Εγινε κι αυτος 56 χρονων, μεγαλωνουμε! Χρονια πολλα σε Jaymz, του ευχομαι να τον κοιταει παντοτε η γυναικα του οπως τον κοιταει το Στεφανακι εδω περα
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“Dude wtf you have your own mic”
“Blacked out pop queen, amphetamine the screams crashed into silence”
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Χρόνια πολλά στον τεράστιο
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Ευχαριστω, αλλα τα γενεθλια μου ειναι την Τριτη
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Θα το έχω υπόψη μου 
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Αυτά είναι !!
Για μένα λέει ρε γιαουρτα που είχα γενέθλια την Παρασκευή 
Σε αυτό το thread έπρεπε να του ευχηθείς!
1 Like
Ευχαριστω 
Ασε κι εχουμε κολλησει γιατι το επομενο review ειναι για θεοβαρετο τραγουδι
Χρόνια πολλά στον Quintom που δικαιώνει τον Pantelis79 πως δε θα τελειώσει το αφιέρωμα ποτε
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Χρόνια πολλά και από εδώ!
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Ειχαμε απροσδοκητες και αρκετα ενοχλητικες εξελιξεις σε προσωπικη ζωη απο Οκτωβριο εως Μαιο, αλλα παιρνουμε τα πανω μας, μην αγχωνεσαι, εχουμε καιρο ακομα μπροστα μας, αλλωστε σε λιγο θα αρχισουν τα καλα… Ευχαριστω πολυ ομως!
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Εύχομαι οι ενοχλητικές εξελίξεις να μείνουν πίσω και οι ευχάριστες να είναι μπροστά.
Αργεί το Lulu.
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Και το St. Anger…
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38 σβήνει. Τούρτα-παγωτό ακόμα καλύτερα.
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2 Likes
Θα βγει κι εδω.
Συνέντευξη του Hetfield στο So What με αφορμή τα 30 χρόνια από το Justice
Summary
Steffan Chirazi: A simple enough question to start with, I’m gonna ask you to teleport back 30 years. How do you view that era in retrospect right now, as you sit and look at it?
James Hetfield: Well, Justice was an unsure, new beginning; that’s what it felt like to me. We had done the covers album so we understood that Jason could play and would fit in with the band… and then, you know, a first studio album. That’s when I was… I don’t want to say really missing Cliff, but I got a little scared at that point, you know? That, “Okay, is this gonna work?” And yeah, it ended up working, but I think we were still a little timid with the whole thing.
SC: Timid?
JH: Well… having Jason on board, I guess we were a little more focused on him than the whole band thing. It was like we got individualized at some point, and it kinda sounds like that on the record. There’s a little more showmanship, there’s a little more of “me in the mix” kinda thing. And I don’t know if the bass being down was a little subliminal, “Hey, welcome, motherfucker, you gotta fight for your fader to go up,” possibly? But you know, I would say we were still mourning. I was still sad that Cliff was gone, but [also] excited that Jason was there. He’s able to sing, he’s playing, with a pick, he’s fast, he’s right there with the guitar. So… I don’t know…
SC: How did his speed and your anger meet and how do you think that ended up working? Because you’re saying “timid,” and I’m sure we both agree that one of the things that’s fueled that album for many people is it’s a very empathetic piece of anger and fraughtness. And then you got Jason’s buoyant excitement and enthusiasm. How did that end up working during the process?
JH: Well, I would say we really wanted to beat that little “fanboy” outta him. We did not like the fact that there was a “fanboy” in there. It’s like, “No, just be.” And in the interviews, “Can’t believe it, it’s a dream…” I didn’t hear any of that from Rob when he first joined. He was like, “This is great and I’m looking forward to kicking some ass,” and that’s that, you know. I think we were scared a little bit that, “Oh, shit, you married a fan” or something.
SC: Right. And when did you feel that slowly started to not be the case? I mean Jason helped build the garage (in the Ulrich Carlson house two where The $5.98 EP was made – ED), he physically had his hands in there, he was almost like the project manager. With things like that, were you thinking, “Alright, you’re earning your stripes, you’re getting in there”?
JH: When the hammer hit his head, after he moved the ladder, I knew it was gonna be okay!!!
