textfiles/groups/CDC/cDc-0067.txt

_______________________________________________________________________________
        _   _                                                      _   _
       ((___))                                                    ((___))
       [ x x ]                 cDc communications                 [ x x ]
        \   /                      presents...                     \   /
        (` ')                                                      (` ')
         (U)                                                        (U)

                         Thrasher's METALLICA INTERVIEW
                                   Part 1 of 2

                             Compliments of  Racer X

                      >>> A CULT Publication......1988 <<<
                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
_______________________________________________________________________________


        The following is an interview with James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett of
Metallica which was conducted by Thrasher Magazine's Pushead.  This interview
has been split into two parts to make it easier on you, the reader.  Thrash,
kill, destroy, and most of all, enjoy.

From THRASHER MAGAZINE: Vol. 6, No. 8
_______________________________________________________________________________


PUSHEAD: WHO JOINED THE BAND FIRST, KIRK OR CLIFF?

JAMES: Cliff.  We saw him play... I think Slagel put this gig together in LA,
it was two in the morning Monday night at the Whiskey.  I think 20 people
showed up.  There was Trauma, Violation, and one other band.  We all went down,
saw Cliff play and said, 'Yeah, that's our guy!'.
  
DID HE HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU GUYS WERE?
  
J: No.  So we kept coming up to S.F. to do gigs every once in a while.  The
scene was way better up here, just the overall vibe.  People could get into
what we were doing as opposed to L.A., where they were just hanging out, posing
with their drinks and cigarettes.  We kept bugging the shit out of him when
they came down to shoot a video in L.A. and we went and bugged him there too.
Finally he said, 'Yeah, cool.'  Things weren't going well in his band either.
He could see the direction they were going, kind of more poppy type.  And he
said, 'Yeah, I'll join the band if you guys will move up here.'  Well, hell
yeah, we were into it, we were sick of L.A.

WAS DAVE MUSTAINE STILL IN THE BAND AT THAT TIME?

J: Yeah.

WHEN DID YOU GET RID OF DAVE AND FIND KIRK?

J: That was when we hooked up with Johnny Z.  Johnathan Zezula, Megaforce...
and crazed manager.  He wired us $1,500 from Jersey and said, 'Get yourself out
here.' We said okay.

WHY DID HE WANT YOU OUT THERE?  TO PLAY OR RECORD?

J: To record.  We were going to get away from home for a bit and see what the
scene was like out there.  Now that I think of it--It was really wild that we
did that.  All of a sudden just move up to S.F., no place to stay or nothing.
Finally, we crashed at Mark Whittaker's pad.  It was cool.

KIRK: Mark ended up helping out on the recordings of "Kill 'Em All" and
"Ride The Lightning."  He was also our sound person.

J: Yeah, he came out to Jersey with us.  We just threw all our shit and
everything into a U-Haul and started driving....

KIRK WASN'T IN THE BAND YET WHEN YOU WENT BACK EAST?

J: Uh-uh.

K: What happened was that on the way to New York they had problems with Dave.

J: Mark Whittaker was also Exodus' manager at that time.  And he kept playing
live tapes of Kirk.

SO KIRK, WHAT MADE YOU GO FROM EXODUS TO METALLICA?

K: At the time Exodus was having personnel problems, we had this bass player
who wasn't really fitting into the direction we were going.  The band wasn't
rehearsing and we were at a real stale period.  I was getting kind of fed up.
It's really funny, because one day I was sitting on the can and I got a phone
call from Whittaker.  He called up and asked me if I'd be interested in flying
to New York to try out with the band, because they were having problems with
Dave.

DID YOU KNOW THE BAND?

K: Yeah, I saw Metallica twice and then we played with them at the Stone.  What
was that, the Night of the Banging Head or something?

J: The Ear Spankers or whatever it was.  (laughs) That was a great one.

K: Opportunity knocked, so I thought, what else do I have to do but check this
out?  So, Mark Fed-X'ed a tape out and I sat down with the tape for a couple of
days.  And then I started to get more calls from Whittaker saying, 'Well, are
you into it?'.  I said, 'Yeah, sure,' and then he said, 'Well, the band wants
you to come out to New York to audition with them.'  So I thought about it and
I thought about it, for like two seconds, and said, 'Sure, I'll check it out.'

WERE THERE ANY HARD FEELINGS WITH THE REST OF THE GUYS IN EXODUS?

K: At first, but they understood.  If any of them would have been approached
they would have done the same thing.

