Enter Night_ A Biography of Metallica - Mick Wall [96]
Certainly more mainstream fans were now starting to queue up for Metallica. Martin Hooker recalls how it took ‘weeks and months of really pushing and slogging, and advertising and getting gigs’ to start the commercial avalanche that was about to begin tumbling in Europe. ‘It was the old school of hard work. I spent over a hundred thousand dollars in tour support, which in those days was a gargantuan amount of money. My [business] partner Steve Mason thought I was mental. But then it started to pay off and by that time we were starting to re-press in five thousands at a time and it’s all starting to look much more sensible.’ He adds, ‘The main thing that took it to the next level was the kids themselves, the word of mouth. Apart from the occasional play on the [Radio 1] Friday Rock Show they were getting no radio or TV whatsoever, a bit of press from the specialists but nothing from the mainstream. But the word of mouth was just unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.’
Hooker’s right-hand man, Gem Howard recalls: ‘They were four kids who were out having a great time. Things were changing in their career. They weren’t that big at home [in America] at that time. Then we started touring them across Europe, which is when you started to notice it.’ Spirits were high, despite their meagre surroundings. ‘The gear was either in a truck or we were sharing it with Venom or Twisted Sister or whoever we were out with.’ Gem, who had previously toured with The Exploited and Madness, was struck by their in-van listening habits: ‘Every other band I’d worked with tended to listen to the kind of music they played. But with Metallica, they’d be playing The Misfits and smashing the van to bits while driving along. Then they’d play Simon & Garfunkel; then it was Ennio Morricone. Cliff was always the one that put on the most bizarre stuff. Lars was like the frontman. If you wanted to know anything about the band – anything at all – he would talk about it. That’s really helpful ’cos it meant that everybody that wanted an interview got an interview with substance.’ James ‘was less sure of himself in those days. He had very bad acne early on – an embarrassment, particularly if you’re trying to put yourself across as a frontman.’ He recalls Hetfield still taking about getting a full-time singer in as late as the summer of 1984: ‘He was always saying that they should get in a singer. He wasn’t happy…As he got older and more successful and the skin’s healed up and his skinny lanky frame took on muscle, and he got the girls, he realised that, yeah, I am a frontman. Which is quite different to the reasons that most people are frontmen; most people do it because of their ego, despite having a lack of talent.’
James also stood apart from the other three when it came to some of the more usual on-the-road pursuits. ‘He didn’t indulge in anything other than a drink,’ says Gem, ‘which set him apart a bit. I remember getting [some cocaine] in at some point and [James] was like, “Oh, we shouldn’t be spending the money on this.” I just said, “Look under your pillow.” I’d stuck a couple of bottles of vodka there and he was happy as a pig in shit. That’s early days, though, when you didn’t have enough money to go out and buy bottles of spirit out of your own pocket, and he just felt that he’d been catered for, which I think is a very important part of looking after any band anyway.’ Or as Cliff sagely put it, ‘You don’t burn out from going too fast. You burn out from going too slow and getting bored.’
They also developed some good habits on tour, says Gem: ‘The other thing that made them stand out from virtually everyone else that I’ve ever worked with is that they always had signing sessions after a show.’ Even at shows they weren’t headlining, they would set up tables in the corridors backstage specifically to meet and greet the fans. ‘They would finish