On Stands Now!
The July/August issue of Revolver magazine, which came out this week, features an interview I did with Ozzy Osbourne, as well as his new guitarist Gus G. In it, we talk about his new album, Scream (of which I’m a fan), his Black Sabbath days, Randy Rhoads, religion, and a lot more. It’ll be on stands through August 16. I’m pretty proud of this one, so check it out. 
I recently rediscovered this Metallica feature I wrote in 2008 and decided to repost it. Enjoy.
A Matter of Life and Death
by Kory Grow
Metallica’s fans will never know just how close their favorite headbangers came to disbanding. The group’s dark times and therapy sessions may have been aired publicly in the 2004 film Some Kind of Monster, which chronicled the genesis of that year’s exposed nerve of an album, St. Anger. But since the movie runs only two hours, their fans couldn’t see all the work the band did off-screen to heal as friends. “We got very close to experiencing life without Metallica there for a year, and it was pretty nutty,” says Lars Ulrich, the band’s exuberant Danish drummer, now 44. “I think we all realized that we were much better off with Metallica than without. We made the best efforts that we could to try and get beyond that. We put a lot of work into it.”
The work they put into reestablishing their friendships with one another is wholly responsible for the triumph of their latest album, Death Magnetic (Warner Bros.). Balancing the underground thrash metal of Metallica’s early ’80s work with the catchy grooves of ’90s blockbusters like their self-titled “Black Album,” the disc is their most vital work in nearly two decades. With ex–Ozzy Osbourne bassist Robert Trujillo onboard, Metallica’s core—vocalist-guitarist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and skinsman Ulrich—plays just as aggressively as the myriad young metalheads still trying to ape their style after nearly 30 years. The band sounds hungry again.
To get to this point, Metallica needed to separate themselves from their recent past. The first step was to find a producer other than Bob Rock, still a close friend of the band, who had guided them since the Black Album. They chose Rick Rubin, the bearded Grammy-winning producer who made the careers of the Beastie Boys, Slayer and System of a Down and revitalized those of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond. Rubin’s main objective was to get Metallica back into the mindset they were in when writing Master of Puppets. The question he asked them to ponder was, “What would you have done if it was 1985?”
“You’ve got to understand that for Metallica, for our fans, for everybody—…And Justice for All, Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning—these records have been elevated by everybody to the icon stage,” Ulrich says. “These records are on pedestals and they’re so important. And they’re so ‘all this stuff’ that we even got scared of ’em. [Laughs] We were intimidated by the supposed greatness of these records.
“We spent the better part of the next 15 years running as far away from those records as possible to not do anything that would in any way belittle them or take any of the glory away from these records. Rick made us feel OK about circling back through that ZIP code again and checking out the neighborhood, listening to the records and being OK with adopting some of the same processes, some of the same ways of thinking.”
To make sure they got Death Magnetic right, the band took their time writing the album. They started writing in the spring of 2006 and composed at their leisure. As invitations to tour and headline festivals arose, the band obliged at will. The lack of pressure would later prove instrumental to the album’s success. In October of 2007, the band played an acoustic set for Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit charity concert. In April of the following year, they appeared at the Mountain View location of Rasputin Music, a San Francisco-based independent record store chain as part of Record Store Day, to sign autographs and meet fans. It was their first in-store appearance in nearly a decade.
“It just seemed like it was a good time to remind people of what a great experience just walking into your neighborhood mom-and-pop record store was, instead of walking into a mega building that’s the size of a small country or sitting and tapping on your keypad and getting music that way,” Ulrich says. “Nothing against either of those; I do both of those myself. But it’s like, you’re walking into a place that you feel the love of human beings. You walk around and you can check out some records and some shirts and some paraphernalia. It’s just a vibe.”
By opening themselves up to so many different opportunities and revisiting their past interests, the members of Metallica primed themselves for anything to happen in the recording studio. One of Rubin’s main demands was for them to have the album arranged perfectly before entering the studio. “It was basically just, ‘Learn the fucking songs ’til you can play them in your sleep standing on your head with your fucking eyes closed, while you’re saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards,’ or whatever,” Ulrich says. “That was the marching order.” Rubin was onto something, too: Metallica played Death Magnetic with unabashed hunger. “It’s still raw,” says the drummer. “It’s very in-your-face. It’s very aggressive and it still sounds like a bunch of human beings playing music. That’s probably what I’m most proud of.”