J: There was a whole strange period right there, all of a sudden a straight
drive out to New York in a U-Haul.  There were five of us and we had a mattress
in the back to switch off sleeping.  Get in the back.  Slam.  You're shut in.
 We'd never been out of California and we got there to find out we were having
some real problems with Dave's attitude.  He couldn't really handle being away
from home or something.  It was just a bit funky and we knew it couldn't go on
like that so we started looking at the other stuff.  It wasn't like we really
auditioned Kirk.  He came in, set up, played and he was there.  I don't know
what we would have done if we didn't like him.  We didn't have the money to
send him back.  We barely had enough money to get Dave home.  He flew back on
Greyhound.  (laughs) 'When does my plane leave?'  Here Dave, bus ticket, one
hour, see ya.  Kirk flew in like an hour after that.  Dave almost missed his
bus.  That would have been great.

K: It was real weird because I was in the same situation of being out of
California for the first time and on top of that I barely knew any of them.
The only one I knew was Mark.  I took a big chance because there was always the
possibility that they might not have liked me or something.  I flew out there
with all kinds of equipment and stuff and I even paid for it.

J: You were using Dave's stuff too.  He couldn't get it home on the bus.

K: Yeah, I was.  I used a couple of his cabinets.

YOU PLAYED WITH VENOM?

J: Yeah, a huge thing.  Venom gigs, da-da-da!

K: There were about a thousand people there.  It was one of the big underground
shows.

WHAT WAS THE RESPONSE TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING, AS COMPARED TO WHAT VENOM WAS
DOING?

K: It was good, people really liked it.  We were still pretty much an under-
ground act.

J: It was one of our first major gigs.

K: Johnny Z plugged us a lot, in a lot of New York newspapers....

J: He owned a record store too, Johnny Z's Rock and Roll Heaven, and he was
selling the demo and album.

A LOT OF PEOPLE THOUGHT YOU WERE AN EAST COAST BAND BECAUSE THE DEMO WAS
AVAILABLE THROUGH THERE.

J: Pissed us off.

YOU HAD AN ADDRESS IN S.F., PEOPLE HAD HEARD YOU WERE FROM L.A....IT WAS LIKE,
'WHERE ARE THEY FROM?'

J: Yeah.  And the fan club was in Oregon.

K: Billboard still thinks we're a Danish band.

WHEN YOU WENT TO NEW YORK YOU RECORDED "KILL 'EM ALL" WHICH TOOK EVERYBODY
BY SURPRISE.

K: We got a half a star in Sounds Magazine.  (laughs)

I BET IF YOU SENT IT TO THEM TODAY THEY'D GIVE YOU FOUR STARS.

K: Yeah, we got five stars, for "Master Of Puppets."

J: We didn't give a fuck at all.

K: We thought that whatever we did, there'd be people who would approach it
with a lot of hesitation, because it was so different back then.

DID YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A HEAVY METAL BAND AT THAT TIME?

J: Yeah.  None of us were really into the punk stuff, except maybe the Ramones
or the Pistols.  We were not real hardcore punk fans.

K: That's the thing that a lot of people don't know, when we first started we
weren't heavily into punk.  It was very, very slight.  Motorhead and the
Ramones.

WHERE DID YOU GET THE IDEA TO PLAY THE RIFFS THAT MUCH FASTER?

J: Motorhead.

BUT YOU WERE EVEN FASTER THAN MOTORHEAD.

J: We'd just keep practicing and the songs would get faster and faster and the
energy kept building up and it sounded more backbuster.

K: When we write something, from the time we write it until the time it
actually comes out, it's a lot faster on the album.  And then from the time
it's cut on vinyl to the time we're actually playing live, it's even faster.
I think that's what happened in the beginning.  We wrote stuff thinking that we
were going to play it at a normal speed and just naturally speed it up.

J: It's always faster, hella shit's going on live.  Booze and freaks dinking
around, just the excitement.

K: The adrenaline flow.

SO HERE YOU HAD THIS NEW FORM OF METAL, WHICH I GUESS NOW IS CALLED
SPEED-METAL, OR WHATEVER.

K: I hate that word.  I hate any sort of label like that.

LABELS ARE THE ONLY WAY PEOPLE CAN CLASSIFY SOMETHING.  SOME PEOPLE HATE HEAVY
METAL BECAUSE BANDS LIKE JOURNEY ARE PUT INTO THAT CATEGORY.

J: If someone has a shitty opinion of heavy metal they're not going to be
impartial anyway... 'Metallica's heavy metal?  Oh, I hate them already,' and
they don't even know what we sound like.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE BEFORE "KILL 'EM ALL" SALES TOOK OFF?

