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By Root 485 0

” and “Orion” – the amount of ground we cover is so big, so vast, it really pisses me off that anybody would want to stick us with one label. Yes, we do a few thrash songs but that’s not all we like to do. That’s by no means the only thing we’re capable of doing and doing fucking well. We’re not afraid to play a little slower sometimes, we’re not afraid to throw in melody or harmony, we’re not afraid to prove to people that we are a lot more musically competent than they might expect.’ Neither he nor the others, he claimed, had ever seen Metallica as epitomising the thrash movement anyway: ‘I accept that we had a lot to do with the way that whole scene took off. We were the first band to sound like that. But we never thought of ourselves as a “thrash band”. We were always an American band with British and European metal influences.’

Afterwards we all went out to dinner, the band, Music for Nations’ Gem Howard and me. There were no stars in the room, just soldiers. Least starry of all was James, a tall yet hunched presence who eyed me suspiciously, only finally coming out of his shell after several beers and vodka chasers. The only even vague concessions to image were their choices of T-shirts. James, a serial message-bearer, was wearing the same Pushead-designed T-shirt for the then totally unknown punk rockers The Misfits that he would later be pictured in on the back sleeve of Master of Puppets – right next to the picture of Cliff aiming his huge middle finger straight at the camera, not a trace of mirth on his poker face. It was the same at dinner. While Lars laughed so loud the people at the next table got up and moved to another one further away, James scowled and a clearly stoned Kirk seemed immersed in his own far-off world, Cliff kept his eyes on me when he knew I was looking and only spoke when I didn’t expect him to. Looking like he’d been born into a pair of faded Levi flares, Cliff was clearly a cool number, asked few questions, told no lies. But not remotely cold, just warming up nicely, thank you. I recall he had immaculate hair, long, past his shoulders but positively gleaming with cleanliness and good health. He may have liked to portray himself as a kind of neo-hippy throwback to an earlier, Woodstock-encrusted age, but Cliff Burton was clearly a meticulous person and no stranger to the mirror on the wall. When Gem and I finally escaped in a taxi, all four of them ran after us and tried to yank open the cab doors to stop us. For Gem and I, who had left our beds at six that morning in order to get to the airport in London in time to spend the day with the band in Copenhagen, the night was almost over. For Metallica, it was clear the party was only just getting started.

Flemming and Metallica never did manage to complete those mixes to their mutual satisfaction. Instead, they left Sweet Silence behind for the last time on 27 December and the master tapes were handed over in January 1985 to veteran LA-based studio fixer Michael Wagener, whose recent credits had included production work with Mötley Crüe, Dokken and Accept. Wagener may not have known much about thrash or even Metallica, at that stage, but he sure knew how to add a wonderful sheen to the mighty building blocks Metallica had painstakingly constructed at Sweet Silence with Flemming. With James and Lars looking over his shoulder, barking orders, Wagener set to work at Amigo studios on giving the latest Metallica opus a high shine.

Delighted with the results, Michael Alago gave the go-ahead for Elektra to schedule Master of Puppets for an early March 1986 release. He did enquire, at one point, about the possibility of a single being lifted from the album, maybe even a video to go with it – these were still the days when MTV was comfortable rotating rock videos on their daytime shows, although they had yet to actively promote any act as self-evidently uncommercial, at least in their corporate eyes, as the ‘kings of thrash’ Metallica. Elektra certainly had the budget to try and twist various influential MTV arms, however, if the band was amenable.