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Again, during both shows, we played mostly covers. This time, though, we did two of my compositions, “Jump in the Fire” and “Metal Militia.” Although we were tighter and made fewer mistakes than in Anaheim, we certainly weren’t perfect. I recall taking the mike from James again and generally flailing all over the stage while playing guitar. In the days that followed, we generated considerable buzz, although the mainstream rock press was not initially impressed. Indeed, our first review was a stinging jab directed at almost everything about Metallica.
With one notable exception.
“Saxon could also use a fast, hot guitar player of the Eddie Van Halen ilk. Opening quartet Metallica had one, but little else. The local group needs considerable development to overcome a pervasive awkwardness.”
Ouch!
I don’t recall taking any pleasure in being singled out as the one bright spot in an otherwise forgettable show. (I’m sure I stood up in defense of my bandmates.) We experienced growing pains no different from those endured by all great bands. The truth is, we were doing something radical. We were fast and loud and dangerous, on the cutting edge of heavy metal. Practically speaking, thrash began with early Metallica, in both form and attitude.
The next few months brought a kaleidoscopic blur of rehearsing, writing, performing, and partying. Everything happened so fast. There was a four-track demo (commonly referred to as The Power Demo in Metallica lore) that we recorded in Ron McGovney’s garage. That tape included two of my songs, “Jump in the Fire” and “The Mechanix,” along with “Hit the Lights” and “Motorbreath,” which was credited to James (although I believe in its nascent stage it belonged at least in part to James’s former Leather Charm bandmate Hugh Tanner).
I’m not sure how we managed to accomplish as much as we did, given the lifestyle we were leading—all that fucking and fighting, drugging and drinking and vomiting. But we did. Our repertoire expanded, our performances improved. Very quickly we realized that in order to achieve the heaviness we wanted, we needed another guitar player. Since James still wasn’t interested in anything other than singing, we recruited a guy named Brad Parker. The first day of rehearsal he showed up wearing a striped shirt with high French cut sleeves—the kind you might see on a Russian sailor. He wore eyeliner and a white feathered earring. I took one look at this guy and started laughing.
Dude, if you last a day in this band, I’ll be shocked, I thought.
He actually lasted a few days—maybe weeks—but not long enough to matter. He played one show with us, at a place called the Music Factory in Costa Mesa. Before we took the stage, he turned to me and said, “Listen, while we’re out there, call me Damien, okay?”
“What?”
“Damien…Damien Phillips,” he said.
“Who the fuck is Damien Phillips?”
He smiled.
“I am. It’s my stage name.”
That was the first and only time Brad Parker and/or Damien Phillips played with Metallica. Our next gig was one month later, shortly before Memorial Day 1982, with James playing rhythm guitar and singing lead. By this time we had dispensed with the poseurs and the endless search for another guitar player and simply decided to encourage James to handle the job himself; he turned out, of course, to be a formidable player.
Throughout the summer our schedule intensified, and so did our reputation. We played at least one gig a week at various venues around Southern California: the Troubadour and Whisky in Hollywood, the Woodstock in Anaheim, any number of smaller parties and concerts at places you’ve never heard of. The first version of Metal Massacre was released in June, and within a month we found ourselves in a studio, working with a record company executive by the name of Kenny Kane. This guy owned a punk label and apparently had gotten the impression that Metallica would somehow appeal to the label’s demographic, so he offered us a chance to record an EP. When he heard the tapes, well, I guess he wasn’t thrilled, since (obviously) Metallica was not a punk band. He withdrew the offer and we kept the tapes. The resulting demo, titled No Life Till Leather, consisted of seven songs: “Hit the Lights,” “Mechanix,” “Phantom Lord,” “Jump in the Fire,” “Motorbreath,” “Seek and Destroy,” and “Metal Militia.”
I was the primary writer on four of those songs: “Mechanix,” “Phantom Lord,” “Jump in the Fire,” and “Metal Militia.” Without meaning to sound bitter, it’s important to note that this demo, which provided the spark for the underground phenomenon that Metallica became, stands as a rather indisputable piece of evidence in the war between those who think my contributions to the band were significant (Megadeth fans, mainly) and those who don’t (Metallica fans). When Metallica released its first album, in 1983, all four of those songs were included (although “Mechanix” had been reworked and given a new title, “The Four Horsemen,” I still received a writing credit).