J: Until "Master Of Puppets" came out.  (laughs)

K: It sold pretty steadily.  It wasn't selling in enormous number but it
sold...

J: All our albums have sold steadily.  When it first comes out all the hard-
core fans will buy it.  But then it doesn't drop off, it just keeps steadily
hanging out in the same place.

K: After we got back from the "Kill 'Em All For One" tour, we played some gigs
sporadically in the Bay Area, we started writing new material for "Ride The
Lightning" and then we played the Halloween gig.  We put out the "Jump in the
Fire" EP and got ready to go to Europe.  It was our first European tour and
when we got there we were pretty surprised at the response, because the
original "No Life 'till Leather" demo was circulated a lot through Europe.
Throughout Holland, Denmark, Germany and stuff.

J: Yeah, hundredth generation tapes... you could barely hear what the hell was
going on, but they were into it.

K: So we had a following with the demo and then "Kill 'Em All" came out on the
European label and did better than it did in America.  There was more of an
audience over there waiting to see us.

ALL THESE BANDS STARTED FORMING AND EVERYBODY WOULD SAY, 'METALLICA'S MY
MAIN INFLUENCE.' HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?

J: It was real cool.  If people are influenced by you--you must be doing
something right.  It must be something original.  A lot of bands, like Van
Halen and Black Sabbath, when they started out, hella people copied them
after that.

IT'S BEEN SAID THAT METALLICA SORT OF BROKE THE STAGNATION THAT EXISTED IN
AMERICAN HEAVY METAL.

K: Yeah, I guess we were inspirational at the time.

DID YOU WANT TO BE THAT WAY OF DID IT JUST HAPPEN?

K: It just happened that way--it wasn't intentional.  We thought: this is cool,
we can get more things happening now in the metal scene.  We broke open a lot
more roads of communication.

WITH THE UNDERGROUND SUCCESS OF "KILL 'EM ALL" AND A COMING TREND OF NEW BANDS
IN THE METALLICA GENRE, WERE THE ATTITUDES OF CERTAIN BAND MEMBERS AFFECTED
IN ANY WAY?

K: At that time the success wasn't really that major.  We were still an under-
ground band, but with a lot of people copying us.  I think the musicians took
to us first.  They took to us saying, 'Hey, this is cool, we gotta listen to
this and be like this.'  At that point we were still pretty much underground.

J: We were definitely confident of what we were doing.  We weren't really
threatened by any bands.  There were no attitude problems like, 'Oh wow, we
invented it.'  We just kept moving on in no special, different direction.
Well, like "Kill 'Em All" material was written at least a year and a half
before it was recorded, so those were songs we'd been doing for awhile.

ON "KILL 'EM ALL" WE FIRST HEARD WHAT WE MIGHT CALL THE "CHUNKA-CHUNKA"
RIFF?      WHERE DID THAT RIFF COME FROM?

J: Well I was always into the riffy stuff.  Diamond Head, Sabbath...

K: The stuff that moves around real heavily--it takes you from one part to
another with no bullshit in between.  It's like a well crafted movie, from
scene to scene.

J: We come up with a lot of riffs on accident.  We'll just be goofing around
on guitar and...  get a tape deck quick!

K: Yeah, just goof around and build on it.

WOULD YOU ADVISE OTHER PEOPLE TO DO THE SAME THING?

J: No! That's the way we do it.  Don't do it! (laughs)... That's the way
it works for us, we can't just sit down and say, 'O.K., we have to write,
let's go.'

DO YOU WRITE THE MUSIC FIRST OR THE LYRICS FIRST?

J: Both first.  We come up with song titles and riffs first.

K: We come up with a basic concept first.

WHY DOES THE STUFF ON SAY, "KILL 'EM ALL" HAVE MORE OF A VIOLENT EDGE?

J: We came up with that title because we couldn't have some of the other titles
we wanted and that pissed us off.  The record company said, 'No you can't,' so
Cliff said, 'Those record company fuckers, you know, kill 'em all.'

K: We were all pissed off because the record company said we couldn't call our
record this because it wouldn't sell as many albums.

WHAT DID YOU WANT TO CALL IT INITIALLY?

J: "Metal Up Your Ass."

K: An independent company wouldn't let us call it "Metal Up Your Ass."

J: We wanted it to be with the toilet and the knife, that we have on shirts
now, which get twice as much exposure.  Ha ha.

