Metallica: This Monster Lives (34 page)

“This sounds like a Metallica cover band,” Lars opined.

Bob traced an imaginary circle around himself. “This area right here is a Metallica cover band.”

When Metallica spontaneously pulled into the parking lot to play an impromptu tailgate show at the Raiders’ AFC championship game, the fans went wild. (Courtesy of Bob Richman)

Through it all, he couldn’t stop smiling, especially when he got to bellow lines like “Seek and destroy!” into the mic.

“Don’t smile and then say, ‘Seek and destroy,’” Lars admonished.

“I can’t help it,” Bob replied. “It’s so fun to play this kind of music!”

“Hey, we’re the biggest fuckin’ band in the world,” Lars said, struggling to keep a straight face. “This isn’t ‘this kind of music.’”

On game day, there was a mild buzz running through the Coliseum tailgaters, owing to a local radio station reporting a rumor that Metallica would play before the game. When a flatbed was opened up to reveal a hastily spray-painted
METALLICA
banner, the buzz got louder. Our film crew began to set up, which led to some awkward moments with Metallica’s road crew. We’d only worked with the road crew once before, on the VH1
FanClub
show, and I don’t think it had quite sunk in with them that the band was paying us to film them or that we had been with these guys on a regular and intimate basis for two years—we weren’t just another rogue film crew looking to take advantage of Metallica. The flatbed stage was too cramped for onstage cameras, and the road crew seemed to be giving away all our preferred camera positions to a crew from NFL Films in the hopes that Metallica would get some good PR by appearing in the day’s highlight footage. Bruce finally buttonholed Zach Harmon, HQ’s studio manager, and explained that we really needed those positions. Zach talked to the road crew, and everything was worked out (although we did have to share the stage with an NFL Films cameraperson).

Meanwhile, James, Kirk, and Bob were holed up in a trailer. Bob, overflowing with nervous excitement, looked like he was running through his bass lines in his head. “I’ve got fucking nothing to lose here!” he said. James came out to shake some fans’ hands through a fence.

Lars was the last to arrive. I had met up with him at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The plan was for me to fly back to the Bay Area on a private plane with Lars and his wife, Skylar, arriving just in time for the pregame rock show. As we pulled out of Park City in a limo on the way to the Salt Lake City airport, Lars asked me how I thought the Metallica film was shaping up. He had been taking an even more active interest in the film in recent months, which was creating a bit of tension between Metallica’s managers and me. I didn’t want to feel like I was going behind their backs, but now Lars had started asking me questions directly. What’s more, I was now certain we had much more than an infomercial, and confident that even a reality TV show would mean giving this material short shrift. Lars clearly thought so, too, but I could also tell that
he wasn’t aware of what Elektra thought of the footage, particularly that all the therapy should be excised. So I leveled with him. “To be honest,” I told Lars, “I think we’ll have a Sundance-worthy movie.”

By the time Lars and I pulled up in the Coliseum parking lot, a huge crowd had gathered in front of the flatbed. Lars’s four-year-old son, Myles, warmed up the crowd by stalking across the stage and flashing what the audience thought was the classic “devil’s horns” with his little hands. (What he was actually doing, as his mother explained backstage, was pretending to be Spider-Man and shooting imaginary webs.) A few minutes later, Metallica emerged, clad in Raiders jerseys. The crowd went wild.

The show went off without a hitch. They played a handful of old favorites, including “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” “It tolls for the Titans!” James sang, in place of the “time marches on” line. Bob executed his parts flawlessly (at least to my ears). At the end, James looked elated. “Thank you!” he yelled before leaving the stage, and then quickly added, “Kick ass, Raiders!”

This was great material. Bob got to live his dream of being a huge rock star, James got to live his dream of being the Oakland Raiders’ official rock star, and Metallica found a novel way to reemerge into the light after its darkest hour. Why, then, did we commit such a gross act of infanticide by leaving it out of
Monster
? Because we decided that the emotional arc of the film dictated that the audience not see Metallica take the stage until the very end. The live sequence that ends the film represents the conclusion of the long emotional journey depicted in the film. James is healed, the new bass player is in place, and Metallica has gone from near-oblivion to rocking out in front of a huge stadium. To show the band playing live earlier in the film, especially a brief impromptu set in the Coliseum’s parking lot, would dilute the impact of the triumphant return that caps the movie.

Unfortunately, as with the Ramones-covers sessions, not including any footage of the Raiders gig meant we also couldn’t include any
mention
of the Raiders gig. That meant that we couldn’t include the series of events the Raiders gig set in motion. The show caused some unexpected emotional fallout and added another chapter to the ongoing saga of Jason Newsted and Metallica.

Just before Metallica began its Coliseum show, Toby Stapleton, the merchandise manager for Metallica’s official fan club, was standing in the
makeshift backstage area when he felt his cell phone vibrate. He listened to his messages at the end of the set. The call had been from Jason Newsted, whom Toby considered a friend. Jason was extremely upset that nobody had bothered to tell him about the show. Although he was no longer in Metallica, he thought he deserved a courtesy phone call. The rambling message he left for Toby made it clear that he felt hurt, although he didn’t admit as much. The closest he came was characterizing everybody involved with the Raiders show, including his former bandmates, as “a bunch of homos.”

