Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [189]
As he later told Mojo, ‘I’m the one who will go and find out what goes on in Oasis-land or Guns N’ Roses-land or Alice In Chains-land. I’m so curious to see how other bands do things. It’s fun to sit down with Liam Gallagher and talk complete and utter nonsense about music.’ Had Liam ever heard of Metallica, though? Did he even know who the motormouth with the funny name and weirdly mangled accent was? Or why he kept turning up at gigs on their US tour that year? It didn’t matter, not to Lars. Just as he had done with Diamond Head all those years before, he really was there as a fan, to look and to listen and maybe learn. Just as with Diamond Head, he probably didn’t even get round to mentioning he actually played the drums, sometimes, you know, a bit.
If the music was changing around them, so was the business. In 1994, Metallica filed suit in a San Francisco court against Elektra, seeking to be released from their deal. Their original contract had been for a fourteen per cent royalty rate, for seven albums. They had never renegotiated, not even after they first hit Top Ten pay dirt with Justice, as would have been the norm for most groups in that position, looking instead to put together a new, partnership-based deal when the current one ended. In 1993, they were alarmed to discover, however, that none of the various video, DVD and box-set compilations they had released counted as one of the nominal seven albums stipulated by their original Elektra contract – not even the Garage Days Re-Revisited mini-album. They considered this particularly unfair as the original drafts of their contract were still based on the conventions of the 1970s when artists routinely released two albums a year, and video, DVD and boxed sets did not exist.
As a result when they came to renegotiate their deal in the wake of the huge success of the Black Album, they did so from the ground up, putting together a new joint venture/partnership agreement with Elektra president Bob Krasnow, in April 1994. The new contracts were still being drawn up when they were then cancelled in the wake of Elektra’s takeover by the Time Warner Music Group that summer. TWG chief Bob Morgado appointed Doug Morris, president of Atlantic, as the new president and head of Warner Music US (which included Elektra, Atlantic and Warner). Subsequently, Krasnow resigned at Elektra, as did Warner’s chief, Mo Ostin. Lars wasn’t underselling the situation when he described them as ‘the two most music-oriented company bosses…We’ve had a great thing going for ten years but it’s a very different situation, a different set of rules than a few years ago.’
Metallica’s lawsuit demanded that they be released from what remained of their original Elektra contract so they could sign with another label ‘free and clear of any interference from or obligation to Elektra’. In response, a Time Warner statement claimed the suit was ‘without merit. The contract is a valid and binding document and Elektra will vigorously enforce its rights to the fullest extent of the law.’ The result was a declaration of war by the band. It wasn’t just about the money, Lars insisted: ‘We were more interested in the long-term outlook.’ They had deliberately not renegotiated in the wake of their success on the basis that ‘Bob [Krasnow] would make it up to us later.’ More specifically, they wanted more control over back catalogue and a larger share of bottom-line profits. ‘There would be a greater gain in the long run only if we made good records people were buying,’ Lars told the Washington Post. ‘The beauty of the partnership is it’s down to us.’
Morgado, however, ‘preferred a more traditional risk/reward structure where the label takes a risk by paying