Rockezine.com interview with Metallica on May 28, 2003

with Kirk Hammett on May 28, 2003

"ST. ANGER": A REAL BAND THING Due to the unprecedented level of anticipation and the prevalence of sub-standard versions of Metallica`s upcoming, "St. Anger", already in circulation, Elektra Records moved up the release date of the new album, from Tuesday, June 10, to Thursday, June 5. Metallica unanimously approved the move, guaranteeing that fans get first crack at hearing the acclaimed disk the way the band intended: loud and unadulterated. On May 28th 2003 REZ spoke with guitarist Kirk Hammet from Metallica at the mighty fine Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam. What questions should one prepare and ask the nr.1 band in heavy music? I decided to be short: none. For the first time in 8 years of REZ history, your reporter didn`t prepare any questions at all. We just sat down and had a nice conversation about the past, the new album, the current situation plus the future from Metallica and heavy music in general. In a very friendly atmosphere Kirk actually started the interview himself…
		Kirk: Well Johan, how are you this fine morning? Johan: Very good, thank you. Ever since 1986 I`ve been following Metallica and Rockezine has been going strong for the last 8 years now. So now after all these years I finally get the chance to do an interview with you. This makes me feel pretty good inside.
		Kirk: That has been a long time coming, Johan, Cool. It`s a pleasure talking to your magazine.
		Okay Kirk, thanks. My first question. How are you doing and what does Holland mean to Metallica? Excellent. I love Holland, man. It`s a great place. I was just telling my friend: Holland was one of the very first places that really accepted Metallica. I remember on the "Kill `m All" tour coming here playing at 7.000 people! That was the biggest crowd we ever played in front of. It was the Aardschok festival in Zwolle back in 1983. We did that festival twice, also in 1987. Holland has always been very very supportive with Metallica and I love coming back here. I love Amsterdam and I really like the coffeehouses.
		I do think that sitting here at this chique Amstel Hotel is slightly different from the hotel or buss you spent the night in 1983… Haha, yeeaahh! A lot different!
		Looking back, did you ever think to make it this far with the band? No. I can remember when we were recording "Kill `m All" we said: "well if we sold about 30.000 albums we can problably do a pretty good club tour of America". That about as far as I went, haha. I just wanted to be able to tour clubs across America, you know? But by the time "Ride The Lightning" came out, it looked like we would be doing more than just clubs. "We`ll be doing theatres across America", haha. And by the time "Master Of Puppets" came out, I set my goals a lot higher. We wanted a gold album, you know? "And if we`d get a platinum album, wow, that would be like too much", haha. But as it turned out things got bigger than any of us could ever have dreamed of, really. I mean even with "The Black Album", we knew that we had a really great album. We didn`t know it would become what it has become. I think our managers knew, I don`t think we were aware of it. It was one of those situations: "It`s a good album you know, it will problably do well". At the end of the day it was just madness! And it`s still selling too, you know? It just went nr.1 in the Pop Catalogue chart. These are albums that have been previously released that are still selling. Into that chart you have classic albums like "Dark Side Of The Moon" from Pink Floyd, "Back In Black" from AC/DC, "Greatest Hits" from The Eagles and "Legend" from Bob Marley.
		Amazing. This is a list of the best selling rock albums of all time. How does that make you feel being nr.1? It`s great. It`s really great because that itself tells me that "The Black Album" is timeless. And I never expected to be a part of something so timeless. It`s a great thing and I`m just really thankful.
		Metallica had become a huge act already but with that album things just exploded. How did you guys deal with "The Black Album"-madness? I pretty much gave 2 years of my life to that album without putting any time aside for myself. That tour in itself, 22 months…it was such a personal sacrifice. I mean I started a relationship at the beginning of that tour, that cycle. By the end of that cycle, the relationship was kaputt. I was never around, you know? It just fell apart when I got back.
		What`s the situation nowadays within Metallica? Do you allow yourself to have a personal life as well? There`s a lot more space. In the last two years we discovered that it`s okay not to put Metallica as the main priority in your life. It`s okay that Metallica is not nr.1 It`s okay that you can put your family and your personal life above Metallica. Because we`ve done that I think that we were able to go a lot longer now, a lot further with this. Because there are not as much bodies falling because of the Metallica-machine. There`s not as many victims of the Metallica-machine now. All of us certainly were victims at one point or another. And James was the most recent victim of that with his drinking. Jason was definitely a victim of the Metallica-machine.