SC: When the light truss hit his head, that probably sealed the deal (this refers to an incident on the Justice tour where the “loose truss” that swings down narrowly missed taking Jason’s head with it in).
JH: Right. He was contributing, which definitely helped take that “fanboy just standing there” away. And that did go away and there was obviously a major hazing period that continued on and on. I think he tried to outgrow that, taking more control of certain things and then it showed up as maybe a little threatening [to us]. Lars and I have been steering the ship for a long time and now someone else is wanting to have some wheel time. And so it was all new for us, super new. Cliff was a certain personality. Very strong. Did things his way, but he was always reliable and loyal, extremely loyal. And Jason came in with a different attitude. It was bouncy. He reminded me of a basketball. I don’t know why but he was always moving, always.
SC: I got to ask you, honest question: At that time did he contribute any ideas that you now look back at and think, “That was actually a pretty good fucking riff, but we weren’t gonna let you have it because you were too busy being Michael Jordan all over the court”?
JH: No. If there’s good stuff we’re gonna use it. We don’t fucking care. Maybe at that point it was a little more…
SC: Could you hear his good stuff? Do you think you were objective enough to be able to hear his good stuff? Or was it just like, “No, this is us. You’re learning.”
JH: I was probably as objective as I could’ve been really. Probably less than I am now. Not even probably, absolutely less than I am now. Now hearing something from anybody that’s good, let’s frigging use it, let’s go! And we’ve always had that attitude but, you know, I can’t tell you exactly where my head was right there.
SC: Right. The political aspect of the record… I’ve always looked at that, it’s always felt like a very political record for a band that is decidedly not political in its motivation. Would you agree with that? Are you happy that it is viewed that way by some people?
JH: [joking around] I’m never happy about anything, come on!!! No. I don’t think it’s political at all. I think it’s us showing off musically. I don’t think it’s political.
SC: Okay, I mean …And Justice for All , freedoms, those could be seen as political messages, to fight for what you believe in and so on.
JH: Well, if freedom is political there’s problems. Anywhere, really.
SC: But what is it for you?
JH: “One” is the antiwar song. I mean, we had songs about destroying shit way before “One,” and “One” was just the perspective of someone who didn’t want to be there anymore. It’s a song about war, the good and bad sides of it. Obviously inspired by the book and then later seeing the movie, and that was the scarier thing for me [ Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo – ED]. It wasn’t that it happened in war, it was like wow, this guy’s trapped in his own head. I feel like that anyway, all the time, you know? I feel trapped in my body, my ribcage, I’m trapped in here. I could relate to that. The fact that it happened in war was another deal.
SC: You’d already explored some catharsis on Master of Puppets but is this the first time that you really felt that you were being deeply cathartic with your writing? I think again of “The Shortest Straw” and “Harvester of Sorrow,” which are two songs that everyone who has in any way had an insecure, anxious, or fearful thought will relate to forever. Bring us through the process that got those out of you.
JH: “The Shortest Straw” for sure is more political than any of the other songs. I mean, it talks about a time, McCarthyism and the artist not being able to be free, but also [when] communism is a problem. All of that kinda bunched up into one. And it seems like every generation has that happening, you know. Whether it’s PC-ness versus, y’know, there’s an artist that says this but that’s not PC, but so what?! He’s an artist. Or free speech. You know, basically fear based. “…And Justice for All,” again a continuation – or more of a ramp up – into putting ourselves into situations or somehow relating to them even though they might be historical or from the past, still plugging into the feelings that are human.
Dan Nykolayko: So, in curating a lot of content for this box set, I ran across an interview that you had done with Ben Liemer from Circus Magazine, where he was through a bunch of songs. The description of “Harvester” was the one that really caught my attention. You described it as someone from the Midwest who married really young, got trapped into a family, and was struggling to get his youth back and he flips out and starts excessively drinking and doing drugs, and, I quote, “kills his family and shit.”
JH: He killed shit too?! Wow. This guy’s angry.
SC: And no, we won’t ask you if you still feel like that today.
