Mustaine

by Dave Mustaine

  Unloading speakers before a show with Ron.

  Photograph by Brian Lew.

  I knew this would infuriate Ron, but I didn’t care. My rationale went something like this:

  I don’t like you, I don’t like that you pinned this break-in on me, I don’t like that you’re a mama’s boy, I don’t like that you seem to have everything going on, everything handed to you, and you don’t appreciate it. It doesn’t seem like you’re one of us.

  By this point, in the late fall of 1982, Metallica had begun performing regularly in San Francisco, where the metal scene was significantly less artificial than it had been in Los Angeles. Hair and makeup mattered less than the music. When it came to playing music, Metallica was like nothing anyone had seen or heard before. But there was always room for improvement. And that’s where Cliff Burton came in.

  Backstage with Metallica. Our first photograph with Cliff Burton in 1983.

  Photograph by Brian Lew.

  Cliff was the star bass player for a Bay Area band called Trauma. That term alone—“star bass player”—should tell you something, because bass players are typically at the bottom of the rock ’n’ roll food chain. Guitar players and singers are at the top, drummers in the middle, bass players at the bottom. I was once quoted as saying, “Playing the bass is one step up from playing the kazoo,” which predictably pissed off a lot of bass players, but it’s essentially true. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and Cliff was definitely not a glorified kazoo player. He was brilliant. The first time I saw him play, I knew he was something special, and so did Lars and James, which is why they began surreptitiously courting Cliff while Ron McGovney was still in the band.*

  Cliff was worthy of pursuit, and I think we all (with the exception of Ron) saw him as the “missing piece.” We had arrived in San Francisco as the band of the moment, an underground sensation that quickly surpassed everyone, even the popular local thrash kings Exodus. We were locked and loaded, with an exhausting stage show featuring a dangerous, loudmouthed motherfucker on guitar and a variation on heavy metal that was at once heavier, faster, and more melodic. We were the real deal. As was Cliff. Trauma was nothing special, but everyone knew the band was worth watching if only to witness Cliff’s wizardry with a wah-wah pedal. It’s not often that a bass player stands out as the star of a band, but Cliff, with a wild mane of hair and an athletic, muscular style of playing, pulled it off. He was an innovator.

  He also was reluctant to join Metallica or any other band not based in the Bay Area. But Lars kept pursuing Cliff. Eventually, when Ron departed, just a few days after the violation of his Washburn bass,‡ the door was open for Cliff to join the band. But concessions would have to be made. Cliff was impressed by what he’d seen of our work and more than willing to trade Trauma for Metallica. Under one condition.

  We’d have to move to San Francisco.

  If there was any hand-wringing over this decision, I don’t recall it. We all knew Cliff was talented enough to present what would ordinarily be considered an outrageous bargaining chip: Relocate the whole band? For a bass player! He was that good. And we were that driven; we were willing to do anything to be successful. I think we all recognized that by adding Cliff, we could become the greatest band in the world.

  THE TRANSITION TOOK a few months, during which we altered living and professional arrangements in a half-assed attempt to save some money and prepare for the move to San Francisco. Shortly before Christmas 1982, James got the boot from Ron McGovney (no surprise, since Ron was understandably reluctant to continue supporting James after splitting with Metallica). I’d already moved back into my mother’s house because . . . well, because I was broke. So I invited James to come and live with me and my mother, creating a variation on the Three’s Company theme with predictably disastrous results. Suddenly you had two heavy metal warriors living with my mom, the quiet little housekeeper. To say she was bummed by the whole arrangement would be an understatement, and not merely because of her religious affiliation. The lifestyle we were leading—the drinking, fighting, carousing—was enough to give any parent cause for concern. But to have it happening under her own roof? It couldn’t have been easy. Especially as she came to realize that it wasn’t merely a phase. I was pretty good at playing guitar, and I was serious about making a living at it. But that wasn’t the only reason I played. It wasn’t only about strutting and getting laid and trying to become famous. When I held a guitar in my hands, I felt good about myself. When I played music, I felt a sense of comfort and accomplishment that I’d never known as a child. When I replicated the songs that I loved, I felt an attachment to them and to the musicians who had composed them. And when I started writing songs of my own, I felt like an artist, able to express myself for the very first time. Maybe my mother sensed all of this, and that’s why she put up with all the craziness. Or maybe that’s just what mothers do.

