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appearance at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. As with the Lyceum two years before, all the metal press showed up, their ranks now swelled by various members of the mainstream music press; even some radio and TV people. This, however, as Gem Howard says, ‘was still very much a word-of-mouth thing. If you knew who Metallica and Anthrax were it was probably the biggest gig anywhere in the country that month. But there were still plenty of people that had never heard of them.’ He adds with a smile, ‘Of course, that would change quite soon.’ He also remarks on ‘how far the band had obviously come since they’d last played here. I always say one gig is worth ten rehearsals, and by then they really had it all going on. Touring with Ozzy that summer had turned them into a really slick live machine.’

Before the show, James and Lars actually went next door to the Duke of Cornwall pub for a couple of beers. Among the surprised throng of faces joining them was Kerrang! designer and DJ Steve ‘Krusher’ Joule. ‘For some reason Lars thought I was Bon Scott,’ laughs Krusher now. ‘Or at least the ghost of Bon Scott, though I can’t say anyone else has ever mistaken me for him. The place was full of Metallica fans of course but everybody was being fairly cool about it. James was pretty quiet but Lars was larging it, never stopped talking the whole time. Then I remember walking back into the gig with them. No security in those days, they were just in a world of their own.’

Outside the venue, Gem recalls giving his last pair of press tickets away: ‘Whenever you had a sell-out show like the Hammersmith Odeon I would stay out front, handing out the press tickets to the various journalists and other guests. By the time the band came on, though, that was it, finished. But of course there’s always a couple of people that don’t turn up, and I hated being left with tickets in my hand that were going to waste. So after the band came on I saw these girls outside absolutely sobbing. They were about fourteen and when I asked what was wrong they said they didn’t have tickets and couldn’t afford to buy any off the touts because they were asking their usual silly prices. So I said, never mind, there you go, and gave them my last two tickets. At which point I remember getting knocked to the ground as they smothered me in kisses! Then they ran off into the hall. It was a lovely moment.’

After the show, the band spent over an hour sitting at trestle tables set up in a backstage corridor signing autographs and talking to the fans. Then Lars took it upon himself to invite the band’s various guests back to Peter Mensch’s house in Warwick Avenue, where he was spending the night. Says Krusher Joule, ‘I remember being thrown into a car with Lars and possibly James, and being driven to this very plush place somewhere near Holland Park, I think, which was Mensch’s house, where I met his wife Sue, who was absolutely stunning. It was quite an amazing place, gold records all over the walls and in one of those streets where there are policemen posted at each end of the street.’ Malcolm Dome, who was also there, recalls the party at Mensch’s ‘only going on for a couple of hours’, then James, Kirk and Cliff went back to the Columbia Hotel, where the last few stragglers joined them and the partying went on till nearly dawn.

Fortunately, they had the next couple of days off – enough time to recover from their hangovers, had they actually stopped drinking long enough to get hangovers. These were party times, though, and apart from Cliff – who preferred weed to wine – James and Lars, in particular, were intent on enjoying themselves. They had barely slept when the band boarded the tour bus on Tuesday morning, for the drive, via cross-Channel ferry, to Sweden, ready to begin the European leg of the tour. Master of Puppets had sold more than 45,000 copies in Sweden alone – huge numbers for such a modest record-buying territory – and their first date, on 24 September, was to be at the prestigious Olympus arena in Lund. James was hoping to be able to strap on his white Gibson Explorer