RON QUINTANA (San Francisco radio DJ, ex–fanzine editor): In 1980, there was no metal in any real magazine in America. Circus would maybe show pseudo-metal bands like Scorpions or Ozzy, and an occasional Black Sabbath. They hardly ever showed Motörhead or Iron Maiden, or anything coming out of Europe. And the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was pretty big hype for England in 1979 and 1980, so we’d read about it if we could ever find any of the British papers—Sounds, New Music Express, or Melody Maker. That’s why a lot of fans started their own fanzines.
LARS ULRICH (Metallica): The scenes were all centered around stores that imported a lot of records and driven by word-of-mouth, grassroots movements, and tape trading. By the time you got a copy of a demo, it was like the fourteenth generation of it. You could barely make it out, but man, you knew it was the thing: “Hey, guess what, I got a demo you don’t have, ha-ha. I’m super extra cool.” It was sort of like the early version of the Internet.
RON QUINTANA: I met Lars on the streets of Berkeley on Telegraph [Avenue] going into a record store. Back then, anybody wearing jackets with buttons and patches of underground bands from Europe was pretty noticeable. My friend ran over and talked Lars into coming up to our party spot in the middle of Golden Gate Park. Since Lars was from Denmark and knew all about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, we all accosted him and pointed at his patches for Silverwing or Demon Pact, because we had only read about these bands. He told us all about the groups, and we all listened intently. It’s funny, because Lars was a total metal guy, but he was also this tennis kid down in LA in Newport Beach. So he went back to LA after our party to play tennis, and then he’d come up every once in a while and we’d go on record trips to Tower Records and this store in Walnut Creek named the Record Exchange. Those were the only places you could buy metal imports. It was an hour east of San Francisco, so it was quite a trek. Lars would pick us up in his little green Pacer. It was kind of like the Wayne’s World car. Not very metal at all.
BRIAN SLAGEL (chairman/CEO, Metal Blade): I hadn’t started Metal Blade Records yet when I went with my friend John Kornarens in December 1980 to see the Michael Schenker Group at the Country Club [in Reseda, California]. While we were there, he saw a kid wearing a European Saxon T-shirt, so John ran up to this kid and said, “Do you know who Saxon is?” The kid turned out to be Lars Ulrich. I’ll never forget hanging out at his family’s condo in Newport Beach. He had a drum set sitting in the corner. It wasn’t even put together. He said, “I’m going to start a band,” and we’re like “Yeah, sure you are.” He was a crazy little kid. When we went to the record store with him, he’d be out of the car and at the metal bin before we even shut the engine off. He had to get there first.
While Tower Records and the Record Exchange were selling vinyl and tapes to California metalheads, a less flashy but even more influential mom-and-pop retail outlet was taking root in Clark, New Jersey; it would indirectly help launch the careers of Metallica, Anthrax, Overkill, and others.
JONNY ZAZULA (Megaforce Records founder): Before thrash metal started taking off, my wife Marsha and I had a flea market store in New Jersey, where we were selling predominantly picture discs from Europe by bands like the Kinks. But there was one picture disc I really loved, and it was Judas Priest’s Sad Wings of Destiny. Someone gave me $200 for it. I said, “Wow, this is amazing.” I realized there was a real market for metal, so I started bringing in other things like that. And then I met Maria Ferrero [longtime Megaforce Records publicist and the current owner of Adrenaline PR]. She came knocking on my door to buy Motörhead and I really didn’t know much about them, but I found the album and I got it for her. We got to the point where all we would buy was metal, nothing else.
MARIA FERRERO (Adrenaline PR founder, ex–Megaforce publicist): Jonny and Marsha were the champions of metal. They brought us the goods and we ate it up.
BOBBY “BLITZ” ELLSWORTH (Overkill): Jonny’s flea market was part of a big supermarket that sold everything from Indian tapestries to cleaning solutions. Overkill wasn’t a band at the time yet, but we would all go out there and be exposed to things like Raven and Anvil. Jonny slowly became this local guru because he held the gold.
While Zazula was selling Saxon and Motörhead albums, across the country in Los Angeles, Metallica front man James Hetfield was just getting started. And Ulrich was learning to keep a steady beat—initially with limited success.
