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I was into.’ After such a stale first meeting, though, I wondered what had prompted him to persist with trying to get to know the taciturn would-be frontman. They were obviously quite different as people. ‘No shit!’ he snorted. ‘Absolutely.’ What was it then that intrigued Lars enough to try again? Initially, he said, it was because James was the only other person he’d found who might be interested in forming a band that played NWOBHM-type music ‘rather than copy Van Halen’. On a deeper level, he sensed something else, too. ‘Even though I didn’t spend a lot of time rebelling against a lot of things because my parents were too cool to rebel against, I spent a lot of time by myself immersed in the music world. And James spent a lot of time by himself and so on, so the one thing we share, even though we come from two different worlds, and two different cultures, is we are both loners. And in each other we found something that just connected with something deeper.’ He went on: ‘It was very difficult for me to find anything that I could relate to in Southern California. That’s why me and James became such good friends because we both sort of had social issues,’ he chuckled self-consciously. ‘Of a different kind but…’ He shrugged and looked away.

For James, that connection would not be manifest until later in his relationship with his new buddy, when Metallica began to assume the mantle of ‘family’ for him. First and foremost, it was simply about the music, he insisted. Yet the first time he went to Lars’ parents’ house he was deeply impressed by more than just the collection of records. The vibe was so different from his own former family home, where outsiders were rare and then only occasionally made to feel welcome, unless they shared the same religious beliefs, which would be quickly and decisively established. ‘I was searching for people that I could identify with,’ said James. ‘I couldn’t really identify too much with my family and, basically, as a child it disintegrated right in front of my eyes. There’s a part of me that craves family and another part of me that just can’t stand people.’ In Lars’ house, all were welcome, differences celebrated, individualism prized. And in Lars’ bedroom there was a whole wall of records, most by groups James had never even heard of. The next time he visited this Aladdin’s cave of NWOBHM treasure, he brought his tape recorder, filling cassette after cassette with the songs of Trespass, Witchfinder General, Silverwing, Venom, Motörhead, Saxon, Samson…it seemed never-ending. ‘I bombarded James with all this new British stuff,’ Lars said, ‘and soon he was sold on getting something together that would stand out in the ocean of mediocrity.’

Brian Slagel recalls hooking up with Lars not long after he’d returned from Europe. ‘He had a bunch of albums and, you know, I wanted to hear the stories, hanging out with [Diamond Head] and all this other stuff. I was insanely jealous, of course, but it was fascinating that he was able to do it.’ Before the trip to Europe ‘we were just kind of crazy kids running around. But when [Lars] came back he definitely was a little bit different. You could tell that he was so into being with the band and seeing their lives it gave him much more motivation to try to start [his own] band. That’s when he was really practising, playing drums a lot and trying to find people to play with. It really solidified for him after he came back from that trip.’ James had also been giving his future a great deal of thought while Lars was away in Europe, coming to the decision that he would continue as he had in Leather Charm, principally as a singer. Now, with only a drummer to jam with, he reluctantly picked up the guitar again. All they lacked initially was a bass player: inevitably, James suggested Ron McGovney, an idea which seemed to make sense to everybody – except for Ron, who didn’t fancy the new partnership’s chances at all. ‘When he and Lars first jammed, I thought Lars was the worst drummer I had ever heard in my life,’ Ron would later tell Bob Nalbandian. ‘He couldn