  Playing with Cliff Burton at the Metallica mansion (Mark Whitaker’s house).

  Photograph by Brian Lew.

  Regardless, out of respect for my mom (and fear of getting caught), I stopped dealing drugs and tried to earn some cash in a more reputable manner. Lars had gotten an overnight job delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Times, and he asked me if I wanted a job, too. I did it for a little while, but I hated the hours and the drudgery of the work. Sometimes, just to make it more interesting, Lars and I would deliver papers together. We’d drive around in his mom’s AMC Pacer, careening through neighborhoods, sometimes sideswiping parked cars or mailboxes. There were few images funnier than Lars driving the Pacer, which was basically a fishbowl on wheels. To see him weaving down the street in one of the ugliest cars in history, chucking newspapers out the window, with no regard for where they landed, you couldn’t help but laugh. It was like a video game: Evil Danish Paperboy!

  All you needed was Orson Welles or James Earl Jones providing the narration: “Metallica is coming to get you!”

  By February of 1983 we had relocated to the Bay Area, specifically to the El Cerrito home of Exodus manager Mark Whitakker, who would soon become Metallica’s road manager and facilitator. Mark’s place, affectionately known as the Metallica Mansion, became ground zero for all things related to the band. Lars and James moved right in and took the two available bedrooms. I settled for a shitty little box of a room—with no shower, sink, or refrigerator—at the home of Mark’s grandmother, roughly an hour away. I lived out of a Styrofoam cooler, into which I would pack everything I needed for the day . . . or for two days . . . maybe even three. One of the guys, usually Cliff Burton, would pick me up in the morning and drive me to rehearsal. Cliff and I got pretty close in those first couple months, simply because we spent so much time together. We’d drive back and forth, smoking some of Cliff’s horrible homegrown pot, talking about music and listening to music. And not just metal or even vintage hard rock, but stuff you’d never associate with Metallica. I can recall several instances in which we were driving along, sharing a joint, and singing out loud to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

  When rehearsal would end, and the other guys would start talking about doing something else with the rest of the day, I’d suggest we keep playing. Not necessarily because I loved rehearsal, but because I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to that little house by myself. Sometimes I would just refuse to leave; I’d sleep on the couch for days on end. It was a strange and surreal hand-to-mouth existence. I’d been there before, of course; I’d grown up poor, panhandled for beer money, knew how it felt to wear the same pair of dirty jeans for days on end and to live off boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. I think it was harder for Lars and James. And for that reason, along with the fact that I considered us to be brothers-in-arms, I often found myself standing up for them.

  There was, for example, the time we were all at a party, and in walked the guys from a band known as Armored Saint. As sometimes happens in these situations, harmless verbal jousting gave way to nasty, personal insults, paving the way for a physical confrontatio
n. They targeted Lars, probably because he was the smallest. I don’t remember exactly how it began; I do remember jumping off my chair and telling them to leave my friend alone. They laughed at me, much as they had been laughing at Lars, which was not a good idea. Lars may not have been a fighter, but I was. I had training and expertise. More important, I didn’t give a shit.

  As the guys from Armored Saint dog-piled on top of Lars, I ran across the room and applied a side kick to the first person in my path. His name was Phil Sandoval, and he was the band’s lead guitarist. The first thing I heard was a loud crack! Like the sound of a branch snapping in half. And then the sound of someone wailing as Phil fell to the floor and grabbed his lower leg.

  I’d broken his ankle.

  Needless to say, that was the end of the fight. I tell this story not to brag, but simply as a way of pointing out how I felt about Lars, James, and Cliff. I would have done anything for them. They were my friends.*

  Although he looked the part of a gunslinger, James wasn’t big on confrontation either. One night I went to the Mabuhay Gardens, a nightclub in North Beach colloquially known as the “Old Mabuhay,” with James and his girlfriend. While we were waiting outside for the club to open, a girl came running out of a nearby alleyway, flailing her arms and screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “He broke my nose! He broke my nose!”

