Metallica: This Monster Lives

by Joe Berlinger

  It seemed like a simple enough job at the time.

  In the early months of 2001, Metallica, the biggest hard-rock band of the last twenty years, arguably the biggest band in the world, got together in their hometown of San Francisco. They rented a converted bunker in the Presidio, a former U.S. army post near the Golden Gate Bridge; assembled a makeshift studio with their longtime producer, Bob Rock; and got down to the business of recording their first collection of new songs since 1997’s Reload. The project carried the burden of a lot of firsts. It would be the first album since 1986’s Master of Puppets to be recorded without bassist Jason Newsted, who had just recently quit the band. (Uncertain about a replacement, Metallica asked Bob to play bass during these sessions.) It was the first time Metallica was trying to make an album as an equal collective, after twenty years of singer-guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich bringing nearly finished songs to the studio and telling the others what to play. It was the first time that anyone but James was allowed to contribute lyrics. It was the first time they tried to write and record an album completely in the studio. It was, in fact, the first time Metallica showed up at the studio with nothing—no lyrics, titles, or riffs, only the ideas each one had in his head.

  When the Presidio sessions began, Metallica was a decade removed from its 1991 self-titled album (aka the Black Album), the record that had done more than anything else to make them international rock legends. The same sessions that produced the follow-up, Load, in 1996, also provided the bulk of the material for Reload, a year later. Since those sessions, Metallica had written and recorded a grand total of two original songs. In 2000, they alienated many of their fans by coming out strongly against the file-sharing software Napster. Now, as they gathered at the Presidio, the members of Metallica were all closing in on their fortieth birthdays. They were men struggling to remain relevant playing a youthful music they had largely invented.

  Nobody could have predicted it, but that bunker setting foreshadowed the long, hard slog that would result, more than two years later, in St. Anger, Metallica’s eighth full-length studio album. I was there from the fragile beginning to the bittersweet end, including the catastrophic middle. I was there at the behest of Metallica. The band had hired me and my filmmaking partner, Bruce Sinofsky, to shoot a promotional film about the making of a Metallica album. Compared to some of the situations Bruce and I had found ourselves in, this one seemed pretty straightforward. For my part, I was just glad to be working. The year before, around the same time as Metallica’s Napster debacle, I was busy alienating Berlinger-Sinofsky fans and becoming a Hollywood outcast to boot. I had made the sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Taking into account the scorn heaped upon this sequel and the high hopes following the massive success of the original, my film was one of the biggest disasters in recent Hollywood memory. First it sank a potentially lucrative franchise, and then it effectively killed the studio that made it.

  By the end of 2000, if you had to guess who would have the easier time ever making a successful work of art again—Joe Berlinger or James Hetfield—the smart money would have been on James. If you were to guess which creative partnership—Berlinger-Sinofsky or Metallica—was in the healthiest state, you’d have to go with the metal-heads. Thanks in part to my inability to deal effectively with long-standing tensions in our creative partnership, I had nearly destroyed my relationship with Bruce. Making the Metallica movie represented a tentative détente for us, but there were a lot of unresolved issues still festering.

  As it turned out, our cameras were rolling during the most turbulent period Metallica has ever experienced. And these were guys who knew a thing or two about turbulence. This was a band so driven that when original bassist Cliff Burton died in a van accident while on tour in Europe in 1986, Metallica’s three surviving members held auditions for his replacement the day after the funeral. Metallica has done more than any other band to make heavy metal “respectable” without blunting the music’s intensity or sacrificing the band’s own integrity Through sheer talent and stubborn will, Metallica has remained relevant even as its original metal contemporaries bloated to excess and bit the dust. Metallica survived the grunge onslaught of the early ’90s, the final nail in the coffin for many of the bands that were part of Metallica’s generation. More recently, the group has weathered the rise of rap-flavored “nü metal.” Metallica was a band of elder statesmen, but they’d emerged from their turbulent two decades as one of rock’s fiercest bands.