WHY THE VIOLENT EDGE, WAS THERE ANY REASON FOR IT?

J: Pissed off.

K: It was just the frame of mind...

WHERE DOES THE PUNK EDGE COME IN?  ALL OF A SUDDEN THERE ARE PHOTOS OF YOU
GUYS WEARING GBH AND DISCHARGE SHIRTS...

K: Well, what happened was we were playing this music no other metal bands were
playing and then all of the sudden one day we heard a punk band that was
playing as fast as we were.  We said, 'Hey, this is cool.'

YOU HAD NO IDEA THIS PUNK SCENE EXISTED?

J: Not too much.  Punks would come to our show and say, 'Hey, have you ever
heard of this band or this band.'  'No.  Give me a tape, let's hear them.'  We
started getting into it that way.

WHAT IS THE FIRST BAND YOU HEARD FROM THAT SIDE?

K: Discharge, for me.

J: It was either Discharge or GBH.

DID THAT CHANGE THE WAY YOU DID MUSIC ONCE YOU HEARD THAT?

K: It changed the way we played.

IT OPENED YOUR MIND?

J: Yeah, it did, we started getting into listening to stuff from different
moves.  Instead of just going, 'Ho, we're going to play some metal now.'

K: When we started listening to punk stuff then we started listening to other
things too--I hate to say this but, The Police, or...

J: Kirk listens to the Police.  (laughs)

WHY DO YOU HATE TO SAY IT, ARE YOU EMBARRASSED?

K: No, I'm not really embarrassed, it's just that a lot of people won't
understand that.  What I'm trying to say is that we started listening to
music other than heavy metal, we broadened our musical horizons.

UP UNTIL THAT TIME YOU WERE LISTENING TO METAL-TYPE BANDS?

J: The metal scene was so small back then that everyone was just fighting
for metal.  There were hardly any bands, so we had to make a mark.

DID YOU LISTEN TO WHAT THE PUNK BANDS WERE SAYING OR JUST THEIR RIFFS?

K: Everything.  It all helped.

J: It opened up a lot of shit.  It gave us, I think, some more heavy topics to
write about.

K: It was a truer gut feeling I think, on James' behalf.

OBVIOUSLY THERE WAS A CHANGE BETWEEN "KILL 'EM ALL" AND "FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE,"
IN WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO SAY.

J: Yeah.  Plus, all that stuff on "Kill 'Em All" was written so far back.  We
had a lot of time to explore new material.

"KILL 'EM ALL" WAS PRETTY RAW AND AGGRESSIVE.  WHEN "RIDE THE LIGHTNING" CAME
OUT IT WAS MORE POLISHED.

J: It was because we had more studio time.  We were producing it.  We had no
experience whatsoever in the studio when we were recording "Kill 'Em All."  Our
so-called producer was sitting there playing with his dick, checking the songs
off a notepad and saying, 'Well, we can go to a club tonight when we're through
recording.  Is the coffee ready?'  He had nothing to say about any of the
songs.  I don't think he'd dare say anyway, because we'd have said, 'Fuck you,
that's our song.'  But production-wise, helping with sound or anything, he
didn't contribute.  So right away we had a bad reflection of what a producer
was.

DID YOU CHOOSE THIS GUY AS A PRODUCER, OR WAS HE CHOSEN FOR YOU?

K: He was chosen by the record company and our then manager Kevin Seed.

SO YOU HAD A RUDE AWAKENING AS FAR AS PRODUCTION GOES?

J: Yeah, it was pretty brutal.  Then next time we went in, to record "Ride The
Lightning" we said, 'Fuck that, we're going to do it ourselves.'

WERE YOU ABLE TO PULL IT OFF?

K: We pulled it off.  We had a good engineer.

J: We had a budget to stick to.  It was fairly big but not enough to where we
could go to the studio we wanted and get the producer we wanted.  So we just
said, 'We practically did the last album ourselves so let's just go with the
best studio and get the best in house engineer.

K: ...Who knew the sounds, that was really important.

SO WHERE DID ELEKTRA COME FROM?

J: Down the street.

K: We changed management, and our new management thought that we should have a
major record company behind us.

AND HE KNEW HOW TO DO THAT?

K: He had a reputation in the business for knowing what he was doing.  Anyway,
he thought that we should have a major record deal, so the word was out that
Metallica was looking for a major record deal and we had about three or four
different companies wanting to sign us.