JH: Just the shit part. Wow, okay! Well, yeah, infanticide… that was a cool word to me so I kinda built a song around it. Infanticide? What the hell is that? The killing of an infant. Whoa, that’s brutal. [So] that makes sense – in the interview. I don’t think it had to be the Midwest; it could be anywhere, really. I got pretty specific there, huh? Yeah… being trapped. It kinda seems like that’s a theme always.
DN: The overall theme of the record, even getting past the political side of it, was just freedom of choice. And you know, “Eye of the Beholder,” “Straw,” “Dyers Eve” all had that thread.
JH: Yeah. I guess you could say that at that point we had discovered that, “Wow, there’s two sides to every coin and let’s investigate both sides.” It was being able to see that there are two sides. When you’re a teenager or [in your] early twenties you’re, “I know way better than anybody else! Here’s what’s supposed to happen.” So the lyrics back then were pretty much, “Here’s my view.” …And Justice for All is a little more two-sided. Being an artist is like a carte blanche card a lot of times. I can get away with a lot of shit just because I’m an artist, you know?
DN: You know, sometimes that can kinda come back and bite you as well, like Jello [Biafra – Dead Kennedys lead singer] at the end of the ’80s where all of a sudden all this censorship stuff started swarming around Dead Kennedys and that freedom of choice starts to get ripped away from you.
JH: Right, and your freedom of choice becomes more of the focus than you being an artist and playing and doing and loving what you do. You become an activist, a hater.
SC: It feels that, on Justice , these are the first times that you started to maybe subliminally mine your own anger and your own misery. As you’re writing those lyrics, are you thinking about times when you were a kid and going through this stuff or is it just coming out?
JH: Was never thinking about what I’m writing about, really. I start writing, or I hear or see something, and something in me, especially back then, identifies with it. I don’t know how or why. I had no inventory of my feelings, my past actions, my, you know, traumas, my damage. None of that was on the radar. So it was just connecting because I felt something.
SC: Talk about mixing on the Monsters of Rock Tour. You’re smashing people left and right, and then you and Lars are jumping onto the little puddle jumpers and going up to Bearsville to mix the record. Tell us what you remember about those trips and those journeys.
JH: Yeah, those journeys. It was easy in the beginning because we were on the East Coast and closer to Bearsville, and so first few shows, days off, heading up there in a car. And then as we got further away – we weren’t taking the charter plane at that point; we were in a limo. I remember the drive from Bearsville to Washington, DC for a gig. It was long, and Lars and I were sleeping in the back of a car after being up mixing. And it was very taxing, getting up and doing a show. You know, doing a show was kinda the easier part, because you felt energy. Going and mixing the record was the harder part. Being in there mixing stuff, I tell you, those days – and there are still times it happens – but it’s like going to war when you’re mixing with Lars Ulrich. And James Hetfield, I will say for sure ! We’re putting the armor on. It’s like okay, first blow. Boom, you know? All right, I leave for a little bit, all of a sudden, I come back the drums are louder and blap-be-blap-be-bap . It’s a battle too, it really is. And I learned that my body is better at sprinting than marathons. I’m “boom” and then okay. Lars? Opposite. He can go on and fucking on.
And eventually, you know, we’d come to some compromise. We’ve obviously learned over the years that we can get there a lot quicker, and with less armor and blood spilled if we just, you know, have a chat. Let’s talk about what we really need here. But back then it was a battle, and then you go up onstage and you’re flying the flag for Metallica; you’re trying to kick Dokken’s ass. Anyway, those drives were long and hard, and it was always tough when you showed up with the cassette, and you put it in on the bus, and everyone goes, “Ah, it sounds like shit!” And you’re like “Oh, fuck. Thanks, man. Thanks. You go and do… No! You don’t go do it!!!”
SC: Did you ever sit with Jason at any point when he was in the band and say, “You know, dude, we kinda did do a bit of a number on the bass on this record and I’m sorry. This is what happened, this is why we felt we had to do it.” I mean did you ever talk about it?
JH: No.
SC: Never? He never asked you once? Did he ever come up to you and say, “Guys, this sounds a little less than I expected?”
