Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [49]
Leaving for San Francisco, they stopped off at Patrick Scott’s house. ‘They came over to tell me goodbye,’ he says. It was a poignant moment for the school friends. Patrick knew he ‘probably wasn’t going to see Lars again any time soon. They said goodbye and hung out for a while and then they left.’ He remembers how, ‘Lars once asked my dad for ten thousand dollars to invest in the band but who in their right mind would have done that? My dad said, “How would anybody rationalise ten thousand dollars in [an unknown] rock band? How many of them make it, you know?”’ When they drove off, Patrick realised that ‘James had left his high school letterman jacket at my house. I called James and told him he left his jacket there and he said, “Just throw it away; I don’t really want it any more.” But I kept it, I still have it actually. It says “J. Hetfield” on the neck and in embroidery on the front it says “James”. I told him about it maybe five years ago and told him he could have it back if he wanted it for like his kids or whatever and he was like, “No, but keep it. Don’t sell it, just keep it.” And I still have it.’
So it was in the week between Christmas and New Year 1982, that Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine packed as much of their gear as they could onto another trailer – this time paid for with their own money and not Ron’s – and drove north up the California coast road to San Francisco, where they had arranged to stay temporarily at their friend Mark Whitaker’s house at 3132 Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito, in the East Bay. Whitaker was a well-known face on the SF club scene. Having taken on the role of manager for local boys Exodus, he had also helped out recently at several Metallica gigs, now becoming their full-time live sound engineer and general dogsbody. When he agreed to let James, Lars and Dave stay for a few days over the Christmas holidays of 1982, he had no idea what he was letting himself in for. By February 1983 all three had moved in permanently and Whitaker’s El Cerrito house was quickly nicknamed the Metallimansion. It would become the band’s HQ for the next three years – the place where they would not only write the material that would comprise some of the greatest albums of their career, but where they began to live the rock ’n’ roll life they had only previously fantasised about. Or: ‘every cliché that you could muster up’, as Lars put it. ‘Me and James each had a bedroom. Dave Mustaine slept on the couch. Dogs running around. We had the old garage converted into a rehearsal room with egg cartons. It was the refuge, the sanctuary for everybody in the neighbourhood. People would come over and live there, hang there. It was a lot of fun – when you’re nineteen.’ It was also the place where they would forge the ‘gang mentality’ they would need to keep them strong through the testing times ahead – ‘this tiny little situation. Nobody can stray outside of…the thing you do.’
As Ron Quintana recalls, ‘The Carlson pad was a fairly normal first pad away from home for three young LA transplants, but quickly things got wilder! The three of them would have nothing to do in El Cerrito but drink vodka most days and practise those days Cliff made the hour drive north from his comfortable Castro Valley parents’ pad. Most nights they would hang out and drink or go to Exodus’ practice studio and party or an occasional Berkeley Keystone metal show or Metal Mondays at the Old Waldorf or shows at Mabuhay or Stone.’ Weekends would