Metallica: ...And Justice for All Interview with David Fricke

We're here backstage in the tuning room in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania with James Hadfield Kirk Hammett Lars Ulrich Rob Trujillo we're going to travel back in time talking about a record that came out thirty years ago almost the same month, but I actually want to open with two quotes . which I conveniently pulled from my own story about that record and the band in 1988 and one of them was and this really is kind of a setup for what we want to get to the heart of this album in the box of this giant. story box I need a forklift to get it up to my apartment but the rewards are waiting until the Black Album wins one of the things.

I was talking to you Kurt and we were talking about the way at that time in 88 87 the The way that the general press had done it, particularly the rock critics and so on, was that you were talking about prohibition and one of the quotes you made was that people wrote to the band as quoting ugly guys singing ugly things to ugly music, which really was the perception in many corners, but there was also a quote from someone. This is a direct quote. I knew they were destined to leave a big mark that they are just beginning to leave.

Now Metallica will be one of the bands you remember. In 2008, people will still listen to the way I still listen to Zeppelin and Sabbath albums, that was Jason Newsted and now we are in 2018 with a record that in some way was the first top 10 album. It was your first album after the loss of Cliff Burton and it was your first real working experience with Jason and at the same time it was the last album you made in such an extreme way with such intense and current songs for almost 15 years. So in a way it was like the peak of something and it was also kind of the end of something like you got to a point that you almost couldn't get over, you had to change once again when you look back on this record.

You see it as what kind of mark does James leave on you, well, you mentioned that yeah, it's like the beginning and the end of a lot of different things that overlap and I think for me, well, I think it's the point where Lars and I had led the band at the time, we weren't sure where we could go after that, obviously, sitting in the producer's seat pretending like we knew what we were doing for five months, yeah, and you know sonically, obviously, you can tell what kind of mix that album, but after that we realized, okay, we can go off the beaten path, here we can ask for help in terms of production, let's focus more on the music in terms of songwriting.

I remember being on that tour playing these songs live and looking at the set list it just shrinks, you know we used to be able to play a lot of songs now we can only play this many songs because they're so long so you realize the connection between the studio making music, getting creative and bringing it. In a live setting, it started to become clearer that some of these songs we're getting a little long and maybe we should know that there's an emotional component too because there's the transition from, you know, from Cliff. to Jason and also the willingness to say "OK, we've been through a huge trauma that was documented in the puppet master's box with those live shows and at the same time say we have to get back to it, we can." You didn't just quit and you still did it.

I think the title song that summed up that album for me in retrospect was The Frayed Ends of Sanity and it was a song that you didn't play for the next 24 years, maybe we're afraid, well, actually. it would be so cathartic that we would heal well, there was a certain emotional aspect to it, you know, the shorter sorrow collector, the ludus, death, uplifting things, well, we didn't, I mean, there's no doubt about it, there was that. that that cloud of pain followed us for quite a while and you know, I just reflect on what you have to say about those titles and I think about it and yeah, you know, maybe subconsciously you know there was something in, you know we're still dealing with all of it. those things, but I mean, we were still pretty young and I can only talk about myself during that period, but I didn't know how to process it.

You know yes. I hadn't lost someone like that. In those circumstances, you know, I don't think any of us did, so I think unconsciously we just buried a lot of things and those things were fighting to come out and I think unconsciously a lot of them escaped through the music, I mean. Honestly, I think in retrospect I'm rooting for you, Lars, because you kind of know the drums and the intensity of what you had to do and a lot of those songs can be almost like a physical release to get stuff out. Are you aware of that or were you aware of that when I think about that moment for me, it's part of a story, you know that, obviously, yeah, you know that, like you know what James was referring to, you know that when I think about

justice

, it's the spaces among the pastures.

Puppets and the Black Album, so I have a tendency to look at these experiences very practically and then this whole Puppet thing came up and then, like you're saying Jason came in, obviously, and we've talked thousands of times about This Isn't We couldn't process the pain, none of us really knew how to deal with it, so we all jumped into several bottles of liquor and gave JSON a hard time because what was he doing here? And I mean, it was all so strange. and in that, when I think about that moment now I just remember, you know, we always moved, you know, it was always that we never stood still and the reason we performed we had a little break that spring, we finished the we mastered the puppets and then We started writing the first two things, the first notes.