J: Pusmort, or some shitty thing like that.  (laughs)

K: We looked at each one individually and it seemed from what we saw that
Elektra was better.  Even though other offers were financially better, Elektra
had a reputation of leaving complete artistic freedom with their acts.  They
had acts in the past, like the Doors, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges...it
was a pretty liberal label.  The had a reputation for trying out new things
that were pretty experimental at the time.

J: Right then there were hella bands being signed, snatched up on major labels.
All the major labels were saying, 'Oh, metal's like the new thing, get in on
the money right now.'  They're still doing it.  Elektra only had Motley Crue
and Dokken and all these other labels had many more.  We'd be say third on the
list of so-called metal bands with Elektra, so we'd get at least some support.
Instead of signing with Atlantic where there were ten metal bands and we'd be
hanging out somewhere waiting for our chunk of money when it came down.
'Here's a few bucks, go buy a hamburger, or whatever,' that type of thing.
There wasn't a clutter of metal on that label so we figured we do something to
get some support.

DID YOU GET ANY OF THIS "UNDERGROUND BAND SELLING OUT TO THE MAJORS" STUFF?

K: Yeah, we got that.

HOW DID THAT AFFECT YOU?

K: It didn't affect us at all.  We basically didn't give a fuck.  We were
going to stick to our guns.

J: Some of the shows we're playing now people will come up to us and go,
'Hey, get me backstage and everything.'  'Sorry, man there's nothing I can do,
it's really tight.'  And they'll say, 'Oh, he's a rock star now.'  You just
want to... hey, man it's no rock star shit, it's just... you just find out who
your friends are after awhile.

K: A lot of people just don't understand it.  There's not enough room for
everyone we've ever spoken to....

J: They try and throw a shitty guilt trip on you....

K: They just see the opportunity to like... 'Hey man, check it out, I know this
guy in Metallica, I can do something good for myself.  Since I know him I can
get put on the guest list, get backstage and hang out with him.' What they're
basically doing is trying to take advantage of you, and when you see that and
say, 'No way man, you're just trying to take advantage,' they go for the
predictable response of, 'Wow, he's a rock star, he doesn't have the time of
day.  He's too big for his friends, he doesn't know who his friends are....'
If they really knew you they wouldn't say shit like that, they would understand
it.

J: Then there's people who say, 'Yeah, they're a popular band and now I don't
like them.'

DO THOSE NEGATIVE FEELINGS THAT PEOPLE HAVE BOTHER YOU?

J: A little bit, yeah.  It makes them look bad.

I NOTICED THE OTHER NIGHT, WHEN THE SHOW WAS OVER, BOTH OF YOU GUYS HOPPED OFF
THE STAGE INTO THE PHOTO PIT AND WENT THROUGH SHAKING PEOPLE'S HANDS...

J: Yeah, since we can't flip out into the crowd anymore.  Maybe we'll do that
when we headline again.  But during the Ozzy support thing it's too brutal.
Ozzy's people... I mean, if I jumped into the crowd they'd freak...

YOU'RE WALKING ON THE SUCCESS OF A NEW RECORD AND IT'S LIKE EVERYWHERE YOU SEE,
'HERE'S ONE OF THE GUYS IN THE BAND AND HERE'S THE BAND.'  HOW DO YOU GUYS SEE
YOURSELVES NOW?

J: All of these people tell us, 'Wow, we don't like you anymore because you're
not an underground band, so automatically you guys are shitty because you're
popular and on a major label and have some money.'  Which is bullshit, because
we'd be doing the same shit if we were still hanging out with Megaforce.
Writing the same material and hanging out with the same people.  They'd
probably think it was great if we were still with them.  Elektra hasn't said
one fucking word to us about the songs we've written except, 'We like 'em.'

DOES THE PRODUCER YOU HAVE IN THERE WITH YOU SAY ANYTHING?

K: We're the producers.

ON THE RECORD YOU HAVE... WHO'S FLEMING RASMUSSEN?

K: He's the engineer who helped us out with production.  He doesn't write the
songs.  He didn't mess around with any of the song writing at all.

J: He didn't say, 'Slow down it sounds muddy.'  He'd go, 'Okay, it's muddy,
let's clean up the sound a bit.'

ONE THING I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IS WHY YOU WENT TO DENMARK FOR FOUR MONTHS TO MAKE
A RECORD.  DOES IT REALLY TAKE THAT LONG?

J: Sometimes it does....

K: You have to live with it, and that's brutal.  If you make mistakes in the
studio and it goes to vinyl, you have to live with that mistake for the next
year and a half to two years.  We just don't want to do that.

