![]() ![]() ![]() Newsted was never granted full band status instead, he endured treatment tantamount to hazing. Newsted was treated like shit by the rest of the band who, deeply in shock over Cliff’s death, were hardly prepared to audition replacements. ![]() Then came Cliff Burton, rapidly replaced by Jason Newsted, a Metallica fan from Battle Creek, Michigan. First was Ron McGovney, who left the band, but not before Dave Mustaine poured beer into his bass pickups. His sincerity is winning.Īs for the bassist, well, if Spinal Tap had drummers, Metallica has bassists. When Hetfield finally goes into rehab, he emerges a changed person, striving to repair himself, to remain sober and face down his demons. Throughout most the book, Hetfield is an angry, aloof, damaged man hiding behind a hostile facade, famously fueled by alcohol. Lead singer and guitarist James Hetfield ranks right up there with Jim Morrison in the “difficult-yet-complex personality” department. While drummer Lars Ulrich’s drive and business acumen are admirable, little else about him is. Nothing holds a story together better.’”Īpart from guitarist Kirk Hammett, it’s impossible to call Metallica “likable”. Anne Lamott, in her classic book on writing, Bird by Bird, writes: “I once asked Ethan Canin to tell me the most valuable thing he knew about writing, and without hesitation, he said ‘Nothing is as important as a likable narrator. Many feel the band reached its apotheosis with 1986’s Master of Puppets, and that subsequent efforts represent a steady decline.Įnter Night has two serious flaws, both beyond Wall’s control. A quarter century later, hardcore Metallica fans still wonder what direction the band might have taken had their charismatic mentor lived. There is Metallica with Cliff, then Metallica without. The book opens with the accident, then backtracks to the band’s beginnings, working its way forward to the crash and its aftermath. For those of us who vividly recall the sickening photo of the tour bus, tipped on its side, Burton’s body crushed beneath it, Wall’s careful recounting is all the more painful. For readers unfamiliar with Burrton’s death, or how it robbed everyone of a gentle, gifted man who was only 26 years old, Wall offers a mournful education. All of this occurs in Enter Night, but the book is built around bassist Cliff Burton, who was killed in a 1986 bus accident. Musical biographies most often follow a straight timeline: early years, becoming a musician, fame, money, drugs, booze, women, a death, rehab, settlement into a contented middle age. ![]() The drugs, the booze, Cliff Burton, the problem known as Dave Mustaine, the booze, the Napster debacle, Jason Newsted’s angry departure, the booze, 2004’s raw documentary, Some Kind of Monster, the in-studio shrink, the booze, and finally, finally, rehab. Much of what veteran music journalist Wall offers up in Enter Night will not surprise such readers. That said, I’m assuming most readers drawn to this book will be Metallica fans with more than a passing knowledge of the group. Everyone will gape at the photographs of an impossibly young Metallica, thick hair flying, decked out in-gasp-spandex. Younger readers will learn about life before MP3s and iPods. Older readers will recall the big hair bands, the birth of a novelty called MTV, and the habit of trading music on mixtapes, which were played on an archaic machine called a tape recorder. While Enter Night is not the tightest rock biography ever penned (more on this later), Wall’s comprehensive examination of Metallica offers not only the band’s history, but a history of Metal from the late ‘70s to the present. Readers lacking any interest or involvement with Heavy Metal music are likely to pass over Mick Wall’s biography of Metallica, which is a shame. Groupie to rock musician Larry Underwood, from Stephen King’s The Stand “I thought you were a nice guy! You ain’t no nice guy!” ![]()
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