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were always in awe of them because they had done that, begging for stories. How ugly the chicks were, how bad the food was, how many times they woke up in the gutter, so on and so forth.’ As the bassist, Joey was especially drawn to Cliff: ‘We had a kinship, Cliff and I, because we also listened to some jazz fusion. We’d have some conversations about Stanley Clarke and about all these other bass players that we liked when we were growing up. So he was someone who had another foot somewhere else in the music and was an excellent player and a pretty strong musical front in that band. I think that’s one of the reasons the band always looked to him for approval. He also had this really strong punk aesthetic…of doing it against the grain, going against the norm, someone who is basically an artist. That’s how I always perceived Cliff, as someone who was very strongly opinionated and very much not willing to do anything which would go against what he believed in. It was pretty evident back then that that mattered to the rest of the guys too.’

Mainstream rock was so conservative in the mid-Eighties, to see this guy with the flared trousers, the denim jacket, the long, straight hair and the weird, scruffy little moustache, it was an inspiration, says Vera. He talks about how Cliff, ‘almost had his own language. Just the way he would phrase things. He wasn’t one of these people that would come and say hello how are you today, the weather’s really nice. One time we played a show in El Paso, and we’re all waiting to go onstage. He opens our dressing room door and pops his head in and says: “Weakness is emanating from the crowd.” And he shuts the door. We’ve never forgot that. That’s like one of the classic Cliff quotes.’ He chuckles softly. ‘We took that as, okay, well, now we’ve got to go out and really fucking wake these people up. The Grand Master has come in and let us know where he stands…’

Machine Head vocalist Robb Flynn was a sixteen-year-old Metallica fan when he caught the tour at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco. ‘That was crazy, a really intense show. The first time I’d seen a circle pit, first time I’d seen people headbanging. I went right down the front. I was like, “Holy shit, this is awesome!” I had never felt such a rush of energy. I was completely exhilarated. I didn’t even drink, I got dropped off by my dad so I was sober and I remember every moment of it. After that I was just like, we gotta start going to shows and drinking and buying drugs. That just seemed like what you were supposed to do.’ James Hetfield was now ‘the guy who everybody related to. I loved the other guys, too, but Hetfield was extremely…he was just so pissed [off] it was awesome. He was just so mad about everything it was like, fuck, yeah!’

As well as top-drawer management and a major US record deal, Metallica’s operation was expanding in other ways too. They now had major agency representation in both the USA – where they were now signed to ICM, personally handled by rising industry star Marsha Vlasic – and the UK, where Fair Warning co-founder John Jackson would become their booking agent. Their touring staff was also upgraded. Mark Whitaker, his time now taken up with full-time management of Exodus – making waves of their own with the Bonded by Blood album – was replaced by an English sound technician, ‘Big’ Mick Hughes, an apprentice electrician from West Bromwich who’d started out humping gear in his spare time for Judas Priest then graduated to live sound engineer with another upcoming Q Prime act, the Armoury Show. When the latter folded, Peter Mensch invited Hughes to work with Metallica, his immediate innovation to add a high-to-mid ‘click’ to Lars’ live bass drum sound, as a way of lifting the drums out of the bottom-heavy sound he’d previously been labouring under, adding more bounce and feel. Paul Owen, another English Midlander who had previously worked for Diamond Head, was also hired as monitor engineer.

Another significant new face backstage was that of soon-to-be-tour-manager Bobby Schneider, who had been working as the