I think the first thing we wrote was Blackened. We were in San Rafael in a rehearsal studio and then we were supposed to play Saturday Night Live and then James broke his arm and then there was kind of a lull in the action and then, you know, now what and then the education happened physics in Karachi and then we built the studio in my house on Carlson Boulevard and then we left. working on writing the material when we return from some festivals and, for my part, musically we are picking up where we left off. I wish I could tell you that I was at least aware of the fact that you know the accident or any of that played a specific role in the choice of riffs or choice of lyrical themes or whatever, but I don't remember it that way, I just felt that here We were going again, um, at that time it was really what it was, I think there.

It was an impulse, we got a mentum, is the word I think of and at that moment I felt like there was obviously something opposite to what it is now, but you know, it was like we belonged on the way home like the way home. it's the movement, the home, the tour, the home, it's out there, living, doing all these things in all these different crazy places and always, never stopping, always moving forward, and you just know that the records were almost like a catalyst for keep the tour and So, you know, it was like we left Master Puppets and then, as James says, the songs became longer, crazier, more progressive and more lateral, and that, it kind of hit a wall along the way. of the tour for the next one. year and a half when I was saying we were good, now we're in Greenville, South Carolina, and here they come, you know three songs of

justice

in the course of 30 minutes and everyone's like, huh, and it was like, well, maybe we need to review In this, but for me, I can't tell you that you know Frances's sanity was a particular thing at that time, it was just always about movement before it got to the process.

I'm curious, Rob, you know him as someone who would have been an outsider. A fan who heard this album, what was your impression of that album when you first heard it as music and as something that spoke to you when you were young? I always thought Justice was more of a concept album and a concept about The thing about everything from the system and some of the titles you had is that I think what happens with a lot of bands and what happens with Metallica is that it's easy for the fan to create their vision, it's open to interpretation, so there's the You get the idea that you process what it means and what it is and it's kind of a journey that you take from the album cover, which was totally amazing, probably also my favorite so the music comes to life through the album cover and what you are.

Listening and the only thing, you know, I'll get into the sound, I'm sure, but I mean, all of that played a role in this really special album and it was really very different from what had been done before, so it was an exciting time. . You know, I used to go mountain running in the Santa Monica Mountains with my cassette player. You know, my Walkman headphones and that was kind of like, I mean every metal album. You know, that's what I tested to determine how fast I could run and. run or whatever, yeah, and it was for me an exciting time and then when the tour came around and stuff that was the talk of the town, we did this really forensic approach for each of the kilomole Lightning master records and now Justice and with the Rift tapes, the demos, the rough mixes to go back through Justice in particular, which is really, I mean, the album alone was a huge document, big enough to be a double album, What do you realize about the progress of work in that process? where you were putting songs together, but the songs were actually, it's almost like architecture.

You know, there's actually these sheets in the session book with, I think they're the tape counter numbers and it actually breaks down into a solo, a solo and the pre-chorus. to verse one and this goes on for two columns, so you've actually mapped out the music, whereas most people write songs and it's like here's the verse, here's the bridge, here's the outro, actually you're building something with a lot different structure even than what you had in Master of Puppets, yes, it's like building a house, like you said, here are the things we need, what else would be cool here, what's the final job and that's it. you know what the general appearance is.

You're right, each song was a riff tape in itself and we had so many riffs that we wanted to include them all, so we were, you know, we were improvising riffs in there forcing them in, you know, when you talk about that kind of thing. madness, the freight ends or something suddenly goes over two and you know, trying to outdo ourselves like that, how many riffs can we get in one song? Logic of that, well, I think one thing as I sit here really trying it. to go deeper, I think playing together, touring, growing, whatever was going on, but I think we were getting better, literally, just getting better at what we were doing, we were kind of at the top of what we were doing, like it felt.

Maybe we would just be more confident steering the train, the ship, whatever and I think we could make frayed ends. You know, I just don't think we were capable of doing it. The load ends five years earlier in Kill. They all had a handle on the language, we just didn't have the skills and the abilities yet and I think at that time there was still a lot of this kind of underlying stuff about the skill and the abilities and about you know, you know what Slayer is doing. and you know, do it like do it and you know all this, I just think this record is still the next step because it wasn't really until Bob Rock came along a couple of years later and started challenging us in the way that we were. writing the way we were recording the way we were arranging the way we would look at everything, you know, justice was just the next record, the same process, but there was more during the same process, but it was all over the top, more riffs , longer, crazier songs on the side, you know.

