Sputnik Music Forums - Titans Of Thrash

Hey, this is an article from my local newspaper, about Metallica's movie. I think some of you will get quite a laugh out of it

"As Dr.Phil is eager to tell you, relationships take work. Metallica learned that the hard way. When longtime bass player Jason Newsted departed and singer guitarist James Hetfield checked himself into rehab, like a long married couple, the band was forced into facing its demons.
So they got their own Dr. Phil to save the day, by way of a counsellor who went as far as to relocate his family to San Fransisco to be near the band and engage the members in intense daily therapy seesions. He even attended recording sessions for their first studio album since 1997, appropriately named St.Anger.
That was back in 2001, and it's all documented, along with plenty of other inside glimpses in the movie Metallica:Some Kind of Monster; which opens friday in Windsor.
The therapist, who was at times rumoured to be recieving $40,000 US per month, stopped working with the band when they went on tour last summer, but he is still in constant contact with drummer Lars Ulrich.
"We got all our crap worked out, figured out, and so on" says Ulrich, on the road from a tour bus outside Reno, Nev. in March.
"He was certainly a major part of getting the band back on course and saving the band's relationship with each other," Ulrich adds.
The drummer; who'd never been in counselling before, concedes that not many bands would go to such extremes to stay together.
"We kind of had to," he says, laughing. "In some ways we have always been survivors, and always wanted to taked it to the next step. We were never willing to let all these issues get in the way. I think it's kind of unusuals, but at the same time it's not shocking to me that we would go to another level to do that.
"The problem was that we realized we had spent 20 years together without getting to know each other very well
"I came gome from a session one day and I told my wife, 'I feel like I'm getting to know James Hetfield again'. There was a long pregnant pause and she said, 'Maybe you're just getting to know him for the first time.'"
Sounds like a man who's undergone therapy. When it's put to him that he and Hetfield's controlling ways might have jeopardized the band, he says: "If you choose to look at it as a problem. It's also a blessing, because it made us as strong as we are. But it also makes it a little tense," he adds, with a knowing laugh.
If it all sounds surprisingly self-aware and grown-up for a band that partied and cursed up a storm for the better of two decades, remember that Metallica has never been a perfect fit in the heavy metal department.
Although fans always return to the fold, Metallica has had, over the years, lots of 'splainin to do.
While the 1991 Black Album is considered a classic by fans, big reaching albums like 1999's S&M, with the San Fransisco Symphony Orchestra, left many confused.
And in 2000, when the band became the very loud ringleaders of the anti-Napster campaign with a lawsuit of their own, fans were angry at a cause that appeared to be less about rocl 'n' roll and more about protecting one's assets.
"It's certainly obvious that we've had a love-hate-love-hate relationship with a lot of people who are very passionate about what we do," says Ulrich, a former professional tennis player from Copenhagen. "Because we refuse to be branded and stuck in this particular way of doing things. And a lot of hardcore fans of hard rock and heavy metal bands want their band and their records and everything in a particular way. If you stray away from that then you are sellpiuts, and the whole world turns upside down, you know? And for the greater number of fans it's been an awesome ride for 20 years, but we still seem to be the band that always gets opinions out of people, which has certainly polarized som fans. So we always just felt that we do what we do. We write a kind of music, and obviously it's mostly heavy metal, but there are some other things that we do and sometimes those definitions become a little limiting, you know?"
While Ulrich is talking, a child can be heard in the background. He's been taking his kid snowboarding while on the road, he says. Metallica may hold serious credibility with teenagers -- last year they were paid tribute on MTV's Icon show, with songs covered by Sum-41, Snoop Dogg and Avril Lavigne -- but both Ulrich and Hetfield hit the age 40 milestone this last year. They have entered the rarified air of metal veterans with cachet so strong and sales so formidable (in the 100 million region), that they are widely considered one of the top five most powerful and influential bands in the world.
"This whole concept about the size of us is something that's been put upon us. ... I still have a hard time dealing with the fact that in some ways our best is still ahead of us. You force yourself to think that in order to stay creatively relevant or semi relevant. We try to keep that 'revered status' as much at bay as possible so we don't end up kind of phoning it in, you know?"
No one would accuse them of picking up the phone when it came time to record St. Anger, released last year after a few setbacks. The album is produced by longtime friend and producer, Vancouver's Bob Rock (of Payolas fame), who produced the band's 1991 eponymous so-called Black Album and broke the band through to the top of the food chain. The album broke at No. 1 and sold more than 12 million albums, fuelled by songs Enter Sandman, Wherever I May Roam, The Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters. It broke Metallica through to the mainstream, but as is always the case with the band, also temporarily alienated fans of previous albums, such as the epic Master of Puppets and And Justice for All.
St. Anger has generally been embraced by fans, marked by a hugely successful Summer Sanitarium tour last year that featured Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. When Metallica arrived on stage, it was like the gods had finally descended. But for Metallica, they raked in a feel-good vibe more than the cash.
"You could call that pretty close to a wash," says Ulrich. "It was not a very profitable tour."
If the Summer Sanitarium tour was an ego booster, the video for the title song from the album -- shot on location at San Quentin prison among death row inmates -- brought them back down to earth.
"I thought it was kind of humiliating and I guess intimidating," says Ulrich. "It was 'Wow. What am I doing here? Whose bright idea was this?' It was an incredible vibe, it was one that I'll treasure. But it was still intimidating. I'm glad I got a chance to experience it, but it was definitely a bit crazy."
The band's demographic is no longer restricted to long-haired boys who feel a Metallica T-shirt is their armour against a cold, hard world. Their demo these days spans age groups and lifestyles.
To a lesser extent, the Metallica line-up has also had some turnover. Bass player Newsted had replaced Clifford Burton, who'd died in 1986 after Metallica's bus crashed while touring in Sweden. Ulrich, Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and Newsted comprised the band until Newsted left in 2001, after 15 years of less than civil band relations.
It was the end of a difficult relationship, and of course, therapy allowed the band a chance to re-evaluate that one, too.
"In retrospect maybe he never really fit into the band," says Ulrich, whose partnership with Hetfield is the basis for the Metallica sound. "Maybe he was never allowed to be a member. He was never given a green light to do his thing. I think he always felt like an outsider, and he was treated like an outsider. I think it's amazing he lasted that long," he adds.
"We didn't really treat him with the respect that he deserved. And he is very, very musical, he listens to reams of music, and he's very very musically gifted, and very musically tenacious, so when he didn't have a creative outlet, then he started looking for other outlets and they were outside the band, and then James Hetfield went all nuclear on him.
"So he was caught in a pretty awkward place, you know."
In the summer after Newsted's departure, Hetfield checked himself into rehab for six months for alcoholism, and the making of St. Anger was waylaid. Some time that same year, the band decided to begin filming the making of the record and brought in documentary makers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, famous for their film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills.
Some Kind of Monster is a close-up look at band relations and struggles.
"I think a lot of people find that a look at a band going through a crisis, a turmoil unlike anything they've seen before -- this is not about the glory -- this is us sitting arguing with each other for about a year -- and a lot of people are kind of feeling pretty strong about this film because they'd never seen anything quite like it."
Producer Rock filled in for Newsted on the album, and eventually the band settled on Ozzy Osbourne bass player Rob Trujillo as the next member. (Newsted joined Montreal band Voivoid).
"Everything in Metallica now is awesome," he says. "The band is doing great, the tour is great, we're playing great. I would probably say we're doing the best we have been doing in years, if not ever."

They actually think that St.Anger was liked...they really should talk to fans some more. People want a new Master of Puppets.