Nearly three decades ago, it was Metallica’s goal to take over the world. They’ve done that, and now their priorities have changed. “It’s really just four dorky big kids in their early 40s still playing the music that gets ’em off,” Ulrich concludes. “I guess Metallica’s mission is to provide the best music that we’re capable of for the people that are interested. It’s to give people a sense of escape. Something that can take them away from five-dollars-a-gallon gas and shit economies and whatever the fuck else it is that’s going on out there in the real world.”
Hiatus
For those of you who visit this blog regularly—and I doubt there are very many of you, since my last post here was in December—I just wanted to check in. I’ve been taking a little hiatus, focusing my online energy on revolvermag.com. I’ve also been writing regularly for Revolver, Guitar World, The Village Voice, and Self-titledmag.com. I’ll post some links to things here and there from this point on, beginning with this bit I wrote for Popmatters.com on “Advice for Young Writers.” Scroll to the bottom to read mine. I’ll also post photos here from shows I’ve gone to, like the one below from the Quasi concert this past April. Anyway, that’s all for now.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts, 10/29/2009 and 10/30/2009
I attended the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary concert at Madison Square Garden last week. The lineup was incredible, not least of which were Metallica’s duets with guests Lou Reed, Ozzy Osbourne, and Ray Davies. I covered both nights in the press room, watching the event on closed-circuit TV and doing junket interviews with many of the artists, for The Village Voice’s “Sound of the City” blog. I’ve pasted the teasers for both below.
Bruce! Sam! Billy! Bonnie! Live From The Ludicrously Star-Studded MSG Rock Hall Extravaganza
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Celebration
Madison Square Garden
Thursday, October 29
The first half of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's two-night benefit concert and 25th-anniversary celebration lasted six hours, ended at 1:30 a.m. and featuring star-studded sets by curators Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, with guests ranging from Billy Joel to Tom Morello to doo-wop legends Little Anthony and the Imperials. All these artists showed a real humility and gratitude for the 60-odd-year-old genre: "Everybody's got their own Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their hearts," as Springsteen put it. And no matter what you think of the museum itself or the state of rock at the moment (the closest thing to a hard-line rock album in this week's Billboard Top 10 is the New Moon soundtrack), the evening proved what a great emancipator the music still is.
Continue reading " Bruce! Sam! Billy! Bonnie! Live"...
Ooooh plus "Iron Man"
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Celebration
Madison Square Garden
Friday, October 30
"When we were down, rock 'n' roll lifted us up," says Tom Hanks in his introductory remarks for the final night of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's benefit-concert extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. "Rock 'n' roll music was American," he later adds. "And it changed the world." Despite his use of the past tense, tonight is anything but a eulogy: Friday's slate features a wider palate of curators than the previous night, this time including Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2. The headliners' guests, a pop-music dream-team ranging from Ray Davies to Ozzy Osbourne to the Black Eyed Peas, also do a better job than last night's cavalcade of explaining how far rock has come.
Continue reading " Live: Even Lou Reed Gets"...More videos:
Lou Reed and Metallica perform the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat”
Jeff Beck performs “A Day in the Life”
Bruce Springsteen and Sam Moore perform “Hold On, I’m Coming” and “Soul Man”
L.A. Times Interview
Recently, the Los Angeles Times book blog interviewed the authors of Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces. The book contains my “Hall of Fame” pieces on Napalm Death’s Scum and Obituary’s Cause of Death. For the blog, I contributed a story about meeting Gorgoroth in Norway, which became the basis of this article. Albert Mudrian and Adem Tepedelen also contributed stories, and the L.A. Times blogger was Christopher R. Weingarten.
Sonic Youth, 7/3/2009
Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon has gotten a lot more freedom through the years as the band has added members like multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke and now former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold. She’s had so much freedom that, after she puts down the bass at concerts, she has perfected a flailing dance that I call—without creativity, I admit—“The Kim Gordon Dance.” At their performance Friday at the United Palace, I caught it with my camera as best I could from where I was sitting.
