Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [160]
‘Things were starting to happen right then and things became available,’ said James, looking back in 2009. ‘Women, parties, you name it. We got sucked into that…It was fun.’ He admitted that it wasn’t funny, though, when he got so drunk he became violent: ‘There’d be the happy stage. Then it would get ugly where the world is fucked and fuck you. I became…the clown, then the punk anarchist after that, wanting to smash everything and hurt people. I’d get into fights – sometimes with Lars. That’s how resentments would get released, pushing and shoving, throwing things at him. He wants to be the centre of attention all the time and that bothers me because I’m the same way. He’s out there charming people, and I’ll be intimidating so people will respect me that way.’
Meanwhile, the band’s reputation continued to grow with every appearance they made on the tour. When it became known that the Metallica T-shirt was selling more than any other bar the official event tee, even headliners Van Halen began to take notice, with singer Sammy Hagar making a big deal of coming over and spending ‘face time’ with them both nights I was there. Merchandising was increasingly where it was at for the rock business in the 1980s. Iron Maiden had become millionaires from profits on their merchandising long before their record sales; many American bands whose limited popularity outside the USA only allowed them to play a handful of shows in Europe or the UK could only afford to do so because of the phenomenal sales from their on-site merchandising operation. Gone were the days when the most money concert-goers could be expected to shell out for a show besides their ticket price was a tour programme. By 1988, the business of selling tour merchandise had become almost an exact science with the biggest artists selling over two hundred separate branded items at their shows. Giant merchandising companies such as Brockum in the USA and Bravado in the UK reckoned on selling between $25 and $50 per head, per show, organising their merchandising stands at concert venues so that the most expensive gear – tour jackets, programmes, posters and baseball caps – was situated by the doors, ready to grab the fans’ attention as they entered. Smaller, much less expensive items – the two-dollar badges and wristbands, stick-on tattoos and denim patches – would be positioned closer to the door of the actual concert hall. ‘The idea was you’d get the big ten- or twenty-dollar hit as they entered, all excited,’ says one former merchandising vendor, ‘then systematically take every last dollar they had so that by the time they were ready to find their seats, you got their last dollar or two. The idea was for them to leave without a penny in their pockets.’ In Japan, where fans were already used to handing over their credit cards for in-concert ‘merch’, you could make ten times your usual profits. There, the promoters would arrange for the fans to buy their ‘mementoes’ on their way out of the venue, erecting barriers that snaked towards the exits past a long line of stalls selling every conceivable type of officially branded tat. ‘In Japan, they figured on making $100 to $200 dollars per head, per concert-goer, sometimes more.’
Shrewd as ever, Lars and Mensch had taken note of how the most successful merchandising brands in rock built heavily on the element of collectability; how it was no longer enough to simply own a Tour ’88 shirt;