Mustaine: A Life in Metal. Dave Mustaine
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Название: Mustaine: A Life in Metal

Автор: Dave Mustaine

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары

Серия:

isbn: 9780007324132

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СКАЧАТЬ fairly quiet that day. It was almost like I was a gunfighter, and I took the matter with an appropriate degree of seriousness. Mind you, I had never been on an audition before. Whenever I’d played in a band, it had been my band. There was no “trying out” for someone else’s band. Fuck that! I was a leader, not a follower. Playing backseat to someone else really didn’t sit well with me and indeed had put me in a bit of a foul mood. Simply by agreeing to drive up to Norwalk and endure the process of being evaluated and interviewed, I’d compromised my own integrity and standards. That’s the way I looked at it, anyway. What can I tell you? I was arrogant. And I was angry. But I had to swallow my pride. I was tired of dealing drugs and playing with a dysfunctional band. Maybe this other thing was worth a shot.

      There was a weird vibe almost from the moment I arrived at Ron’s place. In addition to Lars, Ron, and James, there were a few other people hanging out, including Ron’s girlfriend and a guy named Dave Marrs, a friend of Ron’s who would later work briefly as a roadie for Metallica. I’m not sure what they expected from me. I’d been pretty honest with Lars about how I filled the day. I told him I played music and sold pot on the side; in reality, of course, I sold pot and played music on the side. Regardless, he didn’t seem to care. And neither did anyone else.

      Lars introduced me to everyone as I unloaded gear from my car and brought it into the garage. While I set up, everyone else went into another room, which I thought was kind of weird. There didn’t seem to be any excitement about what we were doing. And as far as I could tell, I was the only one competing for the job.

      I plugged in my amp and calmly went about the business of warming up. Then I warmed up some more. I kept playing, faster and louder, figuring eventually somebody would walk in and start jamming with me; at the very least, I thought they’d come in and listen, ask me a few questions. But they never did. They just left me there to play on my own. Finally, after maybe a half hour or so, I put down my guitar and opened the door into the house. The entire group was sitting there together, drinking and getting high, watching television. I noticed, by the way, that James and Lars were drinking peppermint schnapps, which was almost comical. I didn’t know anyone who drank schnapps—it was an old ladies’ drink.

      “Hey—we gonna do this thing or what?” I asked.

      Lars kind of smiled at me and waved a hand. “No, man…you got the job.”

       Huh?

      I looked around the room. Was it really that easy? I didn’t know whether to feel like I’d been offended or complimented. My response vacillated between relief and confusion. Did they not care? Were they so impressed by my warm-up that they just had to have me in the band? (I knew I was pretty good, but I didn’t know I was that good.) The way I see it, looking back on it years later, maybe they didn’t want to conduct a real audition—with all of us playing together—because it would have given me the opportunity to gauge their level of skill and musicianship. That strikes me as a bit ironic now, given the sometimes acrimonious nature of our relationship over the years, and the fact that I have often been portrayed as someone who was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, filling a temporary hole in the Metallica lineup.

      But I didn’t know any of this at the time. Both physically and in the way he dressed, Lars was as foreign looking as he had been the day we met, but I attributed that largely to his European upbringing. Ron was doing his thing, and James…well, James was rail thin, with black spandex tights tucked into boots and a cheetah-print shirt. Displayed prominently on his wrist was a wide leather bracelet with a clear patch in the middle of it—almost like the kind of thing a quarterback wears on game day, with the plays written on it. James, you could just tell, was trying really hard to look like a rock star. He had long hair shaped into a windswept coif, so that he resembled Rudy Sarzo, the bass player for Ozzy Osbourne.

      I tried not to laugh.

       Oh, my God. What am I getting myself into?

       4 METALLICA—FAST, LOUD, OUT OF CONTROL

       “You keep talking like that, I’m going to punch you in the mouth.”

       IN THE BEGINNING IT WAS AS MUCH ABOUT STYLE AS SUBSTANCE.

       I REMEMBER GOING OUT SHOPPING ONE DAY WITH LARS AND MARVELING AS HE SPENT THE BETTER PART OF THE AFTERNOON TRYING TO EDUCATE ME ON THE FINER POINTS OF PURCHASING HIGH-TOP SNEAKERS. IT WAS, APPARENTLY, SOMETHING OF A SCIENCE, AND LARS AND I DISAGREED ON THE PROPER FORMULA. CHECK OUT THE EARLY PHOTOS OF METALLICA AND YOU’LL SEE ME WEARING SHINY WHITE LEATHER CONVERSE ALL-STARS WITH RED STARS ON THE SIDE. THIS WAS MY CHOICE, NOT LARS’S. FOR SOME REASON, HE WAS OF THE OPINION THAT ROCK STARS WORE TRADITIONAL CHUCK TAYLORS.

      “Fuck that!” I said. “That’s like the kids on Fat Albert. I’m not wearing that shit.”

      I could be wrong, but I remember this as my first disagreement with Lars. It may sound like a petty detail, but I think it points to the inevitability of the dissolution of Metallica as it was in its infancy. Too many cooks in the kitchen. I was a band leader. So was Lars. Inevitably, the failure to agree on a common goal or to accept specific roles rose within the framework of the group. I’ve seen it time and again. Egos clash, combustible personalities ignite. The odds of surviving these obstacles—to say nothing of the financial, artistic, and managerial challenges—are astronomically bad.

      And yet, in retrospect, I understand what Lars was doing because I’ve done it myself: he was trying to form an image as well as a musical entity. His heart, I think, was probably in the right place. To me, it was his taste that was misguided. One day he pulled out a photo of Diamond Head, a British heavy metal band that he admired to the point of obsession—he’d even trailed them, Deadhead style, on a European tour the previous year.

      “Look at this,” he said. “These guys look like rock stars.”

      I just stared, slack jawed. There was a lot to like about Diamond Head, but fashion was not high on the list. I looked at that picture, saw all the black spandex, the white boots, the long, flowing dress shirts unbuttoned to the waist with the bottom tied into a knot, exposing the singer’s hairy navel, and I wanted to gag.

      “Lars, I can’t even believe a dude would dress that way. He looks like a chick.”

      See, there were lines of distinction that couldn’t be blurred. You had to decide what type of music you were going to play, and your appearance had to properly reflect that music. In that sense, Diamond Head was not my cup of black coffee. A lot of bands were like that. Consider the importance of hair. Everyone had long hair in those days, with the exception of the punk bands. In hard rock and metal, hair was long, and within that framework a decision had to be made:

      Up or down.

      You were either like Page and Plant (hair down, and thus cool) or you were like KISS, Mötley Crüe, and so many other imitators (hair up, and thus not so cool). My hair went down. Always did, always will.

      Next came the name. Every band needs a great moniker, right? We discussed and discarded several, including Leather Charm, which had been the name of a short-lived band in which James and Ron had both played. This was one of those names that just seemed incredibly wrongheaded to me. Leather Charm? What are you after with that one? Who’s your audience? It sounded kind of questionable in terms of projecting your notion of a good time, if you know what I mean.

      It was Lars who suggested “Metallica,” СКАЧАТЬ