Mustaine: A Life in Metal. Dave Mustaine

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and dangerous—not inaccurate, I must confess. When a break-in at Ron’s place was traced back to acquaintances of mine (not friends, mind you, and I certainly had no idea what they had done), Ron became angry and accusatory. My response, and I don’t say this with any pride, was to walk into the rehearsal room one day when Ron wasn’t around and pour a can of beer into the pickups of his Washburn bass, effectively destroying a very expensive piece of equipment.

      I knew this would infuriate Ron, but I didn’t care. My rationale went something like this:

       I don’t like you, I don’t like that you pinned this break-in on me, I don’t like that you’re a mama’s boy, I don’t like that you seem to have everything going on, everything handed to you, and you don’t appreciate it. It doesn’t seem like you’re one of us.

      By this point, in the late fall of 1982, Metallica had begun performing regularly in San Francisco, where the metal scene was significantly less artificial than it had been in Los Angeles. Hair and makeup mattered less than the music. When it came to playing music, Metallica was like nothing anyone had seen or heard before. But there was always room for improvement. And that’s where Cliff Burton came in.

      Cliff was the star bass player for a Bay Area band called Trauma. That term alone—“star bass player”—should tell you something, because bass players are typically at the bottom of the rock ’n’ roll food chain. Guitar players and singers are at the top, drummers in the middle, bass players at the bottom. I was once quoted as saying, “Playing the bass is one step up from playing the kazoo,” which predictably pissed off a lot of bass players, but it’s essentially true. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and Cliff was definitely not a glorified kazoo player. He was brilliant. The first time I saw him play, I knew he was something special, and so did Lars and James, which is why they began surreptitiously courting Cliff while Ron McGovney was still in the band.^*

      Cliff was worthy of pursuit, and I think we all (with the exception of Ron) saw him as the “missing piece.” We had arrived in San Francisco as the band of the moment, an underground sensation that quickly surpassed everyone, even the popular local thrash kings Exodus. We were locked and loaded, with an exhausting stage show featuring a dangerous, loudmouthed motherfucker on guitar and a variation on heavy metal that was at once heavier, faster, and more melodic. We were the real deal. As was Cliff. Trauma was nothing special, but everyone knew the band was worth watching if only to witness Cliff’s wizardry with a wah-wah pedal. It’s not often that a bass player stands out as the star of a band, but Cliff, with a wild mane of hair and an athletic, muscular style of playing, pulled it off. He was an innovator.

      He also was reluctant to join Metallica or any other band not based in the Bay Area. But Lars kept pursuing Cliff. Eventually, when Ron departed, just a few days after the violation of his Washburn bass,^* the door was open for Cliff to join the band. But concessions would have to be made. Cliff was impressed by what he’d seen of our work and more than willing to trade Trauma for Metallica. Under one condition.

      We’d have to move to San Francisco.

      If there was any hand-wringing over this decision, I don’t recall it. We all knew Cliff was talented enough to present what would ordinarily be considered an outrageous bargaining chip: Relocate the whole band? For a bass player! He was that good. And we were that driven; we were willing to do anything to be successful. I think we all recognized that by adding Cliff, we could become the greatest band in the world.

      THE TRANSITION TOOK a few months, during which we altered living and professional arrangements in a half-assed attempt to save some money and prepare for the move to San Francisco. Shortly before Christmas 1982, James got the boot from Ron McGovney (no surprise, since Ron was understandably reluctant to continue supporting James after splitting with Metallica). I’d already moved back into my mother’s house because…well, because I was broke. So I invited James to come and live with me and my mother, creating a variation on the Three’s Company theme with predictably disastrous results. Suddenly you had two heavy metal warriors living with my mom, the quiet little housekeeper. To say she was bummed by the whole arrangement would be an understatement, and not merely because of her religious affiliation. The lifestyle we were leading—the drinking, fighting, carousing—was enough to give any parent cause for concern. But to have it happening under her own roof? It couldn’t have been easy. Especially as she came to realize that it wasn’t merely a phase. I was pretty good at playing guitar, and I was serious about making a living at it. But that wasn’t the only reason I played. It wasn’t only about strutting and getting laid and trying to become famous. When I held a guitar in my hands, I felt good about myself. When I played music, I felt a sense of comfort and accomplishment that I’d never known as a child. When I replicated the songs that I loved, I felt an attachment to them and to the musicians who had composed them. And when I started writing songs of my own, I felt like an artist, able to express myself for the very first time. Maybe my mother sensed all of this, and that’s why she put up with all the craziness. Or maybe that’s just what mothers do.

      Regardless, out of respect for my mom (and fear of getting caught), I stopped dealing drugs and tried to earn some cash in a more reputable manner. Lars had gotten an overnight job delivering newspapers for the Los Angeles Times, and he asked me if I wanted a job, too. I did it for a little while, but I hated the hours and the drudgery of the work. Sometimes, just to make it more interesting, Lars and I would deliver papers together. We’d drive around in his mom’s AMC Pacer, careening through neighborhoods, sometimes sideswiping parked cars or mailboxes. There were few images funnier than Lars driving the Pacer, which was basically a fishbowl on wheels. To see him weaving down the street in one of the ugliest cars in history, chucking newspapers out the window, with no regard for where they landed, you couldn’t help but laugh. It was like a video game: Evil Danish Paperboy!

      All you needed was Orson Welles or James Earl Jones providing the narration: “Metallica is coming to get you!”

      By February of 1983 we had relocated to the Bay Area, specifically to the El Cerrito home of Exodus manager Mark Whitakker, who would soon become Metallica’s road manager and facilitator. Mark’s place, affectionately known as the Metallica Mansion, became ground zero for all things related to the band. Lars and James moved right in and took the two available bedrooms. I settled for a shitty little box of a room—with no shower, sink, or refrigerator—at the home of Mark’s grandmother, roughly an hour away. I lived out of a Styrofoam cooler, into which I would pack everything I needed for the day…or for two days…maybe even three. One of the guys, usually Cliff Burton, would pick me up in the morning and drive me to rehearsal. Cliff and I got pretty close in those first couple months, simply because we spent so much time together. We’d drive back and forth, smoking some of Cliff’s horrible homegrown pot, talking about music and listening to music. And not just metal or even vintage hard rock, but stuff you’d never associate with Metallica. I can recall several instances in which we were driving along, sharing a joint, and singing out loud to Lynyrd Skynyrd.

      When rehearsal would end, and the other guys would start talking about doing something else with the rest of the day, I’d suggest we keep playing. Not necessarily because I loved rehearsal, but because I couldn’t stand the idea of going back to that little house by myself. Sometimes I would just refuse to leave; I’d sleep on the couch for days on end. It was a strange and surreal hand-to-mouth existence. I’d been there before, of course; I’d grown up poor, panhandled for beer money, knew how it felt to wear the same pair of dirty jeans for days on end and to live off boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. I think it was harder for Lars and James. And for that reason, along with the fact that I considered us to be brothers-in-arms, I often found myself standing up for them.

      There was, for example, the time we were all at a party, and in walked the guys from a band known as Armored СКАЧАТЬ