No Life Till Leather became our calling card, and we used it to build an audience from L.A. to San Francisco. We had no formal contract, no means of distributing songs, but that was far from an insurmountable obstacle. Tapes were copied and passed around, and pretty soon we were playing in front of fans who knew the words to our songs, which I have to tell you is about as thrilling a thing as a young rock star can experience. We were getting better and we knew it.
We also were completely out of control. I will never deny that I was a handful in those days. I was aggressive, driven, and unpredictable, and I drank way too much. But so did everyone else in the band. We practically lived in our cars, driving up and down the coast, drinking before and after rehearsals and gigs. It wasn’t unusual for one or more members of the band to pass out during those trips and wake up to discover that his face or body had been painted. We shared homes, money, equipment, drugs, alcohol, girls. It was a life of utter decadence (and at times one hell of a lot of fun). For all of us.
The difference, and I suppose it is an important distinction, is that we were different types of drunks. I was often an angry, hostile drunk; Lars and James were happy drunks. Harmless, for the most part, although their antics were juvenile.
As word of No Life Till Leather spread, so too did our reputation. We found ourselves spending increasing amounts of time on the road, driving up and down the coast between L.A. and San Francisco. Invariably, those trips became exercises in humiliation. On every trip, it seemed like someone’s shoes would be tossed out the back of our truck, just so Lars or James could watch them get pissed off. If they had treated me that way, I would have left.
Admittedly, the person I was onstage—pissed off, trying to play my guitar so fast that it would nearly burn my fingers—was not far from who I was off the stage. When I drank, I would often get combative. I didn’t always go looking for a fight, but I certainly never walked away from one. Even when it involved my friends and bandmates.
Prior to the formation of Metallica, I’d bought a couple dogs to dissuade people from breaking into my house (which had happened on occasion, in part because of my “business” interests). These were formidable pups—Staffordshire terriers (which are similar to pit bulls) cross-bred with Rhodesian ridgebacks—and they quite naturally scared the shit out of most people. But they were also very affectionate and loyal, and I cared for them immensely. When I traveled to Ron’s house for rehearsal, or to a gig, I’d usually leave them behind to protect the house. Sometimes, though, one of the dogs would keep me company. One day in the summer of 1982, I drove to rehearsal, and when I let the dog out of the car she began running around. Dogs do that when they’ve been cooped up for a while. At some point the female jumped up on the front quarter panel of Ron’s car, a beautiful Pontiac GTO, prompting James to give the dog a hard kick across its chest. The dog (she was still just a puppy) let out a yelp and scampered away.
And I went nuts.
“What are you doing?”
“She’s scratching the car, man,” James said, as if that was an acceptable excuse for kicking a dog.
“Fuck you!”
The actual fight didn’t happen right there. They call it a hang fire, like when there’s an unexpected delay between the trigger of a gun being pulled and the actual discharge of the weapon. You know it’s coming, and there’s no stopping it. It’s just a matter of time. James and I alternately cursed at each other and refused to speak, until eventually we were both in Ron’s house, preparing to rehearse, and tensions boiled over. There was another round of accusations and insults, more cursing, more threats.
“You keep talking like that, I’m going to punch you in the mouth,” I said.
“Fuck off!”
In the middle of this exchange, Ron walked out of the bathroom and into the living room. He and James went way back, and despite the fact that James often treated him like shit, Ron instinctively defended his friend.
“You hit him, you’ll have to hit me first.”
“Shut up and sit the fuck down,” I said.
And then James jumped to Ron’s defense. “You touch him, you’re going to have to hit me first.”
Jesus, I thought, what is this, some kind of fucking game show?
I realized I would have to make a decision.
“Okay, you win,” I said, and with that I threw a right cross that landed flush against James’s face, turning his mouth into a pile of bloody Chiclets. To my surprise, Ron immediately jumped on my back. Reflexively, I gave him a hip toss; he flew across the room and landed on an entertainment center, sending shards of particleboard all over the place and destroying the old Pong video game hooked up to the TV. The fight might have gone on longer if not for the presence of my friend and martial arts training partner Rick Solis, who quickly intervened. I was enraged, ready to kill both Ron and James, when Rick came up from behind and grabbed my elbow, pinching the ulnar nerve and rendering me incapacitated.* We stood there together for a moment, saying nothing, when suddenly James began screaming at me.