RON McGOVNEY (ex-Metallica): James and I went to junior high and high school together. In high school we had our lockers by each other. He was the rocker kid with the Aerosmith shirt, and I had an Elvis Presley sticker on my notebook, so he’d always make fun of Elvis and I’d make fun of Aerosmith, but we became friends. James had a band called Obsession and I was one of their roadies. We started going to clubs when we were seventeen and seeing Hollywood bands. That’s when I really got into Mötley Crüe, because they were so different. We just looked at their ad in BAM magazine, and I was like, “Hey man, this band looks cool—let’s go watch them.” So James and I went down and saw them, and he was like, “Yeah, whatever,” but I thought it was awesome.
RON QUINTANA: On one of his trips to San Francisco, Lars said he was a drummer. My friends in Metal Church—at the time they were called Church of Metal—were looking for a drummer. They had made this amazing demo, and back then they were probably the heaviest band in America. So I set up an audition for Lars with them in early ’81. But he disappeared and he didn’t show up for months after that. We didn’t know what happened or if he could actually drum.
As it turned out, Ulrich was in the UK following some of his favorite bands. Having grown up in an art community in Copenhagen with ultra-liberal parents, he retained worldly perspective as a teenager and was allowed to travel back and forth to Europe on his own.
BRIAN TATLER (Diamond Head): Back in 1981, Diamond Head still hadn’t gotten a record deal, so we decided to sell our first album ourselves via mail order for 3 pounds 50. We advertised for six weeks in Sounds magazine, which Lars regularly read, and he ordered his copy. Well, he loved it and he wrote back to the fan club address, which was at [vocalist] Sean Harris’s house, and said how much he loved the band. He even phoned Sean and Sean’s mum a few times. Next thing you know, he shows up at this gig in London at the Woolwich Odeon in 1981, and he introduced himself and said he flew over from California to see us. That was astounding to us—that a seventeen-year-old had flown over from America to see us in England. I asked him where he was staying, and he hadn’t arranged to stay anywhere yet. So I said, “Well, come stay with me.” He literally jumped in the car with the rest of the band and we drove back up to the Midlands, and he slept on my floor in my bedroom. I still lived with my parents, so he slept in my brother’s old sleeping bag on the floor for a week. Then he went and stayed with Sean for four weeks.
LARS ULRICH: In the fall of 1981, after coming back from a trip in England, I wanted to put a band together. I put together an ad in The Recycler saying, “Heavy metal drummer looking for other musicians. Influences: Tygers of Pan Tang, Angel Witch, Saxon.” Most people would call up and be like, “I’m into heavy metal but I’ve never heard of any of those bands. But I like Journey and I like REO Speedwagon. Does that work?” One of the guys that called up was a guy named Hugh Tanner. He came down with his rhythm guitar player, this James Hetfield guy, who basically spent the whole afternoon not saying one fucking word. I mean, I’d never met anyone that shy in my life. We had a bit of a jam and nothing much materialized out of that. My ability on the drums at that time was basically zero. I think they were secretly laughing at me. But there was something about this guy Hetfield. The way he played, his aura, his vibe.
RON McGOVNEY: James and I were in Leather Charm; I played bass. We only had “Hit the Lights,” which we played in Metallica. And there were riffs from three different Leather Charm songs that James put together later to make the Metallica song “No Remorse.”
LARS ULRICH: I called up Hetfield and I said, “M
y friend’s putting this [heavy metal compilation] record together. Do you want to take another shot at it?” He came down and we started hanging out pretty much every day. I started subjecting him to every single New Wave of British Heavy Metal thing, from Praying Mantis to Black Axe to Silverwing. Then we basically wrote a song together—“Hit the Lights.”
RON QUINTANA: Me and Lars prepared band names and magazine titles. I had Metallica on my list for magazine names, but I liked Metal Mania better, and, of course, he liked Metallica better. It came from the Encyclopedia Metallica, an English book that was hard to find in America that was all about English heavy metal bands.