  I had no idea who she was or what had happened. And I didn’t care. Instantly I felt the rush of adrenaline you get before a fight. I looked at James, didn’t say a word. I just smiled, and I could tell what he was probably thinking.

  Oh, what’s this crazy fucker gonna do now?

  Finally, I touched him on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go, dude!”

  So we ventured into the alley, hardly able to see a thing. I was quiet, but behind me, James was grunting, snorting, yelping half-baked threats.

  “Gonna kill you, motherfucker!”

  I almost laughed. James wasn’t so much threatening anyone as he was whistling past the graveyard. You know, like you did when you were a kid, trying to convince yourself that you weren’t afraid of anything when in reality you were about to shit your pants.

  At the end of the alleyway was a parked van. As we drew near, with James still yelling, the driver’s-side door opened, and out stepped this big son of a bitch.

  “Which one of you assholes wants to kill me?” he said, the look on his face signaling either inebriation or a complete lack of fear. Maybe both.

  Before I could respond, James took a quick step backward and yelled, “He does!”

  I turned around to see James pointing at me.

  Thanks a lot, brother . . .

  There wasn’t time for an explanation. The big guy lunged at me, and as he moved forward, I opened my hand, thumb pointing down, and grabbed the back of his neck. Then I swept his foot out from underneath him, threw him on the ground, and started rabbit-punching his head until he was unconscious.

  A few minutes later the cops arrived and took the guy away in handcuffs. James and I went back to hanging out in front of the club, acting like nothing had happened, but inside I was pretty shaken up. When I woke the next morning my hand was swollen and sore, like I’d punched a wall. When James asked me if I was okay, I just nodded. We never talked explicitly about the way that incident unfolded. There was no point. We are who we are. And I accepted James as such.

  Chapter 5

  Dumped by Alcoholica

  Playing a fierce solo on Lars’s belly while carefully avoiding the wang bar.

  Photograph by William Hale.

  “You’re a bad motherfucker!”

  San Francisco, with its thriving club scene and vigorous metal fans, proved to be a warm and welcoming place for Metallica. We played our first show with Cliff on March 5, at the Stone. On March 19 we played for a second time, at the same club. In between, we recorded another demo and watched our popularity soar. It seemed as though we had taken over the city in a matter of just a few short weeks. Not that anyone seemed to mind the invasion; it was actually a nice environment up there, with a lot of bands pursuing similar goals, playing and loving the same type of music, what would come to be known as thrash metal. The jealousy and posturing that typified the L.A. club scene was mostly absent in the Bay Area, and we bonded quickly and easily with other musicians, most notably (and ironically, as it would turn out), those in the band Exodus. At one point I even became blood brothers with some of the guys in their band. Like, real blood brothers—cutting our hands and swapping fluid in a manner that, in retrospect, given the lifestyles we led, can only be termed reckless.*

  ANYWAY, METALLICA SEEMED to be moving at warp speed. One morning in April 1983, I rolled out of bed, bleary eyed, hungover, and smelling like bad cottage cheese, and saw a U-Haul was in the driveway. Everything had happened so fast that I didn’t even know (or, frankly, care about) most of the details. If anyone wonders why I became such a control freak later in my career, well, the evolution has its roots right here. I was perfectly content to go along for the ride.

  The No Life Till Leather demo had drifted east and wound up in the hands of a guy named Jon Zazula. “Jonny Z” owned a popular record shop in New Jersey called Rock and Roll Heaven that was well known for finding and promoting underground artists. He also was an aspiring record producer; after hearing the demo, and seeing the reaction to it among customers, Jonny Z offered Metallica an opportunity to play a few shows in and around New York and to help the band secure a recording contract. Most of the discussions regarding this arrangement went on without my knowledge or involvement. Days later, when we arrived in New Jersey and I discovered that my name wasn’t on any of the contracts and got a little nervous, Lars suggested that I was overreacting.