  What Bruce and I discovered during those early days at the Presidio was that Metallica, whose members had always united against the world, was threatening to collapse from its own internal divisions. Beaten down by years of being “Cliff Burton’s replacement” and ticked off that James wouldn’t let him tour with a side band, Jason Newsted became the first person in twenty years to defy James’s proud rule that “the only way you leave Metallica is in a body bag.” Jason’s departure cast a glaring light on James’s and Lars’s deteriorating relationship, as well as underlining guitarist Kirk Hammett’s own perceived backseat status. Metallica had kept going through sheer momentum for many years. Like a meteor that breaks up as it hits the Earth’s atmosphere, real life was catching up with these guys. “When they became people who got married and had serious relationships, they realized they didn’t have relationships with each other,” says Bob Rock, who, after ten years on the front lines, has probably the most intimate and objective view of Metallica of any outsider. “You become the biggest hard-rock band in the world, but you forget about the person you’re with.”

  Metallica’s huge fan base and personal fortunes notwithstanding, maybe Bruce and I weren’t so different from Metallica after all. We were all guys who were around the same age, who made our living making art in collaboration with other people, and who were now finally confronting hard truths about just what it means to work closely with these people who play such large parts in our lives. For this early insight, I largely thank Phil Towle. Phil is a therapist (he prefers the term “performance-enhancement coach”) whose specialty is working with creative types and pro sports teams. When the Jason Newsted problem began to reach a crisis point, shortly before we began filming, Metallica hired Phil to mediate the dispute. He zeroed in on the deeper problems plaguing the group, and Metallica asked him to stick around and conduct (rock) group therapy sessions. Amazingly Phil and Metallica welcomed our cameras. And that’s perhaps the oddest and bravest of St. Anger’s firsts: It’s the first rock record in history recorded with a documentary film crew and a therapist in almost constant close proximity.

  I felt like we had struck documentary gold. Here were a bunch of rock stars who’d gotten famous together actually jamming together for the first time, while simultaneously destroying their own hard-rockin’ image by submitting to introspective therapy sessions. Our project was clearly shaping up to be something other than the typical promotional video. On the other hand, jamming and therapy were all we had. At first, I really wasn’t sure that these two components would jell together into an interesting film. I’m a firm believer that every documentary needs a narrative arc, and this wasn’t much of one. Despite the shake-up in the band’s lineup and the soul-searching it provoked, the remaining members of Metallica seemed really jazzed and happy during those early weeks of filming. They were excited to be making a collaborative album, and they were acting all touchy-feely as they got in touch with their emotions in therapy. Any good narrative needs a conflict, something we were sorely lacking.

  It was with a certain amount of guilty relief that Bruce and I saw one developing after a few weeks. Something was clearly up with James. During the therapy sessions, he seemed increasingly uncomfortable. He let others do most of the talking. He was especially silent and moody, reluctant to bask in the good vibes. We didn’t know it yet—and James probably didn’t even realize it himself—but I think he was struggling with what it meant to let others participate in his writing process. Not to mention what it meant for him t
o allow a film crew to document his every move. “You don’t seem very psyched about this,” Lars said to him. He was talking about the music they were making, but he might just as well have been referring to the therapy that was bringing everyone together. Or our cameras.

  The band took a vacation after a few weeks. James flew to Russia to shoot bears and drown himself in vodka. The others didn’t know it, but James was spiraling downward. When he returned, things deteriorated quickly. James and Lars were at each other’s throats, and there wasn’t a whole lot Kirk and Bob could do about it. It’s no exaggeration to say that Lars and James are the Lennon-McCartney of current hard-rock bands. To our surprise, it looked to Bruce and me like we had stumbled into a Let It Be–style meltdown. This was certainly a dramatic arc. It looked like we had a film. Or did we? One night, after arguing with Lars, James got up, slammed the door, and walked out of our lives and into rehab. Our dramatic arc suddenly looked more like a line plunging straight down into the red.