It was inevitable that I would hit a wall, well there's nowhere else to go, it's interesting because I actually listened to the whole album of riff tapes, you know, and all those parts that we're going to release. God bless you, James, one of your films in which you are playing Harvester, a piece of Harvesters, I'm sorry, but what really ends there is also the eye of the beholder and there is another one from October 87, it is a session of writing, I guess you're doing it at your house in El Cerrito and they're playing Blackened and suddenly in the middle there's a bit of Harvester, so it was like any of these bits could have been in any other song, so yeah, this should be on the album, this should be on the album, what songs? are going to fit into those samples that was always so positive, I mean, that goes back, I mean, that goes back to the beginning and part of still and it's still, I mean, if you sat here and talked about wiring for self-destruction, I mean, that's still part of it. of our DNA and I think that's when Metallica works, there are times where we've forced different paths and that's when something different and cool comes out, but a lot of people sit there and say what are they doing, but when Metallica really is, oh Wow, Metallica, that's what we do, it's just this giant puzzle, if you want to play and illustrate anything at any time,feel free, you know, I mean get back to the arrangements and I mean we were already on that path. walk with songs like Lightning and Master of Puppets, you know, and it sounded like justice for all, it's not that far from songs like Master of Puppets or writing Lightning, it definitely has more parts, yeah, it definitely has more riffs, but I mean, Anyway, we were moving little by little in that direction and another thing, you know, I have to say that I go back to what Laura said in the late eighties that it was something that everyone knows.

I wanted to show how much they could play, it was a time when the one you already know all these guitar solo albums, you know Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and yet a lot of progressive metal bands or Dream Theater and you know there was a real emphasis on Playing back then it was just a short window like between 19 and 86 until 1989, but I definitely felt that and I think you know some of that slipped in and out of this album and you just want to show people that yes, you know the world. We're a metal band, but we can actually play, you know, intricate stuff, even more intricate stuff without really being a prog band, you know?

So I mean it was a sign of the times, what was the real logic? Let's just pick one song as an example, the actual logic being built was blackened because that's actually a Nishan song because it's the one that has Jason's co-writing credit, well the main riff was Jason's, I mean, it I remember after he joined. I mean we were out, we had tuning rooms at the time, but I mean, Bam Bam, yeah, that was written on the bass, right, I think so, he came to my apartment at the time in Albany and not in New York. , Albany in California, but Yeah, he came over and you know, when we were dating and we were starting to get some ideas together, it was like, hey, what do you have?

And that was one of the things that would always stand out to me is him playing that thing and the way the riff was different every time at the end, if it felt really fresh and really cool because it came up, it would keep coming up, but then there would be that little twist at the end that would make it different in a way. However, it was driving somewhere else and then when you came back, it had that security, but there was still that turn in the tail, exactly it was, it was rolling, but you didn't know which direction it was going to roll for a second and, I could still keep it, but having gotten that riff, what do you think would be cool with that?

In a way, there's an interesting logic because it's a type of composition that really stands out because the record clearly has a legacy and yet when you look at it and I look at those sheets of tape where it's actually broken down, any of those pieces , like I said, could have gone somewhere else, but there was clearly an internal logic to the wise writing and ultimately the voice, because there really is one. version of blackened on the box where you are, you are playing, you are playing the riff and humming the vocal melody, there are no words, but you clearly have an idea of ​​what has a candle over it, well that's always something that I feel that I've been pretty good at it, you know, the drummer is doing something, the guitars are doing something, it doesn't have to be the same thing and then the vocals, you know, there's a way they work together.

I have always thought about the voice. like one of the instruments, so there's some percussion here, like I'm playing drums on the guitar essentially and then the same thing with my singing, you know, it's just another rhythm that's happening along with that and that's just part of it. of the construction of all of us from the three. dozens of parts in justice that are listed on that sheet that's in the book, what would have been the point at which okay, we're actually starting to compose and justice for everything? We say that about every album, just hit the red button and record. everything and then we'll figure out what's good, just improvise, just write, just create and let it happen organically or and or let's take this riff that we love and force it somewhere, you know, you know a little bit of everything. there was a little bit of everything, but I think the interference came a little bit later, this was extremely detailed, very precise, we wanted to be as tight as possible and you know, not just play wise, but sound wise we wanted it to hit you in the face and that's what I think was our motivation.