JH: He probably did. I don’t know what my answer was then, but it was kinda done. I mean I will say, it was not all about, “Fuck him, let’s turn him down.” That’s for sure. We wanted the best sounding record we could make. That was our goal. We were burnt. We were frigging fried. Going back and forth. Playing a gig. No earplugs, no nothing. You go back into the studio, your hearing is shot. If your ears can’t hear any high end anymore, you’re gonna turn it up. So we’re turning the high end up more and more and more and all of a sudden, low end’s gone. So I know that played a bigger part than any hazing or any ill feelings towards Jason, for sure. We were fried. We were burnt.
DN: You obviously had a very specific sound that you guys wanted for the record, Lars in particular with his specific EQs for his drums.
JH: The click drum.
DN: Yeah, exactly. In recent years, Steve Thompson’s [mixing engineer] been talking about how A) the record sounds like shit, and B) you can blame 100% of it on Lars, like, “He was the one who made me turn the bass down and we tried to do all these other things,” which I find it to be a bit unfair. Because even listening to rough mixes before you started mixing, it’s pretty close to what it ended up being. So it was still a united front in terms of you and Lars having a specific vision, right?
JH: We wanted it tight. We wanted it fucking tight. That’s what we wanted. We wanted the snare, we wanted the guitar, we wanted everything up front and in your face and really tight. And we thought we got it. And you know, we kinda know what we want to sound like. Can we sit behind a desk and make it happen? No. We ask people to do it, and they do it. So [Thompson] did his job. He’s got nothing to apologize for or point fingers at. No one’s to blame for “something.” It is a piece of art. It happened and it ended up the way it is for a reason. And for reasons we were just talking about. We were burnt. We’re traveling, we’re playing a gig, our ears were fried. We were not sleeping. He doesn’t need to defend himself. He was a part of an awesome album in history, so I think he should be maybe be a little easier on himself.
SC: Do you think it’s a case of a “language thing” again? You and Flemming obviously share a common musical language, you know that you don’t have to work as hard to have him know what you want, and do you think that was the issue? That maybe you were dealing with someone who’s speaking a different language in Thompson?
JH: For sure. Yeah. I mean as far as Flemming goes it was always painless and easy. He would easily latch onto where you were going and what you were thinking, and he wanted it to sound good too. There were disagreements and we worked through ’em. There were no disagreements I recall around …And Justice for All . All this [bass discussion – ED] is after the fact, and it’s like who gives a shit, man, really? And why would you change that? Why would you change history? Why would you all of a sudden put bass on it? There is bass on it but why would you remix an album? You can remaster it, yes, but why would you remix something and make it different? It’d be like…I don’t know. Not that I’m comparing us to the Mona Lisa but it’s like, “Uh, can we make her smile a little better?!” You know?! Why?
SC: You talk about feeling timid, maybe being a little anxious or whatever going into the process. At what point did you realize that you had what you wanted?
JH: I don’t know. I think the confidence around the songwriting was always there. It was more the live show, you know, the band dynamic. That’s what I was referring to as far as the timidness, but you know, when we were on the Monsters of Rock Tour, there was a great response for us from the crowd, from the other bands, from everything. It was fun and we were having a blast. So everyone on that tour was kinda, “Uh, oh! Who’s this Metallica band?!”
SC: We have “One,” which was probably the most unlikely sort of “hit” that you could expect to be taken from an album where there is not even a whiff of a single. I know you never wanted to do a video and then you made one and so on. Was it exciting to see it on MTV even though you were an anti-video band? Was that another sort of, “Fuck it, I’m kinda happy to be validated like this and I’m kinda happy with being nominated for a Grammy, this is kinda fucking cool, actually”?
JH: Excited. And I wouldn’t call us an anti-video band. We were anti-bands that had videos. Because we weren’t on there, we hated it. We had to watch frigging Asia for the 20th time or frigging Cyndi Lauper! And “One” wasn’t the first single. I think “Harvester” or something else was?
DN: “Eye of the Beholder.”
JH: “Eye of the Beholder.” Then “Harvey” maybe?
DN: Yes.
SC: “One” was the one that really pushed you into the “big” or the “mainstream,” right? I mean did your management ever say, when putting Justice together, “Guys, it’d be really great if you could give us a song that’s maybe five and a half minutes or six minutes”?