BRIAN SLAGEL: So Lars finds out I’m doing this record [Metal Massacre I] and he says, “If I started a band, would you put me on your compilation?” I said, “Sure.” Him and James had been jamming for a while but couldn’t find anyone else who liked what they liked. So they’d stopped jamming. Typical Lars. He was scattered. They recorded that song, “Hit the Lights,” the night before the very last day [of the deadline for the compilation]. I kept pressuring him, saying, “This record is going to press. I need your track.” So they recorded on [a Fostex four-track tape recorder] and he brought a cassette to the mastering session, and the engineer told him, “It has to be on quarter-inch reel,” which would cost $50 to transfer—but I didn’t have $50, Lars didn’t have $50. So my friend John Kornarens actually paid for it because if he didn’t, it wasn’t going to get on the record.
RON McGOVNEY: When this thing from Brian Slagel came up about doing a song for Metal Massacre, Lars didn’t have a complete band and I thought Lars was a horrible drummer, so I told James and Lars, “You guys just go ahead and do whatever you want.” But they were at my house, so I’d sit there and watch them play. They would try out bass players, and one night I’m watching a guy try “Hit the Lights,” and I’m like, “Wait a minute, let me plug in here and I’ll show you how to play it.” And James and Lars go, “Why don’t you just be in the band?” I said, “OK.” When Metal Massacre came up, Lars knew [guitarist] Lloyd Grant from somewhere. I didn’t know him. So, there’s a knock at the door and there’s this black Jamaican dude standing there, and it’s Lloyd. He plugs in, and he’s a ripping guitar player. He did lead guitar on the first pressing of Metal Massacre for “Hit the Lights,” and James played my bass and did vocals, and Lars played drums. My name is misspelled and Metallica is misspelled. When they reissued Metal Massacre, we had already done the No Life ’Til Leather demo, and they just took the song off of that. Of course, by then Mustaine was in the band.
DAVE MUSTAINE: I was leafing through The Recycler and an ad caught my attention. It was the first to reference, not one or two, but three of my favorite bands: Iron Maiden, Motörhead, and Budgie. I would soon discover Lars was an avid collector of music from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Deep down inside, a very long time ago, we really were kindred spirits. We met a few days later at Lars’s condo in Newport Beach. We shook hands and went right upstairs to his bedroom. Lars played me a rough demo of “Hit the Lights.” The song wasn’t bad. The afternoon ended with a handshake. Lars called again a few days later, wanting to know whether I’d be able to meet him and the other guys in Norwalk, where Ron McGovney lived. There was a weird vibe almost from the moment I arrived. While I set up, everyone else went into another room. I plugged in my amp and warmed up. I kept playing, faster and louder, figuring somebody would walk in and start jamming with me. But they never did. Finally, after a half hour, I put down the guitar and opened the door into the house. The entire group was sitting there, drinking and getting high, watching television. Lars smiled at me and waved [and said] “You got the job.”
RON McGOVNEY: I remember Dave calling my house, and I answered and this guy starts spouting off about all these guitars he’s got and all these amps and everything, and I remember saying to James and Lars: “If either one of you want to take this, this guy’s head’s not going to fit through the door.” Within a couple of hours he was over there, and he had a B. C. Rich guitar and a fake Marshall amp spray painted with a Marshall logo on it. He plugged in, and we were like, “Wow, this guy’s smokin’.” But all he did was rattle on about himself.
By the early eighties, Metal Blade was the premier West Coast indie label for underground metal. As ambitious as it was financially challenged, the label released four Metal Massacre compilations before 1983, and soon after, put out albums by Bitch, Slayer, Voivod, Fates Warning, Hellhammer, and others. The East Coast equivalents were Jonny Z’s Megaforce, initial home of Metallica, Anthrax, Overkill, and Testament; Combat Records, which released albums by Megadeth, Possessed, Dark Angel, and others; and Shrapnel, which focused on shredders like Steeler (which included a young Yngwie Malmsteen), Cacophony (featuring future Megadeth axeman Marty Friedman, and Racer X (showcasing Paul Gilbert). In the UK, Music For Nations distributed Exciter, Manowar, and Metallica; and Neat Records released Venom, Raven, and Tygers of Pan Tang.