“You’re out of the band! Get the fuck out of here!”
Ron was yelling, too. Lars, meanwhile, was standing in a corner, just sort of twirling his hair, and trying unsuccessfully to mediate a settlement. “Come on, man…I don’t want it to end this way.”
“Fuckyou! I quit!”
“Good! Fuck you, too!”
WHILE OUR DISAGREEMENTS had never reached this level of intensity, it should be noted that by this time Metallica was already a band struggling with personality conflicts. Each of us was guilty of pointing the finger of blame at one time or another. My job was safe, as far as I could tell, although obviously I’d failed to assess the situation properly.
The dismissal lasted roughly twenty-four hours. I returned for rehearsal the next day, apologized to everyone, and was welcomed back into the fold. Everything was fine. Except it wasn’t. Some things can’t be undone, and this was one of them. In many ways, it was the beginning of the end. Ron and I grew increasingly annoyed with each other. I thought he was smug and spoiled and not particularly talented; he viewed me as unpredictable and dangerous—not inaccurate, I must confess. When a break-in at Ron’s place was traced back to acquaintances of mine (not friends, mind you, and I certainly had no idea what they had done), Ron became angry and accusatory. My response, and I don’t say this with any pride, was to walk into the rehearsal room one day when Ron wasn’t around and pour a can of beer into the pickups of his Washburn bass, effectively destroying a very expensive piece of equipment.
I knew this would infuriate Ron, but I didn’t care. My rationale went something like this:
I don’t like you, I don’t like that you pinned this break-in on me, I don’t like that you’re a mama’s boy, I don’t like that you seem to have everything going on, everything handed to you, and you don’t appreciate it. It doesn’t seem like you’re one of us.
By this point, in the late fall of 1982, Metallica had begun performing regularly in San Francisco, where the metal scene was significantly less artificial than it had been in Los Angeles. Hair and makeup mattered less than the music. When it came to playing music, Metallica was like nothing anyone had seen or heard before. But there was always room for improvement. And that’s where Cliff Burton came in.
Cliff was the star bass player for a Bay Area band called Trauma. That term alone—“star bass player”—should tell you something, because bass players are typically at the bottom of the rock ’n’ roll food chain. Guitar players and singers are at the top, drummers in the middle, bass players at the bottom. I was once quoted as saying, “Playing the bass is one step up from playing the kazoo,” which predictably pissed off a lot of bass players, but it’s essentially true. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and Cliff was definitely not a glorified kazoo player. He was brilliant. The first time I saw him play, I knew he was something special, and so did Lars and James, which is why they began surreptitiously courting Cliff while Ron McGovney was still in the band.*
Cliff was worthy of pursuit, and I think we all (with the exception of Ron) saw him as the “missing piece.” We had arrived in San Francisco as the band of the moment, an underground sensation that quickly surpassed everyone, even the popular local thrash kings Exodus. We were locked and loaded, with an exhausting stage show featuring a dangerous, loudmouthed motherfucker on guitar and a variation on heavy metal that was at once heavier, faster, and more melodic. We were the real deal. As was Cliff. Trauma was nothing special, but everyone knew the band was worth watching if only to witness Cliff’s wizardry with a wah-wah pedal. It’s not often that a bass player stands out as the star of a band, but Cliff, with a wild mane of hair and an athletic, muscular style of playing, pulled it off. He was an innovator.
He also was reluctant to join Metallica or any other band not based in the Bay Area. But Lars kept pursuing Cliff. Eventually, when Ron departed, just a few days after the violation of his Washburn bass,* the door was open for Cliff to join the band. But concessions would have to be made. Cliff was impressed by what he’d seen of our work and more than willing to trade Trauma for Metallica. Under one condition.
We’d have to move to San Francisco.
If there was any hand-wringing over this decision, I don’t recall it. We all knew Cliff was talented enough to present what would ordinarily be considered an outrageous bargaining chip: Relocate the whole band? For a bass player! He was that good. And we were that driven; we were willing to do anything to be successful. I think we all recognized that by adding Cliff, we could become the greatest band in the world.