Phil heard about this latest crisis before Lars, Kirk, and James did. Toby mentioned it to Phil during halftime. Phil brought it up the next day at HQ.

“What bothers Jason?” Lars asked skeptically. “That we played?”

“That we didn’t tell him, I think,” Kirk said.

Lars looked puzzled. “I guess I’m missing …”

“You know, Toby’s a friend of his,” Phil said.

“Toby’s supposed to call him and tell him what we’re doing?” James said. “That’s BS.”

“That’s fucked up,” Bob said. “What kind of friend puts somebody on the spot like that? I don’t understand why he thought he had to be told when you guys play.”

In their trailer prior to playing at the Raiders game, James readies himself for his first public performance since returning from rehab. (Courtesy of Bob Richman)

Birth of a song: “Sweet Amber” (Courtesy of Joe Berlinger)

“Because he’s still part of the band in his mind,” Phil said.

Kirk said, “That’s weird.”

Phil frowned. “It’s not weird.”

Phil called in Toby to tell the story in more detail. Toby came in, looking sheepish (he later said the cameras made him uncomfortable), and described the phone message.

“Who did he call a ‘homo’?” Lars asked.

Toby seemed a little embarrassed. “The way he put it, it was just ‘a bunch of homos’ or something like that. I guess I’m included in the homo group. It’s not just you, Lars.”

“You know, I’m convinced that people who call other people homos are the homos,” Lars muttered.

“I’ve left messages at Jason’s house, and he hasn’t called me,” James said.

Lars made a face that said he’d figured what was going on. Back in June, on the day Dee Dee Ramone died, Metallica had left the studio vowing to set up a meeting with Jason. The idea was to clear the air, let Jason get some things off his chest, and hopefully give everyone some closure. That meeting had never happened. “He probably thought you were calling to get him back in the
band,” Lars said. “And then when he found out we were doing our thing yesterday …”

“Well, I’m sure tons of stuff is going through his head,” James said. “All he has to do is call back and say let’s get together and get the stuff
out
of his head. I can’t wait for this meeting to happen.”

James’s cell phone rang. He got up and walked to the kitchen to take the call. “Hey, what’s up? It’s a good time to call actually. We’re having a meeting.” Somehow, we all knew it was Jason. We exchanged incredulous looks.

Kirk grinned. “Synchronicity”

James and Jason spoke briefly and discussed the possibility of everyone getting together a few weeks later. When the call ended, everyone talked about where to hold the meeting and whether Phil should come along. Phil offered the use of his house.

“I kinda doubt that Jason would be comfortable with that,” James said. “I mean, no offense.”

“But he doesn’t need to know it’s my house.”

“It would be uncool not to let him know that, I think.”

“I’m thinking that you need a place where there isn’t a possible opportunity to justify Jason escaping from feelings,” Phil said. “You want to got through a process with him, and see where it goes. And hopefully it will come out at some point that you loved each other when you were together. Things are just escalating and escalating because they’re not being resolved. It’s all about the pain of leaving.”

Kirk worried that Jason might “lose it” and shut himself down if Phil wasn’t there to guide him.

“Jason has accumulated a lot of tension inside him,” Phil said. “There’s a certain amount of tension that exists here, as well. We need to flush it out, flush it out, flush it out…. Courageously open up to whatever comes up. And you guys will be just fine. Just take your time.”

“I was thinking, maybe the ‘homo’ thing he’s talking about is this,” James said, gesturing to include everyone at the table. “Getting in touch with feelings and stuff. I think he’s fearful of this process and how it’s working for us. You know, I can relate to that. Years ago, if I would have heard this stuff, you know what?” He thrust his hands out dramatically, palms up, and reverted to the James of old. “Just rock, man! Metal’s in my veins! Screw all that ‘feeling’ stuff!”

This was a really powerful moment. It was incredible for me to see how astute James had become about the situation with Jason. Here he was, someone
who not long ago had been the poster child of rock-fueled testosterone, now able to acknowledge that image and critique it. He knew there was more than metal coursing through his veins. In that moment, Bruce and I were thinking this would end up in
Monster.
We realized later that there was really no way we could use it, however, without acknowledging the Raiders gig, which we didn’t want to do, lest we dilute the film’s ending.
Monster
really is a tightly interwoven film. There are many sequences in the film that, if removed, would make large parts of the film collapse like a house of cards. The Raiders show had the reverse effect: by not including it, we had to exclude all of the interesting repercussions.

Toby seemed really sad about getting that call from someone he considered a friend, and genuinely moved by the support of James and the others. “Like I said, man, my loyalties are always with the band and you guys. There’s no question. It’s always with this band and with the goals we have for this fan club. It’s not with him. He chose his path, and … I guess …” He didn’t know what else to say.