Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [2]
Part One
Born To Die
‘Fuck it all and fucking no regrets!’
– James Hetfield, ‘Damage, Inc.’, 1986
One
The Prince
It was such a bizarre, unexpected moment that for years afterwards I wondered if it had really happened, or whether it was some sort of trauma-induced false memory. Yet the vision of Lars hopping on crutches towards me down the steps of the Hammersmith Odeon still remains now, despite all the days and years and lifetimes that have since passed between us.
I don’t remember the gig – who it was or what it was – just that moment as he lurched down the steps at speed towards me, calling my name.
‘Hey, Mick, you fuck! What’s happening?’
Its front doors bolted, the fans having long since left, I could only assume he had been malingering at the same after-show drinks thing I had, idling at the upstairs bar backstage into the early hours, now in search of a taxi home. Yet I had not seen him. But then the frame of mind I was in, my field of vision had been limited, tunnelled down to some wincingly sharp needlepoint within. It was my first outing since my mother had died a couple of weeks before. Younger than I am now, she had been struck down by cancer of the brain and the ending, although relatively sudden, had been preceded by extremely unkind circumstances, excruciating for her, godless to those of us in attendance.
He was down the steps in an instant, his face close to mine. ‘Hey,’ he said. There was a brief bit of banter in which I motioned questioningly towards the crutches. ‘My toe,’ he said, as though it was such ancient news it barely rated a mention. I must have looked baffled. ‘I broke it.’ I stared at him. ‘In the crash,’ he added, impatiently.
I was used to rock stars, even the ones who weren’t really famous yet like Lars, expecting you to know every minute detail of their working lives and to be suitably fascinated by them. But still…broken toe? Crash? What crash?
But that wasn’t what he was interested in. What he wanted to know was: ‘So were you here for us too?’
Again, I was baffled. He read it instantly. ‘When we played here, you dork!’ Oh…now I got it. Metallica had also played the Hammersmith Odeon recently. As their latest champion in the British rock press, it was not unreasonable for Lars to have expected me to be there for the band’s first headline appearance at a prestige venue like that. But of course I hadn’t. Instead I had either been at the hospital or coming home from the hospital or getting ready to go to the hospital. Either that or I had just been in hell.
I didn’t know then, though, how to put something like that into words. I barely knew how to say it to myself, let alone someone else. I was twenty-eight and my world had simultaneously shrunk and expanded in ways I was struggling to grasp. He was twenty-two and not remotely interested anyway. All that mattered was Metallica, you fuck!
‘No,’ I said, too exhausted even to lie about it. ‘Was it good?’
‘What?’ he exploded. ‘Was it good? You weren’t there?’ He looked at me, disappointment flecked with anger and shock. ‘Yeah, it was fuckin’ good! You really missed a great fuckin’ gig! The place was sold out and the fans went crazy!’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s great. Sorry I missed it, man.’
His outraged eyes studied mine. A precocious child growing rapidly into a full-on fuck of a man, Lars may have been too in love with Metallica and what it gave him when he looked in the mirror to see past it long enough to think seriously about almost anything else, but he was not a stupid person, and in that instant he must have gotten an inkling of something else going on in my face – not what exactly, just enough of something to forgive this transgression, although not enough to forget, not for the foreseeable anyway – because he changed the subject and after a bit more inconsequential banter he hobbled off again, still unhappy with me but not quite so offended, or so I feebly hoped. Him and his broken toe…
I watched his back disappear into the night, accompanied by his minder, looking for their