THE TRANSITION TOOK a few months, during which we altered living and professional arrangements in a half-assed attempt to save some money and prepare for the move to San Francisco. Shortly before Christmas 1982, James got the boot from Ron McGovney (no surprise, since Ron was understandably reluctant to continue supporting James after splitting with Metallica). I’d already moved back into my mother’s house because…well, because I was broke. So I invited James to come and live with me and my mother, creating a variation on the Three’s Company theme with predictably disastrous results. Suddenly you had two heavy metal warriors living with my mom, the quiet little housekeeper. To say she was bummed by the whole arrangement would be an understatement, and not merely because of her religious affiliation. The lifestyle we were leading—the drinking, fighting, carousing—was enough to give any parent cause for concern. But to have it happening under her own roof? It couldn’t have been easy. Especially as she came to realize that it wasn’t merely a phase. I was pretty good at playing guitar, and I was serious about making a living at it. But that wasn’t the only reason I played. It wasn’t only about strutting and getting laid and trying to become famous. When I held a guitar in my hands, I felt good about myself. When I played music, I felt a sense of comfort and accomplishment that I’d never known as a child. When I replicated the songs that I loved, I felt an attachment to them and to the musicians who had composed them. And when I started writing songs of my own, I felt like an artist, able to express myself for the very first time. Maybe my mother sensed all of this, and that’s why she put up with all the craziness. Or maybe that’s just what mothers do.
Regardless, out of respect for my mom (and fear of getting caught), I stopped dealing drugs and tried to earn some cash in a more reputable manner. Lars had gotten an overnight job delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Times, and he asked me if I wanted a job, too. I did it for a little while, but I hated the hours and the drudgery of the work. Sometimes, just to make it more interesting, Lars and I would deliver papers together. We’d drive around in his mom’s AMC Pacer, careening through neighborhoods, sometimes sideswiping parked cars or mailboxes. There were few images funnier than Lars driving the Pacer, which was basically a fishbowl on wheels. To see him weaving down the street in one of the ugliest cars in history, chucking newspapers out the window, with no regard for where they landed, you couldn’t help but laugh. It was like a video game: Evil Danish Paperboy!
All you needed was Orson Welles or James Earl Jones providing the narration: “Metallica is coming to get you!”
By February of 1983 we had relocated to the Bay Area, specifically to the El Cerrito home of Exodus manager Mark Whitakker, who would soon become Metallica’s road manager and facilitator. Mark’s place, affectionately known as the Metallica Mansion, became ground zero for all things related to the band. Lars and James moved right in and took the two available bedrooms. I settled for a shitty little box of a room—with no shower, sink, or refrigerator—at the home of Mark’s grandmother, roughly an hour away. I lived out of a Styrofoam cooler, into which I would pack everything I needed for the day…or for two days…maybe even three. One of the guys, usually Cliff Burton, would pick me up in the morning and drive me to rehearsal. Cliff and I got pretty close in those first couple months, simply because we spent so much time together. We’d drive back and forth, smoking some of Cliff’s horrible homegrown pot, talking about music and listening to music. And not just metal or even vintage hard rock, but stuff you’d never associate with Metallica. I can recall several instances in which we were driving along, sharing a joint, and singing out loud to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
When rehearsal would end, and the other guys would start talking about doing something else with the rest of the day, I’d suggest we keep playing. Not necessarily because I loved rehearsal, but because I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to that little house by myself. Sometimes I would just refuse to leave; I’d sleep on the couch for days on end. It was a strange and surreal hand-to-mouth existence. I’d been there before, of course; I’d grown up poor, panhandled for beer money, knew how it felt to wear the same pair of dirty jeans for days on end and to live off boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. I think it was harder for Lars and James. And for that reason, along with the fact that I considered us to be brothers-in-arms, I often found myself standing up for them.
There was, for example, the time we were all at a party, and in walked the guys from a band known as Armored Saint. As sometimes happens in these situations, harmless verbal jousting gave way to nasty, personal insults, paving the way for a physical confrontation. They targeted Lars, probably because he was the smallest. I don’t remember exactly how it began; I do remember jumping off my chair and telling them to leave my friend alone. They laughed at me, much as they had been laughing at Lars, which was not a good idea. Lars may not have been a fighter, but I was. I had training and expertise. More important, I didn’t give a shit.