		Kirk, do you regret certain things that happened along the way? I don`t really regret much of anything. Even though the price is so high…I`d pay the price again. Yeah.
		So it`s still worth it? Yes. It is still worth it. The only thing I really regret is the way we treated Jason. If there`s any regret at all…I wish that we were just better people towards Jason. Maybe then he would still be here now and we`d be the happy band we always wanted to be.
		Your new album. Are you completely satisfied with the way the record turned out? Oh yeah, absolutely. I`m so proud of this album. It freaks me out. I haven`t been this proud of an album since "The Black Album" I must say. I mean, the "Load" and "Reload" era for us was such a reaction to our first 5 albums. We didn`t want to do what we had been doing: play fast, over the top and aggressive. If anything, the "Load" and "Reload" era was a big experiment in hard rock. We needed to do these two albums for us to make "St. Anger". If we would have made "St. Anger" in the mid-nineties, it would have been fresh and as exciting for us as it was now. It would have felt like doing the same old thing. We needed to balance it out. When we finally got around playing fast and aggressive again, it sounded fresh. You need to get to point A to be able to make point B sound better, you know?
		I`ve listened to "St. Anger" at the listening session at the Universal office in Hilversum and the thing that struck me the most was the energy and dynamics in the songs. There`s a lot of fire.
		Do you agree on that and did all you guys feel the same way being in the studio recording it? Yeah, totally. This album is very much a band statement. We wanted it to be the four of us moving together musically. All the musical decisions, all the playing, everything was something that all four of us had to be comfortable with. There are no guitarsolos on this album. The reason for that is because again we wanted to move together all four of us in the same musical direction. We also wanted to preserve the sound of the album. When we tried to put overdubs on the album and put guitarsolos on the album it kind of…it sounded like an afterthought, you know? Like something was put on after we created it. It stood out. We wanted to preserve the sound of all four of us in a room just jamming. Spontaniously together. To put production stuff on top of that just didn`t sound right. We tried to put guitarsolos on, but we kept on running into this problem. It really sounded like an afterthought.
		Did you on purpose write these 5 minutes and more-songs? No. It just happened. We had the riffs. We had like a ton of riffs. These riffs were written for the songs and there were a lot of good ones. We didn`t want to waste them, so just put them all in!
		This is way certain songs on the album that are full of riffs remind me of the "And Justice For All" album. Do you agree on that? I can totally agree on that. It`s simular to "And Justice For All" in complexity. For this new album the complexity of it is something for us that was just fun to do. Our concept we had was to make it as dynamic as possible. With a lot of different dynamics, you know? You have to play a fast part to make a slow part sound slower and vica versa. There is a lot of that which we wanted to interject into the music. We`re interested in bringing this back again, a lot of dynamics.
		What will you guys be playing at the European festivals? A lot of old stuff and just a few new ones? I read the setlists from your warming-up shows at the Fillmore. You even played "The Thing That Should Not Be"… We`ll problably play a couple of new songs on the festivals and when we come back indoors in spring of next year we`ll be playing more new songs. Every time we put out an album it makes writing the setlist much more difficult. We have over a hundred songs now and it`s just hard to pick which songs to play live. Yeah, we did "The Thing That Should Not Be" at the Fillmore. It`s still fun playing these songs. Most of the times you tour behind your newest album and older songs drop out of the set. Sometimes for years and years. When you come around playing it again, it sounds new and fresh which is great. The songs on the Fillmore setlists were fan favourites and favourites of our own. That`s how we pick the songs. It was like: "We like this song, let`s play it because it fucking rocks!" We just play what feels good.
		Okay Kirk, thanks very much for your time. It was a pleasure talking to you. My last question. What do you think of the hard rock and metal music today and the position from Metallica in this genre? I don`t really know were todays metal bands are going. I just know where we are going, haha. I have a suspicion that once this album drops and people hear it everywhere, I just have this suspicion that bands gonna get heavier and start playing faster again. I just have a suspicion that they are. I`ll tell you one thing. Lars played Fred Durst four songs of our new album and the next week Fred Durst postponed the release of the new Limp Bizkit album and started rewriting it. Lars and I were talking about it, "did he postpone it because he wasn`t satisfied with it or did he postpone it because he heard our direction and wanted to be contemporary with it. It`s interesting. We`ll see.
		(Johan Godschalk)