  Nobody knew when—or even if—James would return. The future of the new album, and the very future of Metallica itself, was in question. Not to mention the future of our film. For a long time after James’s departure, we all operated on a certain amount of tenuous faith. Kirk and Lars believed that someday there would be a Metallica again, and Bruce and I believed, against what were probably even worse odds, that we would one day produce something much more powerful than an infomercial. Phil played a big role in keeping things moving, urging Lars and Kirk to continue therapy and not to scrap the film. Two years later, as the band came out on the other side and we began putting together our film, Lars told Rolling Stone that the cameras kept Metallica honest.

  I mention this not because I think our documentary, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, “saved” Metallica (I think Phil has more bragging rights there). Truthfully I’m sure there were times when Bruce and I—and the crew we dragged along with us—were a nuisance and probably made things harder for the band. Metallica got through this rough period through hard work and perseverance. It takes tremendous courage to open up your life to a camera’s eye for one day let alone two years. But I’m struck by what Lars said because it cuts to the heart of a question that I, and all documentary filmmakers, must constantly confront: Can (or should) a camera always serve as an objective chronicler of real life, a fly on the wall that exerts no influence on events? Or does it sometimes affect the “real life” it records?

  Myself, I’ve never believed that a camera can ever be purely objective. In Paradise Lost, a documentary Bruce and I made about three teenage boys accused of committing three Satanic-themed murders, our cameras impassively recorded the boys’ court trials. But the camera also affected the way people behaved, both in and out of the courtroom. I think filmmakers who film real life as it unfolds, and don’t admit that they sometimes influence the events they record, are in denial. In our films, Bruce and I try to explore this tension. That’s why I was so intrigued by what Lars said. And why even though Some Kind of Monster documents people in pain, I’m glad we were there when they figured out how to cope with it.

  The word “monster” gets thrown around in our film a lot. The title originated in an offhand remark James made when describing for Bob lyrics he was working on about a fractured man broken down into his component parts: “It’s like some kind of monster.” Bob seized on the phrase, and it became the chorus of the song as well as its name. When James returned from rehab, he bemoaned “the beast” of his band, all the “bigness” that came along with playing in Metallica, which he was worried might be detrimental to his mental health by destroying his individuality. Jason Newsted, describing how ridiculous he found James’s rule prohibiting side projects, scoffed that there was no way his solo work could ever affect “the monster that is Metallica.” Original lead guitarist Dave Mustaine, still struggling with his dismissal from Metallica two decades ago, doesn’t use the word “monster,” but he clearly views Metallica as a demon he can’t seem to shake.

  Bruce and I were definitely a manifestation of the same beast that James had grown to fear. But the monster also became a part of us. Metallica ultimately bankrolled Some Kind of Monster. They could have told us to take anything out they didn’t like, but all they ever did was make nonbinding suggestions. What Metallica’s resources and vast reservoir of trust allowed us to do was mount a project much grander in scale than anything we’d ever attempted. Some Kind of Monster is the product of more than two years of near-constant filming that resulted in 1,600 hours of footage, ten times more than on any of our previous films.

  This book is about a period when the monster had three heads. It was a time when Metallica, Phil Towle, and Berlinger-Sinofsky were all struggling to produce something in conjunction with the others. Metallica was trying to make an album, Phil was trying to create and nurture relationships in the context of therapy and Bruce and I were trying to make a film about these two projects. Some Kind of Monster delves deep into the way those first two heads interacted, how Metallica came to depend on Phil, and how Phil got close—perhaps too close—to Metallica. This book widens the scope to paint a picture of the monster as a triumvirate. This is the story about my role in creating the monster, and how the monster changed me.

  When James returned from rehab, Bruce and I sat down with Phil, Bob Rock, and the band to discuss whether our film project should continue. James, more aware than ever of the monster’s adverse effect on his life, was on the fence. Phil offered a compelling reason why it would be a good idea for all of us—James included—if we kept going: “Maybe the process of making this movie is as important as the end product.” This book is testament to that belief. We captured the monster, but we didn’t tame it. This monster lives.

