Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [199]
Back in 1996, however, the revolution continued apace. The Load world tour began with the band headlining that summer’s Lollapalooza extravaganza. A travelling annual festival show instigated by Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell in 1991 and presented as the totemic pinnacle of the Alternative Music Nation, the announcement that Metallica would be gate-crashing the party that year came as yet another controversial move in the band’s self-reinvention, and at first appeared to win over almost no one. Hardcore Metalliheads viewed it as another example of the band’s sell-out to the grunge generation; Lollapalooza freaks saw it as a hijacking by the very music and culture it had been specifically designed to reject. (Ozzy Osbourne had already been turned down as a potential headliner that year, initialising the birth in October of the first Ozzfest shows: Lollapalooza-style festivals aimed more specifically at metal fans.) The previous year, Metallica had followed their Donington Monsters of Rock show with festival appearances in Europe alongside Sugar and Sonic Youth; there had also been a bill-sharing show with Courtney Love’s band Hole in the Arctic Circle village of Tuktoyaktuk, Canada. None of this had generated undue comment, one way or the other. Lollapalooza was different, though, sparking months of debate, led by Farrell himself, then negotiating the sale of his share in the enterprise, who branded it no less than a betrayal of his original anti-establishment vision. With Soundgarden, the Ramones, Rancid and Screaming Trees booked to appear below Metallica on the main stage, it was hardly that. Nevertheless, with Kirk Hammett – who had been to every Lollapalooza and even played at a couple, guesting with Ministry and Primus – the only member of the band with any firsthand knowledge of what the event meant to the world at large, there was something intrinsically contrived about their haste to be shoehorned onto the bill now. ‘The part I like most is we’re hated again,’ said James defiantly. ‘I kind of miss that. People like us too much now.’ Careful not to push the boundaries between ‘old’ and ‘new’ Metallica too far, though, despite one of their guests in a revolving slot on the tour being Waylon Jennings, who James admitted had been an inspiration for ‘Mama Said’, the band would never dare to play ‘Mama’ live.
But perhaps their most radical move was the announcement the following summer that they would be releasing a sequel to Load – smugly titled Reload and comprising those tracks that remained from the original Load sessions. The idea of recording two albums’ worth of material and releasing the second CD halfway through a lengthy world tour a year later was one Axl Rose had told Lars about back in 1990 – had been the plan, in fact, before record company compromise meant that Guns N’ Roses eventually released their two Illusion albums on the same day. Lars had always kept the idea in the back of his mind, though. The fact that it also helped service the new deal with Elektra, in terms of delivering another album quickly, could not have hurt either.
If only the album itself hadn’t been such a let-down. From its bland, uneventful cover – another Andres Serrano painting, this time titled Piss and Blood – another red-tinged amber landscape, with only one central swirl this time, resembling, perhaps, a woman’s vagina,