Ladies and Gentleman, the Kim Gordon Dance:
Honestly, the set was one of the best times I’ve seen them. They mostly played songs from their new album The Eternal, but the oldies the group pulled out were great: “Tom Violence,” “Catholic Block,” “Pacific Coast Highway,” “Brother James” and, my favorite of the evening, “Death Valley ’69” (full set list below). This song made me especially happy because earlier in the day, my girlfriend, Lisa, and I had gone to MoMA and seen the “Looking at Music: Side 2” exhibit. There’s a video post there showing Richard Kern’s video for the song in it, so it was exciting to hear it twice in one day; the exhibit is totally worthwhile, by the way, with great no-wave and first-wave punk photos and artifacts, like a old Teenage Jesus 7-inches and a Patti Smith “self-portrait.” At the show, the band members were jokey with one another. At one point, when Moore was fiddling with a guitar strap, Ranaldo said, “Strap it on!” Moore barked back, “I’d like to strap it on you.” Ranaldo rejoined, “Again?!” Maybe this explains why Gordon dances…
Set list:
Sacred Trickster
No Way
Calming the Snake
Poison Arrow
Tom Violence
Walkin Blue
Anti-Orgasm
Leaky Lifeboat
Antenna
Catholic Block
Malibu Gas Station
Massage the History
World Looks Red
__
What We Know
Pacific Coast Highway
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Brother James
Death Valley ’69
Jane’s Addiction/Nine Inch Nails, 6/7/09
Tonight, Jane’s Addiction and Nine Inch Nails played Jones Beach Theater, along with Street Sweeper Social Club. One thing I felt fortunate about growing up in Colorado was seeing shows at Red Rocks, but I have to say, seeing concerts literally on the water—as with Jones Beach—feels special, too. And even though Jane’s frontman Perry Ferrell kept saying, “Tonight is a historic event,” it sort of was. 
Not only was this the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction’s first time playing in the New York area since 1991, but—if Ferrell’s memory serves correct from the way he introduced “Jane Says” at the end of the set—this is also the band’s 25th anniversary. The group played a hit-filled set, including (going by memory and not in order) “Had a Dad,” “Mountain Song,” “Ocean Size,” “Ted, Just Admit It…” (accompanied by a canopy depicting sex and violence and Natural Born Killers footage, see below), “Stop!” “Ain’t No Right” and “Been Caught Stealing.” (Why no “Classic Girl”?) Throughout the set Ferrell was swigging a bottle of wine in between poses and spouting off about grabbing his crotch, and how sometimes you’ve got to do it. (This was around the time it dawned on me that JA is pretty much an even split between the Doors and Led Zep, with a little Bootsy Collins thrown in.) At one point during “Ocean Size,” I think it was, Ferrell said, “I was just getting to the sexy part,” which had me in stitches because it was so non sequitur. It was nice to see original bassist Eric Avery back in the fold, but he seemed out of it for most of the show or upset. Nonetheless, they played a great set and—for not having seen them in 10 years—it was, I guess, historic, for me personally.
Tonight was the first time I had seen Nine Inch Nails live. What struck me most about about their show was that frontman Trent Reznor and the rest of the band hate instruments. Each member threw a guitar at one point (as my friend Reed said, “That acoustic guitar didn’t stand a chance, Robin Finck”), and Reznor threw several mic stands at drummer Ilan Rubin. “Burn,” from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack was a surprise, a cover of “I’m Afraid of Americans” was welcome, and “Wish” was fun, but I would have liked to hear even more stuff from the first few releases (especially since this year is the 20th anniversary of Pretty Hate Machine). I found it odd that they were playing in the middle—going on during daylight—even though they played a full set, including an encore of “Hurt.” The dichotomy between the NIN and Jane’s Addiction fans was pretty black and white, and many of the NIN fans seemed to leave during the Jane’s set. At the end of the night, there was a girl on the way to the parking lot with a “Free Hugs” sign, and we can only imagine which band she had come to see.
Openers Street Sweeper Social Club—a new group featuring Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and Coup rapper Boots Riley—were quite good, too. They came onstage to Darth Vader’s theme in Star Wars. Throughout the set, Riley kept saying, “We’re more than a band. We’re a social club.” Their novel feat, aside from Morello’s always incendiary guitar playing, was doing an almost note-for-note rendition of M.I.A.’ s “Paper Planes.” The music sounded better than the original samples. The band’s debut is out June 16, and I like it quite a bit. In a way, this band was the glue between DIW optimism and recession-fueled negativity that held together the other two bands tonight even though they played earlier. In fact the only drawback from the whole night—and detractor to the bands’ anti-consumerism ethos—was the venue’s high prices for drinks (and they don’t serve alcohol). It’s a good thing its on the water.
Street Sweeper Social Club 
A swan on the harbor during Street Sweeper’s set
Nine Inch Nails
Jane’s Addiction 