  CHAPTER 1

  PITCH ’EM ALL

  The Berlinger-Sinofsky team in happier days, on our first film, Brother’s Keeper, in 1991. From left to right: Bruce, Delbert Ward, cinematographer Doug Cooper, and me. (Courtesy of Derek Berg)

  Like many great stories of rock-and-roll excess, this one begins in a hotel’s penthouse suite. Not that you’d guess that anyone here was contemplating anything excessive. No lamps were being hurled onto Fifty-seventh Street, fifty-two stories below. No mattresses were slashed. No room-service trays were overturned. There was nothing to suggest that these guys were thinking about doing something crazier than any stunt any drug-addled rock star had ever pulled in a hotel room (nobody was doing anything strange with shark meat). No hint that their decision to do it would wreak havoc with their lives and risk their livelihoods. And cost them millions of their own dollars.

  They were agreeing to let Bruce Sinofsky and me hang out with them.

  Or so I hoped. An awkward silence had descended on the opulent suite. Bruce and I weren’t exactly getting along very well these days, but we knew each other intimately enough to know that neither of us thought this meeting was off to a very auspicious start. I didn’t even know whose suite it was—I guessed the drummer’s, since he’d just recently emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered and wearing only silk running shorts.

  Bruce and I had just spent an eternity in the Four Seasons lobby waiting to be summoned to this royal court. I was seething. Bruce, always the calmer half of our duo, was doing his best to keep it light, but it wasn’t working. I have a “fifteen-minute” rule in life: It’s the longest I will wait in line for a movie or a restaurant table—or, I decided then and there, rock stars. Peter Mensch, shaved-headed, no-nonsense, and one of Metallica’s two managers, kept coming down to tell us our audience with the kings was imminent. By the time we finally made our way upstairs, I had broken my own rule a record sixteen times over.

  I knew the ostensible reason why we were there. Cliff Burnstein, Metallica’s other manager, wanted to hire us. Bruce and I had been making documentary films together for almost ten years. We now wanted to make a documentary about Metallica. Cliff also wanted us to do a documentary about Metallica, but not one that we particularly wanted to make
.

  It was the summer of 1999. Metallica had decided to lay low in 2000 (a little file-sharing program called Napster would put a dent in that plan). To keep them in the public eye, Cliff thought it was a good time to make a Metallica movie. What he wanted was really closer to an infomercial: a clips-driven film about Metallica’s storied history The idea was to buy airtime on late-night television, show the film, and flog the band’s albums through a toll-free number. It seemed like a good idea. Metallica’s back catalog is one of the most lucrative assets in the music business. Even in an off year, when Metallica doesn’t tour or release a record, two million Metallica albums find new homes.

  Kirk Hammett onstage in Oslo, Norway, in December 2003 (Courtesy of Joe Berlinger)

  Although Bruce and I had several times turned down offers to make historical films for basic cable channels, we were willing to consider this one. We both have healthy second careers making commercials and corporate films to pay the bills, and we figured this would fall in that category But we were also intrigued at the prospect of making a more personal film about Metallica, who we’d come to know by using the band’s music in our film Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and its sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, which we were in the process of finishing. I didn’t know the band members well, but I knew enough to think it would be interesting to make a film about what these guys were like as people, and how they dealt with the baggage that came with being the kings of metal. We had pitched the idea a few times over the previous two years and gotten some tentative interest, mainly from drummer Lars Ulrich. Now Bruce and I had a vague idea that we could take the job they were offering and somehow nudge it in a more personal direction. I threw some numbers together for Cliff and didn’t hear back from him. A few months later, Cliff called us to say that the band would be staying in New York en route to Woodstock ’99. They wanted us to stop by their hotel. Although I was a little disappointed that they were participating in such a lame event, I was happy for the opportunity to meet with them again.