence of camaraderie
on the tour would have little effect on the outcome: “We’re going to co-exist. We’re all going to make
money, and the fans are going to be delighted.” The features in national and large regional papers
across the nation proved to be a boon for the bands, and the tour did ensure that they would be able to
stay active during the nineties, but any significant connections to the underground had been severed,
and bands of a smaller stature never reaped any rewards from the high-profile activities of the
“titans.” 10
As for the remaining member of the “Big Four,” an examination of their journey from thrash to
hard-edged radio-rock during this period supplies the reasons for the egotistical behavior of their little
brothers. The sins of Metallica are legion and legendary, but despite the incessant cries of “sell-outs,”
there has been little analysis of why or how the band actually sold out. Many regard the Black Album
as a stylistic shift that did not place Metallica beyond the boundaries of metal and view the alternative
imagery and music of the Load-era as the time when the band turned its back on heavy metal. In Sound
of the Beast, an “authoritative” history of heavy metal, for example, Ian Christe presents the Black
Album as the conclusion of a larger process of maturation metal was passing through that made
America over into “a nation of headbangers--housewives, sailors, software programmers, major league
ballplayers and all.” 11 And Metallica merely expedited the populist metallic groundswell by “craft[ing]
a thick sound befitting universal popularity--one that would carry to the back rows of big venues and
punch through the speakers of tiny transistor radios.” 12 In essence, according to Christe, it was a matter
of acoustics instead of any crass calculus based on money or popularity employed by Metallica. This
makes for a comforting bedtime story where everything ends happily ever after, but is shoddy history
that conceals much more than it reveals. For, in reality, Metallica’s wild Billboard bullet ride to the top
of the charts was the product of an industry-driven strategy which saw the most popular underground
band in metal discard the values that had allowed them to succeed and embrace the norms of the
mainstream in order to become a “serious” band receiving praise from rock journalists.10
With the well-wide-of-the-mark gambit at remaining relevant as metal has become “safe” again
that was St. Anger fresh in so many minds, it is hard for many metalheads to recall that at one time
Metallica was the most important underground band in heavy metal. Of course, one could argue that
Metallica ceased to be underground once they signed with Elektra and when ...And Justice For All
sold like hot cakes and ultimately went double platinum, it is almost foolhardy to place the band
outside of the mainstream, but Metallica had not yet totally shed the values that made thrash a hard sell
for record company executives. There was just something special about Metallica, and the furor over
the release of the video for “One” was a sign of this status. Many underground bands had made videos,
and Megadeth’s clip for “Peace Sells” had been voted on to the top-ten videos of the day numerous
times and was even adopted by MTV as the opening music for their “news” segments, so it is odd and
ridiculous that Metallica would be held to a different standard than Testament, Overkill or Nuclear
Assault. But the band’s attitude and ideology before the “One” video was aired resonated with
underground headbangers and made a hostile reaction to the act inevitable.
In the years preceding the video, Metallica had consistently espoused anti-establishment views
that marked the band as underground metallers who would never play the industry game to achieve
success. Shortly after the release of Master of Puppets, the questions about what increased popularity
meant already began to appear, and James Hetfield set the record straight:
We’re doing it our way. We’ve always wanted to do it our way. I’m happy with it. We haven’t
had to conform to any certain standards, record companies or whoever else wants us to do it.
They haven’t molded us in a certain way, we did it all ourselves and that’s great. 13
By this time Hetfield had also become comfortable with Metallica appearing in the pages of Hit
Parader and Circus, coverage that had bothered him in the past, because it was “so widespread” and
often indicated that “another band was blowing it” by watering down their sound--but he took comfort
in the fact that the band was able to say what they “want to say in interviews and [magazines] are not
twisting the shit around.” 14 The preoccupation with doing it their own way was also expressed by
avoiding videos, radio, and other promotional avenues designed to lure consumers to a product, and as
late as March 1989, Lars Ulrich could assert that Metallica might be able to “reach a few more people”
through the mainstream media, “but the bottom line is that it has to be done our way” with a relatively
clean underground conscience. 15
“One” did not make Metallica mainstream, but the glitz and glamour surrounding the single
and video was intoxicating, and the seeds had been planted for what Christe correctly characterizes as
radio-friendly songs. The size of the speakers or venues was not the reason behind the alterations
though, since the roots of the plodding and bland beats of “Enter Sandman” are located in the reception11
Metallica received from the mainstream rock press. Heavy metal has always been considered an
obnoxious and loutish bastard child of rock ‘n’ roll that was not a genre to be taken seriously, and the 2
million copies of Justice flying from the shelves during the late eighties did nothing to change this fact.
