Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [39]
The most significant outcome of the Stone show, though, was the reaction of the crowd. ‘It was our first encounter with real fans,’ said James. ‘It was like, these people are here for us, and they like us, and they hate the other bands – and we like that ’cos we hate them too.’ Says Brian Slagel, ‘In LA [Metallica] were kind of looked at like a black-sheep band because they were way too heavy compared to what the other bands were doing at this point. Even Mötley and Ratt were getting more commercial and that’s kind of where the scene was going. So they didn’t go down so well. But when they came up to San Francisco that night, all of a sudden they have all these kids there that went crazy for them. Just loved them and loved what they were doing. It was really amazing. I was like, holy shit! Even the band was like, wow, we never saw that coming!’ Eager to keep that good feeling going, the band booked a follow-up show in San Francisco, at the Old Waldorf, for October. It was only a Monday night – the deadest night of the week – but they played it like a Saturday night. They didn’t even bother with the safety net of the Diamond Head covers this time, just went out and blasted through the No Life ’til Leather demo plus ‘No Remorse’. Again, ‘the people went nuts’, Ron recalled. Among them was Gary Holt, guitarist in local San Francisco outfit Exodus, who would open for Metallica at a November show at the Old Waldorf – later immortalised on another officially sanctioned live tape for the traders to play with, dubbed Metal up Your Ass. He recalls that ‘they were great but they were really sloppy. Lars could barely play his drums and they were really drunk onstage. But they had this raw punk energy.’ Such was their growing reputation in San Francisco the band even took out an ad in local music free sheet, BAM (Bay Area Music). It cost $600, a great deal of money to shell out for an otherwise penniless unsigned band in 1982. Fortunately, they had good old Ron to pay for it – again. ‘It was probably Lars’ and James’ idea,’ said Ron. ‘They laid the ad out and showed it to me and said it will cost $600. I said, “Okay, Lars…James, where’s your money?” and they said, “We don’t have any money.” I was the only one that had any money, so I wrote out a cheque for $600 to BAM. Till this day I never got that money back.’
The only real fly in the ointment was the increasingly hard to handle Dave Mustaine. Slagel recalls the guitarist coming up at the first Stone show and telling him, ‘You’re gonna hear something from somebody that’s not true.’ Explains Slagel, ‘Apparently what had happened was they had gone through all the beer that the promoter had given them and they wanted more beer. And the promoter I guess didn’t feel he should give them more beer or wasn’t giving them the beer quick enough. So Dave just went behind the bar and grabbed a case of Heineken and took it backstage and they drank it. When the promoter found out about it he got upset and decided not to pay them the hundred bucks [fee] and it became this big thing. I’m like, oh boy. But it was a classic Dave Mustaine moment in the early days.’ Indeed, Mustaine’s overbearing personality and wayward behaviour – not helped by his daily over-consumption of weed and alcohol – had been causing the band problems almost from the start. Ron, in particular, found the