You know, sound-wise, we wanted it to jump. You know, we were obviously in a transition, a dark place, but. It was darker than you knew other places I've been before, but I've been in a lot of darkness, so for me it was the next thing and what do you do with that? Well, you're right. If you're right, you posted it and I remember people saying WOW, now that you know Cliff died you're not going to write about death anymore, it's like now there are even more reasons to write about it, you actually know one. Of the first recorded tapes in the box, there's a couple from late '86, one of them is for Dyers Eve, so if that lyrical concept was already there, you were clearly moving, as you say, to a pretty place. dark and intense, whether almost Whether you knew it or not, I think you know all the albums well, besides killing them all, you know that was us when we were babies, you know we had those songs with attitude, you know, the first one that we actually sat down and wrote, Ride the Lightning. then Master of Puppets where we're getting current and then, you know, and justice for all is very current, but also a little more internal stuff started to appear, you know, there's not as many opinions, but my experience with that? could you see that Mars as the composition developed, could you see that it turned inward a little bit or maybe it wasn't like I guess I want?

I look back in my mind, the way this all connects is, when Bob Rock came along, things changed and there was a completely different guy. The thing is, I think one thing that's interesting to mention is that we tried to record with someone else, there's someone else you know, so Flemming Rasmussen rode the lightning Flemming Rasmussen did a puppet master and we were like, you know. The Guns N'Roses record had come out, there was a lot of that it sounded like a band, it was like there was some sonic thing going on, this attitude and I remember we sat there and said: wow, you know whatever, we just tried someone further. and then my jingle came and God bless him and his patience and so on, and James and I were in Los Angeles and what that lasts maybe like a couple of weeks, three, four weeks, something like that and it just wasn't like that , it didn't stick because I think mainly we weren't ready to let anyone in, but we had a way that in our minds worked, we were incredibly cautious about Metallica at the time, but you know there were so many record companies that would get involved. and our people got involved and there was all this stuff with the money and the promotion and MTV and then there's all this stuff and we were like we're independent, nobody's going to go with our James and I are nobody's keepers. that's coming to try to destabilize this, we're just going to push them away, you know what I mean?

So you know, we called the jingle, you know, bless it, it lasted a couple of three weeks, maybe four weeks and then Fleming came and we went back to what we knew and again not about good or bad or better or worse or just this is what we will know this is what will happen and I think what we had is we found a way not to do it. I don't know, as I'm sitting here listening to what everyone is saying and trying to think about what was really going on at the time, I think there was a lot about balances, you know, so we found a way to achieve it.

I guess mainly James and I had our voices in writing the Sonics parts and it wasn't necessarily about the big picture, it was about the way everything could coexist without anyone having to step back or it was like we were all chained together. and that's why we were moving forward that's how it worked it was like why the kick drum sounded like that well, part of the reason why the kick drum sounded like that is because there was no other place for the kick drum to somehow get through because James' guitar was more o less here, so the kick drum would live up there or a little bit down here, so there's kind of there's a reason for a lot of these things, no one sat there and said, we're going to have a record that's going to be mixed this way. , you know it's like we weren't able to think at that level, so a lot of that was a result of what I think were balance points along the way of just decluttering. of making it all work for the big picture that makes sense no it's actually interesting it makes sense because I was actually thinking listening to the record again the other day is you know one of the reasons why Justice seems like possibly the record more extreme.

What you ever did is because the tone is so vicious, you know, the guitars are very compressed, the drums are very compressed, it really has this, but it sounds like this frayed end of sanity, like some are really on the verge of losing their minds. sanity and it really cuts like a knife, but it's important, I think it's important to say that and correct me if I'm wrong, man, but it wasn't like that, it wasn't planned that way, it wasn't like we didn't sit there and inside a year we will have a record that will sound this particular way.

I don't know if the word is accidental, but it's just the result of instinctive choices made along the way for something we considered. to make it work to keep people in line all that kind of stuff you know what I mean this is our thing no one's going to accept it we're going to touch it no one's going to get involved we're the keepers you know that was my memory of all that year was Jason really integrated performance-wise because when I heard those songs live on that tour when I went out with you guys in Sheffield, Belfast and Dublin, he clearly had a big presence in that sound, one of the things you know. has been a topic of discussion for 30 years is where the bass went and yet clearly as a performer, instrumentalist and writer he had begun to develop, how would you characterize what his place was in that? because maybe people didn't necessarily hear it immediately on the record.

I think it must have been extremely bittersweet for him, like a dream come true, but I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone he can never fill. It must have been very difficult and for him and for us it was difficult, it really was and you know, Psychology 101 will tell you that all of our anger and our pain and our sadness was directed at him when, you don't know everything, but you do know a Much of it, he was an easy target and I. I think at PAS there were a couple of things about Jason, you know his personality, he felt like he was dumb enough to take it, which was positive for him.