Most coverage of metal was typed out with tongue planted firmly in cheek and petty swipes at the
accouterments and attitudes of headbangers were common. Moreover, as Metallica entered the
mainstream radar, jibes such as “thrash... is an artform that makes much of speed and use of little else”
and accusations of having “no class” due to the monotonal and monosyllabic nature of their songs were
common reactions from rock journalists. 16 And many variations of the following insulting opinion of
Metallica’s performance were read or heard by the band:
Most of what Metallica offered was indecipherable to anyone but the most avid followers. With
the exception of “For Whom the Bells Tolls,” and a song that prompted listeners again and
again to “obey your master...faster, faster,” [lazy idiot] each piece bore a striking resemblance
to each other piece. The effect was not unlike standing at the door of a blast furnace. 17
By Justice some journalists had made the effort to read the lyrics and listen to the albums and offered a
more favorable opinion, presenting the band’s music as “power-chord poetry” deserving respectful
consideration, but the damage had been done, and any approval was drowned out by a consistent
chorus of jeers in Metallica’s mind. 18
The first step to counter the criticism was to bring in Bob Rock, a Canadian producer
responsible for the slick sounds found on Motley Crüe, Bon Jovi and Loverboy albums, to soften the
band’s harsh attack. Metallica’s stated reasons for bringing this producer into the studio were many,
but one perceptive reporter saw the handwriting on the wall: “Bob Rock’s interest in making
Metallica’s music listener-friendly...actually coincided with the band’s own desire to burst out of
thrash-metal’s buzzsaw prison.” 19 Next, Hetfield, in this case, began to free Metallica from its “prison”
by establishing distance between the band’s musical past and present trajectory: “People are going to
label you forever. It really didn’t bother me so much; although the thrash title was one thing that did
bother us a little....People would have preconceptions about that.” 20 These moves proved to be
successful: the press was ecstatic and executives regarded the product (the Black Album) as “just what
the music industry need[ed]” to remain a viable force in entertainment. 21 Metallica was also pleased
with the results. Hetfield and Ulrich had quietly decided to quit “doing it their own way” in order to
win acclaim from the journalists and bands who had previously spurned the band, and the Danish
drummer exulted in the bands “artistic” success:
I know there were a lot of bands who went, “Oh, yeah, Metallica, they sell a lot of records, but
they can’t play or write songs....So this is a big ‘Fuck you’ to all the people who felt that way12
for years and years and who came up and smiled to our faces, but as soon as they walked away,
the were laughing at us--‘These guys. What’s this thrash shit?’” 22
Metallica rapidly became a parody of the band it once was after “One” catapulted them into the klieg
lights of the mainstream, and Ulrich and his bandmates began to believe that the only type of music
worth playing was a style which would make it easier for “a lot of people...getting exposed to what we
do.” 23
Ulrich was no longer defiantly insisting that the “the public will change for us in a few years,
instead of us changing for them” and intimating that the mainstream was “defective” and “needed to be
replaced.” 24 This was because Metallica had become part of the faceless hit factory and jumped into
the fire of the hierarchical industry structure with both feet. Any allegiance to underground values or
music was buried under derisive statements about thrash metal, former lyrical subjects and the listeners
who felt betrayed. For one brief moment, it had seemed that an underground band who called for
“crushing all deceivers [and] mashing non-believers” and would “go against the grain until the end”
could retain their identity and integrity within the confines of the mainstream. However, Metallica shit
on their hardcore supporters, lashed out at the scene from which they emerged, offered no support to
up-and-coming traditional or thrash metal bands, and adjusted their sails to the prevailing industry
winds that would carry them from one ridiculous transformation to another--leaving metalheads with
an endless series of what ifs.
But as the similar impulses behind the Clash of the Titans prove, placing all the blame at
Metallica’s doorstep would be a simplification, and one could claim that the band’s decision to dive
headfirst into the mainstream was the result of a profound sea change in the underground. In fact, the
entire underground had linked its future to the music industry well before Metallica “matured” and was
defenseless when executives, publicists and the press decided to redefine what it meant to be metal. At
the first Foundations Forum in 1988, over one thousand metallers from bands, labels and PR agencies
met with industry representatives in an effort to discover why the growing popularity of heavy metal
had not been translated into “legitimacy” or “credibility.” James Ryan, the United Press International
stringer who covered the three-day event, discovered that many of the movers and shakers in metal
were at their wits end:
Band members complained that MTV won’t air their videos (except on its late night
Headbangers Ball program), publicists whined that magazine editors never return phone calls,
and promotions people lamented that only a handful of specialty radio stations give airplay to
heavy metal or hard rock. 2513
Some attendees blamed the inability of heavy metal to be accepted by the media and the industry to the
unholy trinity of Satanism, drugs, and death that was wrongly regarded as the be all and end all of
metal by outsiders. But Mike Greene, the president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and
Sciences and a member of the “Credibility and Respectability” panel, hit the nail squarely on the head
when he told the assembled audience that the “mainstream establishment” remained aloof because
heavy metal “music [was] saying things that society does not want to hear.” 26 Ironically, Greene was a
card-carrying member of the “mainstream establishment,” and his presence at the forum was not only
evidence of how far the underground had strayed from its roots, but also a harbinger of things to
come—because, despite the concerted effort to attain credibility, legitimacy and respectability, heavy
metal in its undiluted incarnation would never become part of the mainstream. Nevertheless, many
metallers at the Foundations Forum continued to methodically march towards the mirage of popular
acceptance and failed to heed the wise and prophetic words of an unidentified metal disc jockey: “If
this form of music tries to be respectable...then this form of music will disappear.” 27
Metal did not just disappear, however, it was twisted and distorted into a freakish caricature
that was packaged for wider public consumption, and the underground had become so wedded to
delusional dreams of achieving mainstream levels of sales and exposure that it went out with a fizzle
instead of a bang. As was noted above, the idea that “grunge killed metal” has become the orthodox
interpretation of why heavy metal experienced a severe slump during the 1990s, but the truth is that
grunge/alternative became metal for all intents and purposes. Metal could not just be discarded as a
category of music, since it was a significant part of the music market, accounting for four of every ten
rock sales in the late eighties, so industry insiders merely expanded the parameters of metal to
encompass bands that were not metal. 28 The designation “alternative metal” had been used sporadically
by some journalists to describe “heavy” bands that were not traditional metal fare, but after the
phenomenal sales of Nirvana’s Nevermind, the two terms were used interchangeably to create a new
brand of metal that would be palatable to mainstream tastemakers. 29
Industry insiders were jubilant that a tamer form of music which could be marketed as metal
had arisen and wasted no time in making sure that listeners would come to the same conclusion.[...]