  So I let it go.

  I suppose I could blame Lars or James or even Mark Whitakker for cutting me out of the loop, which they did, but I also have to take responsibility for failing to keep my eye on the ball. I was too busy fucking and getting fucked-up. These guys were my friends, and despite our periodic disagreements, I trusted them.

  My mistake.

  Just one of many, as it turned out.

  A woman I’ll call Jennifer was my bed partner the night before we left San Francisco. She was, at the time, the semiserious girlfriend of Kirk Hammett, the guitar player from Exodus (like I said, we shared a lot of things with the guys in Exodus). Jennifer was a cute girl who liked guitar players, and I certainly didn’t mind hanging out with her. As I walked out of the bedroom, Lars and James were waiting.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Give me a few minutes to shower. I can’t go all the way to New York like this.”

  They nodded. Everything seemed perfectly fine. But it wasn’t. I had no idea that my time in the band was nearing an end.

  There has been much dispute regarding the timeline of events during this period of Metallica, but here is what I believe happened. At some point in the preceding weeks, or maybe even months, a flirtation had begun; Lars and James—Lars, mainly—had discussed with Kirk Hammett the possibility of Kirk joining Metallica. Since there was neither room nor need for a second lead guitar player, his role was clear: he would replace me.

  Metallica posing on the side of Mark’s house.

  Photograph by Brian Lew.

  Regardless, I never saw it coming.

  WE PACKED A twenty-four-foot U-Haul and attached James’s pickup truck to the back. At any given time, three of us rode up front, in the cab of the U-Haul. The other two passengers, including Mark Whitakker, who was now officially Metallica’s road manager, slept in the cargo bay, where the temperature alternately soared and plummeted and the vibrations rattling off the sheet-metal walls made it feel like the inside of a trash can. We stopped for beer less than a mile after pulling out of the driveway and remained in a drunken stupor for most of the trip.

  For the first few hundred miles, we fed off the adrenaline of embarking on a new venture. I remember crossing a bridge out of California into Nevada and feeling
a rush of excitement and accomplishment, as if for the very first time I was doing something important with my life. I was in love with the idea that I had been presented with a gift: the opportunity to play music for a living. And it was almost like that Willie Nelson song, “On the Road Again,” which so perfectly captures the appeal of the circus life, of playing music and performing in front of crowds. He totally nailed that aspect of the troubadour’s existence.

  Everything gets old, though, doesn’t it? After a while, as the miles clicked away, we all grew irritable and weary. Whenever it was my turn to get in the back I’d feel a wave of anxiety; I’d imagine someone falling asleep at the wheel and the U-Haul tumbling off a bridge, and I’d see myself drowning in the back, the last moment of my life devoted to gulping stale air out of one of Lars’s tom-toms. The sunshine and warmth of California gave way to the gray clouds and snow of Utah and Wyoming, and I took a turn at the wheel. I was a surfer kid who had grown up driving in little cars on crowded but pristine highways, so this was new territory for me, in more ways than one. I’d never driven a commercial vehicle, and only a couple times (on ski trips) had I driven in the snow. So I was totally unprepared when we hit a patch of black ice and began sliding sideways across the interstate.

  For a moment everything slowed down, just like they say it does in an accident. The only way I can describe the sensation is to equate it to surfing. Like when you’re riding a wave and you walk down the nose of the board, and the fin pops out of the water, leaving you rudderless. It’s a feeling of helplessness and inexplicable exhilaration. And it’s exactly what I felt as the U-Haul truck careened across the highway, completely out of control, eventually spinning to a halt with half of its body on the shoulder and the other half facing oncoming traffic. We all jumped out of the truck, laughed nervously, the way you do when you can’t believe you’re still alive, and prepared to go on with the trip. Suddenly, though, an eighteen wheeler went roaring by, swerving at the last second. And then came a Jeep Wrangler, right at us. We froze for a moment and then began diving for cover, just as the Jeep spun out and slammed into the front of the U-Haul. I grabbed Mark Whitakker at the last second, pulling him out of the path of the oncoming vehicle and perhaps saving his life in the process.