I think he was a big fan and we hated that part that we wanted unfathomable. become as tough as you, yeah, as tough as us, so we tried to take away the fanaticism and we also tried to get him to play something different like Cliff, would you know he was a player who played with a pick and followed whatever I wanted. do and I remember there were times when I knew he would be playing her, I would just turn around so you couldn't see what he was playing and he couldn't follow me, it's like, dude, you do whatever you want.

You know this, but obviously live he definitely fit the bill, he was a huge force and you heard the bass live so he wasn't afraid to get up to the mic and bark whenever he felt like it and he was. He sweated, he really sweated and he put a lot into the live show, so that gained a lot of respect, at least I think for us once we started touring with him, yeah, and also you know, I think Jason tried again to try to balance the things. like he was really prominent on those sides of those songs when they were played live.

I mean, he had played those songs and you could tell he was kind of giving it his all and I think part of that was because you know he was trying to make up for not being heard on the album and that was his way of getting his parts heard, hey, I'm there, yeah, yeah, in, you know, in the live life situation, and then you know that I. I think there was a bit of that in the writing phase, the songs you have credits for include Justice, The Beholder, Frayed Ends and Dyers, Eve, at what point would you come up with ideas or riffs that you would include if you were putting stuff together and putting it together? ?

We'd put them in like a big basket and listen to things or come in as things were developing to say, "Oh, well, here's something that could go here to add length." in a big pile and you know, the best, the best parts would be collected from those tapes and put into the songs. I mean, basically, that's how it was done back then. I mean, you really know we had, we've had. different approaches to that over the course of the different albums, but you know, back then, basically, I'd let you know a handful of copies and give them to these guys you know and then I'd come back, you know, X number of days later and I would listen to them. riffs and in the context of you know the songs and you know the guy, oh yeah, I recognize that riff and then, oh yeah, I recognize that riff that James played six months ago and alsominutes and a half, and we had found a dirty old copy in Italy that had to be, you know, transferred like three different times, so it looked horrible and I experimented with where.

You could put the movie between a lot of the breaks and the music covering most of your solos. I had to talk about it. I thought these buy me some time during the solo, but I remember bringing it and you. guys, obviously, because it was the day they were filming their performance, I brought this cut that had a lot of blank spaces where they were going to be placed and it had all the pieces from the movie that I thought were appropriate in its cut and I think you looked at it , you shook your head like you didn't understand what was going on and I'm sure you didn't because most of the time it was just these black holes with a and I believe you, what is this?

Your eyes and you left the room so they were a coupleThings I remember now. I remember someone showed up. If you watch the video, there's a lot of shoulders and arms and body parts that were obviously referencing arms and legs and all those things that we're missing, yeah, and I think. You know, at that time, you know the biggest source of inspiration was what everyone else was doing because that gave us exactly, you know, something like this is what we have to avoid, yeah, it always became intense, when you turn on MTV , it was color. It was light, it was life, it was hair and makeup and people jumping and fun and silly and all that kind of stuff, no names mentioned, but it was all like we wanted to do the opposite of that and it was like, okay, you know? low top in black and white you know, body parts, you know all that, it was kind of like let's just do the office, it was the complete opposite and we approached what everyone else was doing, walking, no milk in the drum, without a party, we were playing. a couple shows at the stadium in Long Beach we had a day off and we went down, there was nothing sexy about Daniel, I mean, this was just a cold, you know, it was cold, cold and just sad, and exactly the way it should be exactly.

The way the song was really amazing because, um, when you think about the source, when you think about, you know, James telling this story about his brothers and, and, and everything I want to say, you think about, you know, I remember that Cliff Bernstein also talked about the book and the movie and could you think about that piece of literature that you know as a source of inspiration and then ended up being the cornerstone of the video and bringing something completely different to the MTV generation at the time? How fucked up the way everything worked out, I mean, you know, I remember we were in San Antonio, we had a day off in San Antonio, the big thing at that time on MTV was called the MTV dial and it was Monday through Friday, It was like 3 o'clock in the afternoon, people were calling and we were saying maybe there's a chance, maybe we'll collapse, maybe you know we'll be number 10, maybe we'll be number 9.

