Of Group Hugs and Metallica
I've got a confession to make. I've just watched the Metallica documentary, "Some Kind Of Monster"....twice. I'm not sure what I originally thought would happen when I stumbled on it playing on one of those lovely movie channels. I guess I'd like to say that I sat down to invest a few minutes in it in order to laugh at Lars Ulrich and point and sneer at big, lumbering James. Since the Napster days I have had little but scorn and derision for the Metallica boys, and one of my "most-mailed" internet links takes you to this little gem at Camp Chaos: The Original Napster Bad. So maybe I just thought the documentary would be good for some Spinal Tap moments while I waited for something I was more interested in to come on. Or perhaps I was paying some kind of strange homage to the past, and my own personal hidden Metallica history.
As I've so cleverly foreshadowed above, I'm one of those people who are weirdly conflicted about Metallica. Years back (uh oh, I'm having a Grandpa Simpson moment) Metallica weren't really a metal band. I mean, I suppose they were but for some reason they didn't belong to the metalheads, they belonged to the punk rockers. When "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride The Lightning" were getting community radio airplay, the metalheads were wearing leopard skin spandex tights, hairspray, and yelling "Shout At the Devil". Perhaps Metallica defined the difference between "Hair Band" and "Hair Band with Curling Irons" but it seemed clear that Metallica belonged to our team. And they were embraced. Did I play "Seek And Destroy" on my plethora of repetitive late-night radio shows? Why yes, I did. Did I feel requests for "Ride the Lightning" were entirely appropriate amidst the Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion and ALL? Why yes, I did. And I observed that knowing who Metallica were, and liking them, seemed to set one apart in an indefinable, music kinda way.
So fast-forward a lot of years. Somewhere in there, the world figured out who a lot of the bands we were playing on community radio were, probably starting with REM. It seems weird now to even write 'REM' in the same paragraph as 'Metallica' but will you understand if I say that for some reason, back then, it wasn't? Slowly at first the bands started trickling out....REM, Nirvana, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins....the trickle started flooding and the next thing you know, Tool was out there too, along with The Pixies and Nine Inch Nails and even Rancid. And a lot of people got bitter, because the music they always said was better than the mainstream crap had now become "the mainstream crap" and maybe they couldn't feel so coolly superior anymore. All I know is that I looked upon it and saw that it was good. I always believed that musicians I liked should, in fact, be listened by everyone and it only seemed positive to me that someone other than Mariah Carey and Dire Straits might actually get paid and stop renting.
But then I found out that the metalheads got Metallica. Not really being so down with the latest developments in head banging, I hadn't spared them much of a thought until the Black Album hit the scene, when I finally looked up to realize that they had washed into the world in the flood too. And I was bemused. I could also tell that, were I to say out loud that I liked "Enter Sandman", I would now somehow lose coolness points (fortunately I was well aware by that time that I had an "L" tattooed on my forehead regardless of what I listened to, so felt fine about admitting it). Having not paid attention though, I didn't quite understand when the coolness turnaround had happened. In fact, I'm still not sure I know when it did....
All of which leads back to "Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster". What I expected to see was a movie glorifying a bunch of penis-bigger-than-their-heads, corporate-rock temper tantrums - good for a few minutes mockery, but ultimately obnoxious. Instead I was shocked to discover I had landed in the middle of Metallica In Group Therapy. I know that sounds like an SNL skit, but I swear, much of the film consists of the boys on couches talking about how they make each other feel hurt, uncared for, or disrespected. Basically what you're seeing is every painful "relationship-talk" you've ever had (including every hackneyed, cliched line short of "I'm going home to Mother!"), being expressed by a metal band to some weanie named Phil. Astoundingly, Therapist Phil has a pathetic moment all his own in the film, when he gets upset because "you guys are saying you don't need me. And I'm fine with that." Phil was so, so not fine with that.
I was still having trouble processing that this really *wasn't* going to end with them destroying the therapist's office and mounting his head on a pole at stage left, when James Hetfield started talking about his 'abandonment issues'. Bob Rock talked about "understanding" and "embracing" the process. Therapist Phil told them to treasure one another. I sat with my jaw on my knee, unable to turn it off when it came on the second time.
And here I sit now, listening to 'Sanitarium'. And it's still a damned good song. But I'll never, ever, hear it the same way again.
And by the way Lars? I downloaded it.