JOHN GALLAGHER (Raven): Neat Records was a little project studio [in England] that used to do recordings for the local bands playing the workingmen’s clubs so they could have a 45 vinyl single to sell at shows. In ’79 they put out a record by Tygers of Pan Tang [“Don’t Touch Me There”] that did really well. Tygers manager Tom Noble saw us play and said, “Would you like to do a record, too?” and we said, “We certainly would.” We did the “Don’t Need Your Money” single [in 1980] and it took off, so we never looked back. Except, by the third record we were still unsigned, and we were making no money and getting zero promotion, and we were really frustrated. Then we got the opportunity to come to America with Metallica.
JONNY ZAZULA: The owner of Neat was a jolly good fellow named Dave Wood, and when I brought Raven over to America, Dave wanted to come too, so I had to pay for Dave. From that, he gave me approval to book concerts for Venom, who had never done any American shows. In fact, they had done six shows in their life. When their first album came out, they weren’t even a band. Dave stayed in our house in a room across from my bedroom and one night at about 3 a.m., he wanders into my bedroom and starts peeing all over my wife Marsha. He thought he was in the bathroom.
CONRAD “CRONOS” LANT (Venom): We always used to say that Venom was all of our favorite bands thrown into a pot and mixed up—the stage show of KISS, the lyrics of Sabbath, the speed of Motörhead, the look of Judas Priest. We were trying to use as many influences as we could to make the ultimate metal band, but also be original.
JOHN GALLAGHER: Venom’s vocalist and bassist, Conrad—or Cronos, as he called himself—was the tape operator at the studios at Neat. That’s how he eventually got recorded. He bugged the guy who ran the studio: “Can we do a demo? Can we do a demo?” So, of course, they finally did. But Venom had a master plan, which was to never play live and just build this mystique, and to a large degree they succeeded. There was such a demand for them to play live. When they finally did, they got paid outrageous amounts of money. But they were terrible and did stupid things. When they first came to America, they brought black [explosive] powder over on the airplane. You try that now and you’re in jail for twenty-five years.
JONNY ZAZULA: They brought all this pyro that they were told not to bring. But they convinced me it was safe. Kids waited for them for two and a half hours while they were busy stringing bombs to everything. When the bombs went off the whole front row turned black. I went up to the balcony to get my head together, and two of the explosives were up on the balcony. [That pyro] could have taken kids’ heads off.
SCOTT IAN: For me and all my friends, [1981’s] Welcome to Hell was our first exposure to Venom, and it was a huge eye-opener. It was one of those “holy shit” records. Like, “Jesus Christ, listen to this. These guys are fucking insane.” There were songs like “Sons of Satan,” and the title track. It was so, so evil. This was a new kind of insanity.
JONNY ZAZULA: We brought Venom over to our house. When they came in, Cronos took glasses out of the kitchen cabinet and starte
d chewing them and everyone freaked out. He left a few of the broken glasses in my cabinet as souvenirs. He wanted me to have them one day to put in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
CRONOS: Venom was unlike anything at the time. People credit us with starting [the thrash metal] movement and all, but the truth is, I think it was inevitable. Punk had died. Metal was lame. There could only be one new way to do this—for metal bands to get some fucking balls again.
Venom’s pyrotechnic performances, Satanic lyrics, and occult imagery were hugely inspirational for Slayer, Possessed, Hellhammer, and others. However, Venom was musically limited, and when they tried to be anything but a really evil Motörhead, they fell on their snarling faces. It took Metallica’s blend of razor-edged New Wave of British Heavy Metal riffs and hardcore punk to really ignite the thrash movement. But first they had to break out of the cock-rock scene in LA.
JAMES HETFIELD (Metallica): So we get this gig—our first ever. The crew at sound check steal a keg from the place. The venue calls us up and says, “Well, you’re canceled.” We said, “Oh, we’ll bring the keg back, hold on!” It was our first run-in with what you were supposed to do and not do in the music business. But yeah, basically seek and destroy. Drink, smash stuff up, feel good.
LARS ULRICH: Initially [for our fans] it wasn’t just about identifying with the songs. It was also identifying with what the band represented. We were the antithesis to what most of the bigger bands were doing at that time. In ’83, ’84, ’85, the music scene in America was still dominated by the major labels. We were the big fuck-you alternative to Loverboy and Journey and REO Speedwagon. At that time we were pretty fucking vocal about it, too. We made sure that everybody understood that we were the anti-Mötley Crüe.
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal Page 20