Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 6, 1992 TAG: 9203060304
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Joe Tennis/ Correspondent
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Friends and neighbors, meet Metallica - the visionary pioneers of the thrash and speed metal movement.
This band's music is cutting-edge heavy metal. It's the loud, crazy, fast stuff that dad says isn't really music at all.
Still, it's the perfect soundtrack for mosh rings and slam dancing, with a rough-as-sandpaper vocalist who sometimes sounds like he's choking on vomit and speaking in tongues while a drummer, guitarist and bassist race through measures at 100 mph.
Metallica's is the kind of music mom and dad most likely don't want their kids to hear.
In a telephone interview early this week from backstage at the Riverfront Arena in Cincinnati, guitarist Kirk Hammett said he feels sorry for parents who censor their kids' musical tastes.
"I think you should raise your kids with an open mind and raise them with some sort of regard as to what their own interests are," he said.
Hammett, 29, grew up in San Francisco and started playing Queen and Led Zeppelin songs on guitar at age 15. For two years, he was obsessed by the instrument.
"I was shy, and I never had a whole lot of friends," he said.
"I never had a social life in high school. I was a high school nerd or dork or geek."
These days, Hammett considers it quite a contrast to see the so-called cool guys in high school strutting across campus in denim jackets emblazoned with Metallica patches - with the band name written in letters that look like lightning - and playing air guitar to riffs he made famous.
"I'm glad that they're enjoying it. . . . But just because I had a lousy high school social life doesn't mean I have contempt for other people who have a good social life."
Hammett joined Metallica just in time to record classic tracks like "Seek and Destroy" and "Hit the Lights" for the band's debut album, "Kill 'Em All."
This revolutionary release blew the metal scene wide open in 1983 by breathing new life into the genre with innovative rhythms and hard-charging energy. For a change, here was a band with music that was "aggressive, powerful and thought-provoking," Hammett said.
Yet soon after the album's appearance, a overnight crop of Metallica imitators came out of the woodwork.
At first, Hammett listened to these other bands and thought his sound was being ripped off. But, he said, he soon got tired of listening to the same old thing. He turned off his stereo.
"That sort of speed thrash death-type stuff, it's incestuous to begin with in the thrash-metal scene. All these musicians, all they do is listen to other bands in their genre, and they start ripping each other off. It's just one big circle. . . . There's not a whole lot of room for fresh, new and different things."
Keeping their minds open - and clear from comparing themselves to others, Hammett said - Metallica allowed its sound to evolve and mature through metal-milestone releases like 1984's "Ride the Lightning," 1986's "Master of Puppets" and 1988's " . . . And Justice for All."
On the road since October, the band is supporting its new self-titled LP, a top-10 release that recently won the 1992 Grammy for Best Metal Performance on the strength of tracks like "Enter Sandman" and "The Unforgiven."
This latest Grammy award is the band's third. In 1990, they took home the prize for Best Metal Performance for their mammoth-length single "One." The following year, the group picked up a Grammy for Best Heavy Metal Performance for their version of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy" on Elektra Records' 40th anniversary album "Rubaiyat."
Still, the band's most memorable Grammy moment came in 1989 when the band performed the explosive "One," Hammett said.
The televised rendition, blasted by the strength of singer-vocalist James Hetfield's grizzly growls and Hammett's hammering guitar, shocked some viewers. What's more, the song's dangerous sound must have sent the Grammy Awards judges into a tailspin: The judges passed over boos in the audience - and passed over Metallica - to give the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance award to Ian Anderson's flute-toting Jethro Tull.
Hammett says he's not bitter about the confusing loss.
"We didn't get the Grammy, but we got more positive publicity out of that than Jethro Tull did. I never had a problem with it, even though I don't think Jethro Tull's a metal band."
Now with "Enter Sandman" showing up on radios everywhere - not to mention on MTV and other rock video showcases - folks looking for something to gnaw on have recently accused Metallica, which also includes drummer Lars Ulrich and bassist Jason Newsted, of "selling out" to mainstream audiences.
Hammett calls such accusations bogus. "People are just waking up to the fact that we're a band that makes decent music. . . . It always takes a while for the public to catch on to things."
Besides that, it doesn't matter what people think, he added.
"We're just trying to please ourselves. . . . It's this little itch that's deep inside of us, and we just have to keep on scratching: That's our music."
by CNB