J: It wasn't that we were making mistakes and shit in the studio, it was
getting sounds together.  Lars was being way too fucking picky.  Like, the
snare would always be going out of tune, this much out of tune, 'Okay hold on,'
so he'd bang for another hour tuning the snare and then go in and bash.

DO YOU GUYS EACH DO YOUR PIECES ON YOUR OWN, OR DO YOU GO IN AND DO BASIC LIVE?

J: Me and Lars will just go in and play it.

SO YOU DON'T DO A BASIC LIVE TRACK?  WHEN YOU GO INTO THE STUDIO FROM PRACTICE
YOU JUST PLAY THE GUITAR TRACK AND EVERYONE ELSE KNOWS WHERE TO COME IN?

J: Yeah.

HOW MANY TRACKS ARE YOU RECORDING?

J: Depends on the song.  I think the most was fifty-two.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH FIFTY-TWO TRACKS?

J: Back-up vocals, dub overs...

HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU OVER-DUB YOUR VOCALS?

J: The main vocal verse is doubled, I double it.

HOW MANY TRACKS ARE THERE WITH GUITARS?

J: Most of the songs had three.

THREE FOR EACH OF YOU?

J: I do all of the rhythms in the studio.

K: It's tighter that way.

J: I did most of the songs with three rhythm tracks.  One on each side and one
down the middle.  Some of the other songs, like "Battery" or "Damage," it got a
bit too muddy so it was just the two.

K: We're giving away studio secrets here.

J: Uh oh, erase.  (laughs)

IT'S JUST KIND OF FUNNY, I SAW YOU BEFORE YOU WENT TO DENMARK, YOU WERE GONE
ALL THIS TIME, AND THEN YOU COME BACK, 'IT'S NOT ALL DONE YET, WE HAVE TO GO
MIX.' IT'S LIKE, WHAT HAVE THESE GUYS BEEN DOING?

J: Drinking beer.

K: We played a lot of poker in the studio, too.

BEING IN A STUDIO, BEING CRAMPED UP IN THOSE KIND OF QUARTERS, HAVING HEAD-
PHONES ON AND LISTENING TO THE SAME THINGS, EIGHT SONGS OVER AND OVER AGAIN CAN
DRIVE YOU UP A WALL.  I MEAN, THERE'S A HIGH LEVEL OF PROFESSIONALISM THERE,
BECAUSE YOU'RE GOING FOR THE PERFECT ANGLE, BUT IT CAN BE NERVE-RACKING.

J: It was.

HOW COME YOU GUYS DIDN'T BREAK UP?

J: Oh, we did.  About ten times... a day.  Things towards the end got kind of,
'Ugh, I want to kill somebody.'

K: The tension was there, it was heavy tension.  A lot of arguing, but that
comes with the territory.

J: I know next album we're not going to spend that much time.

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE WAY THE RECORD TURNED OUT?

J: Definitely.

K: Well, you're happy with it to a point, and then you think, well I could have
done that better still.

J: You always think that.

IS THERE A CRITICAL DEGREE YOU GUYS HAVE WHERE YOU HEAR CERTAIN THINGS YOU
DON'T LIKE, THAT NOBODY ELSE WILL EVER HEAR, IT'S JUST YOUR PERSONAL THING?

J: Yeah, after awhile it's pretty cool.  'People, check it out, right here I
fucked up.'  And they go, 'Where?'.  Ha-ha, you don't know.

K: Exactly, it's like find the hidden pictures.

J: They've heard it that way so they don't know it's a mistake.  You've gotta
have that... if it's perfect all the way through it's no fun.

K: There are mistakes on the album, but like I said, find the hidden picture.

J: Def Leppard... two years in the studio or whatever it is.

THEY'RE STILL IN IT AREN'T THEY?

K: Yeah, still in it.

THAT'S YOUR MANAGEMENT'S OTHER BAND?

J: Yeah.

SO NEXT RECORD FOR METALLICA, TWO YEARS IN THE STUDIO, HUH?

J: At least, we're going to try and beat them.

K: We're going for three.

SO THE NEW RECORD, "MASTER OF PUPPETS," IS OUT AND IT'S PRETTY CLOSE TO A GOLD
RECORD AT THIS POINT, WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK OF THAT?

J: I'll stick it up in my storage place.

K: I'll give mine to my mom.


        So there ya go, the first part of the thrilling 'tallica interview....
Look for the second part soon as another cDc release.


===============================================================================
 (c)1988  cDc communications  by Racer X                             8/12/88-67
 All Rights Worth Not Very Much At All, And Regrettably So