As I've so cleverly foreshadowed above, I'm one of those people who are weirdly conflicted about Metallica. Years back (uh oh, I'm having a Grandpa Simpson moment) Metallica weren't really a metal band. I mean, I suppose they were but for some reason they didn't belong to the metalheads, they belonged to the punk rockers. When "Kill 'Em All" and "Ride The Lightning" were getting community radio airplay, the metalheads were wearing leopard skin spandex tights, hairspray, and yelling "Shout At the Devil". Perhaps Metallica defined the difference between "Hair Band" and "Hair Band with Curling Irons" but it seemed clear that Metallica belonged to our team. And they were embraced. Did I play "Seek And Destroy" on my plethora of repetitive late-night radio shows? Why yes, I did. Did I feel requests for "Ride the Lightning" were entirely appropriate amidst the Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion and ALL? Why yes, I did. And I observed that knowing who Metallica were, and liking them, seemed to set one apart in an indefinable, music kinda way.
So fast-forward a lot of years. Somewhere in there, the world figured out who a lot of the bands we were playing on community radio were, probably starting with REM. It seems weird now to even write 'REM' in the same paragraph as 'Metallica' but will you understand if I say that for some reason, back then, it wasn't? Slowly at first the bands started trickling out....REM, Nirvana, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins....the trickle started flooding and the next thing you know, Tool was out there too, along with The Pixies and Nine Inch Nails and even Rancid. And a lot of people got bitter, because the music they always said was better than the mainstream crap had now become "the mainstream crap" and maybe they couldn't feel so coolly superior anymore. All I know is that I looked upon it and saw that it was good. I always believed that musicians I liked should, in fact, be listened by everyone and it only seemed positive to me that someone other than Mariah Carey and Dire Straits might actually get paid and stop renting.
But then I found out that the metalheads got Metallica. Not really being so down with the latest developments in head banging, I hadn't spared them much of a thought until the Black Album hit the scene, when I finally looked up to realize that they had washed into the world in the flood too. And I was bemused. I could also tell that, were I to say out loud that I liked "Enter Sandman", I would now somehow lose coolness points (fortunately I was well aware by that time that I had an "L" tattooed on my forehead regardless of what I listened to, so felt fine about admitting it). Having not paid attention though, I didn't quite understand when the coolness turnaround had happened. In fact, I'm still not sure I know when it did....
Regardless of the reason, it seemed something had forever changed with Metallica, and their rock god status in the 90's only seemed to further the divide. Then there was Napster and I went from being generally disinterested and non-commital to hateful and scathing. Not being one to study the people behind the bands I like, I knew little about Lars, James and the lot (I'd never even freakin' heard of Jason Newstead), but I knew I now thought they were money-grubbing prima donnas with egos the size of their amps.Audience Participation Moment
It seemed to go like this, to me:"And Justice For All" = for 'edgy', nihilistic-types/still cool
"The Black Album" = for metal-types/not cool
Perhaps the cooler among you out there will tell me that it was oh-so-much-more complex than that, and involved Metallica 'selling out to a major label', or becoming 'over-produced', or some other such standard jargon used to explain the fall-from-coolness factor. Feel free to unlock the mystery in the Comments section. It all seemed rather arbitrary to me.
All of which leads back to "Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster". What I expected to see was a movie glorifying a bunch of penis-bigger-than-their-heads, corporate-rock temper tantrums - good for a few minutes mockery, but ultimately obnoxious. Instead I was shocked to discover I had landed in the middle of Metallica In Group Therapy. I know that sounds like an SNL skit, but I swear, much of the film consists of the boys on couches talking about how they make each other feel hurt, uncared for, or disrespected. Basically what you're seeing is every painful "relationship-talk" you've ever had (including every hackneyed, cliched line short of "I'm going home to Mother!"), being expressed by a metal band to some weanie named Phil. Astoundingly, Therapist Phil has a pathetic moment all his own in the film, when he gets upset because "you guys are saying you don't need me. And I'm fine with that." Phil was so, so not fine with that.
I was still having trouble processing that this really *wasn't* going to end with them destroying the therapist's office and mounting his head on a pole at stage left, when James Hetfield started talking about his 'abandonment issues'. Bob Rock talked about "understanding" and "embracing" the process. Therapist Phil told them to treasure one another. I sat with my jaw on my knee, unable to turn it off when it came on the second time.
And here I sit now, listening to 'Sanitarium'. And it's still a damned good song. But I'll never, ever, hear it the same way again.
And by the way Lars? I downloaded it.
posted by Crowbar at 12:54 a.m.
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