JH: No, never. No one has ever said that. I’m the one saying it. “Let’s shorten up these fucking songs.” When we went on tour supporting …And Justice for All , that’s when I discovered these songs are really fucking long. We’re playing close to two hours and the set list is like “this” long [denotes shorter]. And long songs, a lot of singing, and we don’t get to play more songs. I’d rather play more, shorter songs. So that’s when I realized, “Wait a minute, it’s okay, how long does the song need to be?” Any of those songs could be chopped in half. Parts are just longwinded, lot of longwindedness and certain people in the band are longwinded! So…
As far as the “One” video, doing that video was a lot of fun. I remember I had on my guitar the “Eet Fuk” or whatever. I had something on my guitar. When the producer said, “You gotta take that off your guitar,” it was the first time I felt like I had compromised. I was like, “What the fuck?” I was like, “No way, no fucking way,” and management was like, “Hey, man, just do it. Think ‘ Eet Fuk ’ on the inside,” or whatever it was. It was like, all right, all right, it’s not worth fighting that. Getting a video out there is gonna be way, way, way better for people to absorb this, whether my guitar says something or not. When we went back to the Bay Area, I remember going to The Stone, which was [a venue] on Broadway Street [in San Francisco], and I went to see some metal band of course. I remember this large man coming up to me and he’s like, “Fuck you!” And he spat on me! “What the fuck?” “You sold out, man. You made a video.” Right then, I knew there’s some fucking idiots in the world and we’re gonna have to deal with some of these people. We’re gonna lose some fans because they don’t get it. They don’t get what we’re doing. They don’t get that we’re taking it to the next level. We’re taking it to the masses, they’re gonna get a taste of Metallica, and he didn’t like it.
SC: It sounds like that was the era where you realized you couldn’t be going and floozing around at The Stone or The Omni anymore. Is that about right? Did you suddenly realize, “Okay, we’re not the thrashers on the scene anymore, we’ve gotta be a little more… we’re gonna have to step away from it a little bit”?
JH: It was a sad moment. But we always tried just to be the guys who live down the street and make noise in their garage, you know? We always tried to be those guys and still continue to try to be that. And people’s vision of you? That’s when I realized people want you to be something for themselves. You represent something for them, and if it looks weird or something changes, it scares them, and they don’t feel stable anymore. So they take it out on you.
SC: And it was upsetting to have people do that?
JH: Sure.
SC: Did it fuel your anger even more?
JH: Absolutely. Yeah.
SC: More anger, more sorta like, “Fuck you, we’re gonna show ya.” That kind of thing?
JH: He’s the reason we made a lot of videos [half-jokingly referring to the spitter]. Hardwired… To Self-Destruct , we said we gotta do one for every song for that fucking guy at The Stone.
SC: But you were still hanging out a lot with Jim [Martin – ex-Faith No More guitarist and old friend of the band] and you were hanging out with Rick “Chopper.” You kept your friend base pretty regular. You were not about to desert that core, right?
JH: Oh, I had friends. I mean this guy [The Stone spitter] was certainly not a friend. He was someone taking out his anger on the wrong place, but you know, I’m sure Chopper had a word with him afterwards. There were a few times where… yeah… my friends backed me up for sure.
DN: Do you have many memories about starting the project with Mike Clink? How did that recording process go?
JH: Well, I recall “studio shopping” and we decided on the One on One place. Loved the control room, nice and big. Right there, I think in Burbank. And that’s kinda what we were used to at Sweet Silence. But Flemming wasn’t available, something happened, the timing was off, so he couldn’t come in and we wanted to get started. I love music, I listen to music a lot [but] I don’t know a lot of the business side, the “behind,” you know, who produced that. Who engineered that. Who managed this. That’s Lars. He investigates the players behind it. And he was infatuated with Guns N’ Roses and the sound of that first record, the guitar sound, the drums, everything . It sounded very lively, it reminded me a little bit of the first Van Halen. It was just, it’s a party, it’s live. Lars wanted that, which is ironic because I’d say that …And Justice for All is probably the most sterile records of all time. So Mike Clink was called, he was brought in. And we tried. We tried. Don’t remember who tried getting the guitar sound, trying to explain to him the “Tent of Doom,” you know, which is not easy. Like, “Ah, we gotta build this tent, man. The room’s too big. We want it tight. We want a big drum sound in the room but the guitar, we want it tight. You can’t put it in a room, you can’t close it in. It’s gotta breathe but it’s gotta be in a tent, here’s what we did,” and you know, showing him pictures of, “It’s gotta be the right kinda U-Haul blanket, man. And you gotta clip it together with duct tape and this certain clip.” We tried and tried, and the Tent of Doom was never recreated very well with Mike Clink.
