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By Root 359 0

was the first time I’d seen Metallica so high up the bill at such an important show. The headliners were the Scorpions, second on the bill were Ratt, and Metallica were just below them, with Y&T, Yngwie Malmsteen and Victory below them. I know it was a hometown show for them but this was a stadium and yet it was clear they belonged on the bigger stages. One thing about Metallica, they always grew into whatever new context they found themselves in. And yet they were still a people’s band, you could tell by the audience reaction. They knew how to relate to the fans, as in we’re still of the same mentality as you lot, we understand you. We are on this big stage here only because we have the music to carry it forward and entertain you but we haven’t changed at all.’

As if to prove it, after the show Hetfield ran amok in a Jägermeister fit and, egged on by one of his East Bay pals, smashed up the band’s dressing room. Wrecking rooms had become a regular sport on their own tours, but as James later confessed, the Day on the Green rampage was ‘the worst’. Having got it into his head that, as he put it, ‘the deli tray and the fruit had to go through a little vent’, when the vent proved too small he simply decided to ‘make a hole’. As a result, the backstage trailer the band was using to change in was all but destroyed. Promoter Bill Graham, whose long career had seen him work with prolific room-breakers such as Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, summoned the singer to his office like the headmaster summoning a recalcitrant pupil for a flogging. Graham told him sternly: ‘This attitude you have, I’ve had the same conversation with Sid Vicious and Keith Moon.’ Informed in no uncertain terms that no further destruction of property would be tolerated and that he would be sent the bill for the damage he’d already done, as James later ruefully observed, ‘I realised at that point there was more to being in a band than pissing people off and smashing shit up.’

Once again, it was left to Cliff to bring things back to a more manageable state of affairs. Malcolm Dome recalls the bassist giving his bandmates a severe dressing down after the show. ‘I remember him looking at Lars, like, “One more word from you and I’m gonna fucking punch you!”’ That quietened things down – for a while, anyway. Kirk Hammett: ‘Cliff was the most mature out of all of us. He had a quiet strength [and] was very, very confident. A lot of times the rest of us would defer to him in times of insecurities. He just had so much confidence, he had confidence to spare. He just seemed so much wiser and much more responsible than the rest of us. He was the guy when I would do something stupid, or Lars or James would do something stupid, he was the guy who would say, “What the hell were you thinking?” Or: “That was a really stupid thing to do!” He was always the guy to reprimand us.’

The day after the show, a badly hungover James, Lars and Kirk met up at San Francisco International airport to catch the flight to Copenhagen. For the first time they would be setting aside proper time to make an album, as opposed to simply tacking on some studio time at the end of a tour and aiming, essentially, just to record their live set. Everyone was buzzing, except for Cliff, who never showed up. ‘I remember James, Lars and I waiting at the gate and paging him and he never showed up,’ smiled Kirk. ‘So we had to get on the plane without him. Cliff was good at missing things because he moved on his own time. He smoked a lot.’ They tried calling him from a payphone but only got the outgoing message on his new answer-machine. But they understood where he was at; that big brother Cliff was probably kicking back at home in a fog of bud-smoke and beer fumes, maxed out. It didn’t take much figuring. Cliff also knew the first few days at Sweet Silence were likely to involve sitting around while Lars got his drums together and James lingered endlessly over the guitar sound. He’d join them later, he decided. After the excitement of Day on the Green, he needed a change of pace anyway.

Recording at Sweet Silence