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to them how it wasn’t time yet. I needed time to adjust to the world and I couldn’t just come and plug in because every time we plugged in and started playing together it was like a security blanket, the world went away and everything was fine. It was a safety zone and I didn’t want to forget about all the other stuff that had to happen; like me explaining to them what I need; how it’s different for me and how the dynamic has changed, and how we’re not going to be going on two-year tours any more. My family is important to me and I can’t let my children grow up without me and all the other priorities, how they lined up in my life. And it’s become contagious, you know, that stuff spread within the band and we all started taking a look at ourselves and becoming a lot more respectful of each other and our needs.’ He had felt like a stranger suddenly, he said: ‘Totally, I had to reintroduce myself to those guys and they didn’t know what to think…To them, to my wife, to everybody.’ Even, he said, ‘to myself: “Is this me talking? Man, I’m not even thinking about what I’m saying and all this shit’s coming out, you know, and it feels right and it feels okay.” And yes, especially to my wife, you know: “I know you, you’re very manipulative,” and addicts are pretty manipulative, and, “Ah, this is just an act,” and after two years, it’s a way of life now. But yeah, there was a whole dynamic change that had to happen within the group. And certain things had to shift…One person changes and everyone else around them, all relationships, friends, everything changed.’

One of the new conditions James requested was that he only work in the studio between midday and 4 p.m. each day – something the others acceded to, only to run out of patience when he then insisted they not work on the album either beyond those hours, prompting a scene in the movie where Lars – eaten up by James’ suggestion that no one even discuss the music in his absence – paces the room and tells him, ‘I realise now that I barely knew you before,’ followed by a shot of James taking off on his motorcycle to attend his infant daughter Marcella’s ballet lesson.

Other remarkable scenes from the movie include a cringingly painful meeting between Lars and Dave Mustaine that takes place while James is still in rehab. In this, the eternally wronged guitarist talks about how he still wishes the band had ‘woken me and said, “Dave, you need to get counselling,”’ rather than simply hand him a Greyhound ticket that cold morning in New Jersey in 1982. There are some equally telling scenes with Jason, in which he damns their recruitment of Towle as ‘really fucking lame’, and in which Lars, Kirk and Bob attend an Echobrain gig in San Francisco, only to discover Jason has already ‘left the building’ when they go backstage afterwards to wish him well. Then there is the now white-whiskered Cliff Burnstein sneaking a glance at his watch while listening to a playback of the album; Lars’ Gandalf-like father, Torben, suggesting they ‘delete’ a gloomy instrumental piece they had planned to open the album with; some evocative stock clips from the band’s past, notably one of a much younger James lifting a beer to toast some vast, outdoor festival audience, telling them how drunk he is; a clearly frustrated Kirk arguing – in vain – for at least one guitar solo on the new album. Up to a fitful climax in which the new album – almost too aptly titled St. Anger – is finally released to devastatingly bad reviews (not shown in the film) but still tops the US charts. There is a more genuine sense of epiphany, however, when, near the end, the band is shown shooting a video at San Quentin prison, with James shakily but touchingly assuming the mantle of the late Johnny Cash.

There are also giddy glimpses into the newly chilled Kirk Hammett sporting a cowboy hat on his now-long-again hair as he gazes out at the ranch he has purchased, or explaining how he recently took up surfing, an activity completely at odds with his previous image as someone who only came out after dark; the auction of most of Lars’ art