Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [139]
It’s tempting then to dismiss this as a typically provocative Mustaine aside. However, Marsha Z remains tellingly reticent to comment on the subject when I ask now how much she knew of this. She certainly doesn’t deny the story is true. Malcolm Dome is less inhibited on the subject and claims he heard about it at the time from both Ian and drummer Charlie Benante. ‘I remember after the crash Scott and Charlie were in London and we went out for drink at the pub near the Kerrang! office and Scott actually said, in so many words, [Cliff’s death] may have actually saved Lars’ job ’cos they were ready to fire him. He said it, absolutely said it. I think he’d been told by James or Cliff that they’d had enough of Lars. He was holding them back. I don’t think now Metallica could actually work with a really good drummer because they’ve adapted to what he doesn’t do. But at that point, with the Master of Puppets era when they were really starting to move forward and change and look at different ways to present music, they could have replaced him.’
Dome goes on to suggest that Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo was being lined up. ‘Dave Lombardo was definitely mentioned at one point as the guy they wanted in,’ says Dome. ‘I don’t actually recall any other names but Dave was definitely on that list and with good reason.’ An astonishingly innovative drummer, technically light years ahead of a player of Ulrich’s limited scope, it’s easy to see how Burton and Hetfield – already masters of their own instruments – would have been excited at the prospect of working with someone like Lombardo. Indeed, his work on Reign in Blood, released that year, had thrilled both men. Intriguingly, Lombardo was also about to walk out of Slayer, citing financial reasons. ‘I wasn’t making any money,’ he said, ‘I figured if we were gonna be doing this professionally, on a major label, I wanted my rent and utilities paid.’ Within weeks, however, the broke drummer had been talked into returning by his wife, Teresa. Had Metallica approached him then it seems highly likely he would have jumped at the chance. Might his defection from Slayer even have been influenced by some whisper of what was allegedly going on behind the scenes in Metallica? Certainly there appears to be little doubt James and Cliff did discuss the notion of getting in a better drummer, just as James and Lars had once discussed getting in a better bass player. As the rhythm engine of the band, Burton and Hetfield would also have been the ones who most acutely felt the drag Ulrich’s lack of wide-ranging drum skills imposed upon them. How seriously they entertained the idea of actually replacing Lars, however, is something only James Hetfield knows. It might have just been one of those drunk and stoned late-night rambles lots of band members have, bitching about each other behind their backs. Or perhaps they really were serious. It seems unlikely that Lars would already have patented the name ‘Metallica’ at that stage, and even if he had it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that both James and Cliff were still young and idealistic enough to play around with the notion of starting again with a newly named outfit – maybe one that included Dave Lombardo and possibly even Kirk Hammett, Cliff’s other close friend in Metallica.
Any such notions died with Cliff, though. Getting over the loss of Cliff was going to be hard enough, starting again with a new drummer as well would be simply unthinkable. Indeed, now that he was gone the relationship between James and Lars began to reassert itself. ‘After Cliff died, James and Lars got really close again,’ says Schneider. It had always been their band, their songs, but now they really did take control seriously for the first time since the days