As the guys from Armored Saint dog-piled on top of Lars, I ran across the room and applied a side kick to the first person in my path. His name was Phil Sandoval, and he was the band’s lead guitarist. The first thing I heard was a loud crack! Like the sound of a branch snapping in half. And then the sound of someone wailing as Phil fell to the floor and grabbed his lower leg.
I’d broken his ankle.
Needless to say, that was the end of the fight. I tell this story not to brag, but simply as a way of pointing out how I felt about Lars, James, and Cliff. I would have done anything for them. They were my friends.*
Although he looked the part of a gunslinger, James wasn’t big on confrontation either. One night I went to the Mabuhay Gardens, a nightclub in North Beach colloquially known as the “Old Mabuhay,” with James and his girlfriend. While we were waiting outside for the club to open, a girl came running out of a nearby alleyway, flailing her arms and screaming at the top of her lungs.
“He broke my nose! He broke my nose!”
I had no idea who she was or what had happened. And I didn’t care. Instantly I felt the rush of adrenaline you get before a fight. I looked at James, didn’t say a word. I just smiled, and I could tell what he was probably thinking.
Oh, what’s this crazy fucker gonna do now?
Finally, I touched him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go, dude!”
So we ventured into the alley, hardly able to see a thing. I was quiet, but behind me, James was grunting, snorting, yelping half-baked threats.
“Gonna kill you, motherfucker!”
I almost laughed. James wasn’t so much threatening anyone as he was whistling past the graveyard. You know, like you did when you were a kid, trying to convince yourself that you weren’t afraid of anything when in reality you were about to shit your pants.
At the end of the alleyway was a parked van. As we drew near, with James still yelling, the driver’s-side door opened, and out stepped this big son of a bitch.
“Which one of you assholes wants to kill me?” he said, the look on his face signaling either inebriation or a complete lack of fear. Maybe both.
Before I could respond, James took a quick step backward.
Thanks a lot, brother…
There wasn’t time for an explanation. The big guy lunged at me, and as he moved forward, I opened my hand, thumb pointing down, and grabbed the back of his neck. Then I swept his foot out from underneath him, threw him on the ground, and started rabbit-punching his head until he was unconscious.
A few minutes later the cops arrived and took the guy away in handcuffs. James and I went back to hanging out in front of the club, acting like nothing had happened, but inside I was pretty shaken up. When I woke the next morning my hand was swollen and sore, like I’d punched a wall. When James asked me if I was okay, I just nodded. We never talked explicitly about the way that incident unfolded. There was no point.
5 DUMPED BY ALCOHOLICA
“You’re a bad motherfucker!”
SAN FRANCISCO, WITH ITS THRIVING CLUB SCENE AND VIGOROUS METAL FANS, PROVED TO BE A WARM AND WELCOMING PLACE FOR METALLICA. WE PLAYED OUR FIRST SHOW WITH CLIFF ON MARCH 5, AT THE STONE. ON MARCH 19 WE PLAYED FOR A SECOND TIME, AT THE SAME CLUB. IN BETWEEN, WE RECORDED ANOTHER DEMO AND WATCHED OUR POPULARITY SOAR. IT SEEMED AS THOUGH WE HAD TAKEN OVER THE CITY IN A MATTER OF JUST A FEW SHORT WEEKS. NOT THAT ANYONE SEEMED TO MIND THE INVASION; IT WAS ACTUALLY A NICE ENVIRONMENT UP THERE, WITH A LOT OF BANDS PURSUING SIMILAR GOALS, PLAYING AND LOVING THE SAME TYPE OF MUSIC, WHAT WOULD COME TO BE KNOWN AS THRASH METAL. THE JEALOUSY AND POSTURING THAT TYPIFIED THE L.A. CLUB scene was mostly absent in the Bay Area, and we bonded quickly and easily with other musicians, most notably (and ironically, as it would turn out), those in the band Exodus. At one point I even became blood brothers with some of the guys in their band. Like, real blood brothers—cutting our hands and swapping fluid in a manner that, in retrospect, given the lifestyles we led, can only be termed reckless.*