SC: Mike Clink is not someone to go camping with then, right?
JH: Not at all. No. You’d be cold and wet. But Flemming Rasmussen, now, there’s something else. He can build a mean Tent of Doom.
DN: So it was like sliding back into a comfortable situation once Flemming was back? Mike was probably relieved that he didn’t have to build a Tent of Doom anymore.
JH: I would say Mike Clink was not the kind of guy who would’ve survived a Metallica album. He’s got a different aura about him. He’s really gentle, really kinda quiet. So he wasn’t driving. We discovered that he might not have been the reason that that Guns N’ Roses album sounded the way it did. So maybe, maybe not. But that’s our perception. Clink didn’t come in and just say, “Okay, here’s what we’re doing, here’s where the guitar is, here’s where you’re gonna do that, blah-blah-blah-blah.” There was none of that. There was nothing to even fight. There wasn’t a lot of energy. And I guess that was our first time trying a different producer. And it didn’t work out for both of us. So be it.
DN: Do you have any favorite songs?
JH: Well, I guess, “Dyers Eve” to me, that’s different than any of the other faster songs that we’ve done. You know, “Damage, Inc.” and you know, you got a fast song at the beginning, fast song at the end. Your “Fight Fires” and your “Damages” your “Blackened.” It had a different arrangement, a different feel to it. Really fast and then the chorus is kinda… it’s got more melody than any of the other faster songs, I think. I like that song. It’s definitely a difficult song to play. But I would say yeah, that, “Harvester of Sorrow” [as well] – great song… was kind of our “Bellz” of that record, the thick, grinding riff and bouncy drum.
SC: You know what, two things we haven’t touched on. Kirk’s role in the record, I mean it seems that Kirk’s always been great at reading what is needed from him in a situation. And that perhaps at the time that you were putting Justice together, writing it, recording it, he knew what his role was, which was to basically let you guys get on with it. Is that how it panned out?
JH: Yeah, I would say that’s kinda how that happened. You know, Kirk has been the kind of guy who really would read the room and make sense. That’s kinda how I guess he is, very good at seeing the room and seeing what’s needed. He was really a referee between Lars and me for most of our career. And now that that’s changed a little bit, he’s able to take the stripes off and be a part of things a little more. But I think he did realize at that point that, “All right, these guys know what they’re doing. I’m gonna show up, I’m gonna frickin’ rip. I’m the rippër. The song “One”… if I hear the song, I’ll know that that’s the solo, but I remember we were mixing and there was some solo, he said, “I don’t like it, I have to change that.” And we had never heard that from Kirk. It’s like whoa, what? Sounds fine. “No, no, I have to change it.” And so he flew in from somewhere, did a little thing, took ten minutes, flew back, and he was done. And he was happy. Kirk was happy. It’s like, okay. But I remember not being very nice about it, like, “Are you kidding me? What the fuck?” It’s maybe like, “I don’t like that word, I want to go in and redo it,” you know? But there was a part of the solo where it goes “ bananana – weeninine .” And I kept thinking about it, because it cost $10,000 to do it and I kept [thinking], ten thousand bucks, ten thousand bucks. I would sing that to him every once in a while. We were dicks.
DN: It was the second clean solo in “One!”
JH: Yeah, okay. There you go.
DN: Lars brought it up to me and I found a rough mix of it.
JH: Huh. So the original is somewhere?
James looks intrigued, and for a moment the reality hits everyone that Dan had heard more of the collected Justice mixes and edits and roughs and bits and pieces than Het himself. And just as we are about to get into another good thirty minutes of conversation launching from said-realization, James is plucked from our grasp and ferried to the CID Meet and Greet. Het saved by the bell? I think that’s a fair comment.
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