I remember we were all sitting in my Las hotel rooms or some of us were whatever and there was the MTV countdown and the videos weren't there, you know, and then we ended up debuting at number one the first day that you know, the first day that it was available for dial MTV. It was something sacred that baffled everyone, but also something like Lidda fide that we talked about earlier about all these people who were out there, the ones who had no voice and who wanted something different than what they had been served all those years and all of a sudden they got a The opportunity to unite behind something that spoke to them was for both of them, but it was interesting because you were also building on something because one of the things I wrote about this and that in the story I wrote in 88, which was the first piece that what you had in Rolling Stone was that after every show I saw in Sheffield, Belfast and Dublin, after every show there were tables set up in a hallway behind the stage and you would sit there for an hour and a half after the show. concert and you just saw the arms taking pictures, you know, coffee, just talking to people and in a very deliberate and I think genuinely engaged way with the people who had come, they were standing, they weren't just standing at the back door of the scenery.

The stage door Johnnie was waiting for you to run through. to get an autograph you invited them in and that really caught my attention because I could really see the way that your audience had been built and that you were still cultivating them actually cultivating is the wrong job because it seems like you're actually trying to just increasing popularity, you were actually connecting with people in such a deep way that the video just solidified. Yeah, connection was the main word there for me and I don't know if it came up, maybe we grew up as the band grew up listening. to a lot of punk rock and we were with a lot of punk bands and that was the attitude like we were just another guy, you know, come in and hang out and you know there's nothing special about it.

We, anyone could do this, yeah, that part, I mean that part, I think we preferred to hang out, drink beers, shoot with our fans, that was ours, that wasn't about growing in numbers, that was just better than sitting on the bus talking to the road. crew or no disrespect to them, but it was like hanging out with those people that we wanted to be with because they were us, we were all in this together, you know what I mean, and that's what it's like every night sitting there and drinking beers. and doing that kind of stuff and filming with the people that come on the show was just a natural extension of our personality, did you miss that when one and that kind of success almost made it harder to do it?

It's a juxtaposition. defeats the purpose in some ways and I remember some of the shows, you just can't tell what Buffalo was and it's 20 degrees below zero, we're not going to stand outside and sign autographs and I remember we were going through and there were some people out there saying, Rolling Stone lied to us? Yes, I remember what about children? Oh my God, stop turning around. You know, at some point you have to have a reality around the whole thing. I mean, like we do now. Do we meet and greet? It's different than how it used to be, but it's the main thing.

You know, the prime directive is to talk dirty to people, not so much sign this or do that, or I want this from you. How about the universe? I also want to know about you back then, we didn't really have boundaries, we didn't believe those boundaries between the audience and the stage and we were like you know, we're pretty open to almost anything. Kind of a fan situation and of course, like you said, you know when the band got bigger, it got to a point where it was physically impossible for us to not have those boundaries, we had to set boundaries for our well-being. the band because after a while it became too big and demanded too much of us, where other things would suffer, but it's interesting because I think what you did was adapt to the change on the next tour and I want to ask about the Darce and the statue in a minute , but on the next tour you had the snake as a mascot, so you had people inside the show, inside the stage, that could really mess up and you're playing in the round and you've done that for years.

So you've actually scaled what you've accomplished to this elemental point of communication. Well, the crowd is the fifth member they really are and they're just as important as us up there and we've always tried how to do it. Could we approach them? How can we approach them safely? You know, safely. No one else catches fire except me. But you know, how do we do it? How do we do it?. You know, also, you know that some people can talk. for them face to face but in the crowd, so enlightening them now, I mean, you know, obviously, the snake pit was a real effort to try to get them to feel what we felt, to vibe with them, that's what we wanted. to be able to vibe with the audience on a level that hadn't been done before, who named the statute.

I just asked. I'm just curious because we're sitting here talking about the video and I just have one question, if not. I asked, but when I was sitting there cutting this video, which only uses the legendary board but has become somewhat iconic over the years, did you feel what you were feeling at the time when we were trying to put this together? There was no roadmap for when you were sitting there doing all the real work, what were your thoughts? Well, my initial thought was who's going to see this because I had big doubts that a seven and a half minute song would ever make it to MTV, so it was like they gave me a directive that I should make it shorter and I think I showed them an edit shorter that lasted about five minutes.

I don't think anyone's seen that one, but now my conundrum, well, the hard part was Try to tell the story of the movie because I thought that was my directive, not to take the lyrics of the song because that was a peace, you know, it was Clearly what your purpose was in that. part of the song I thought I should expand the whole story and incorporate all the other elements of the main character's life and bring in the doctors, the doctors had a very important part in the movie because they didn't realize that this guy was alive , and I think I heard you talk about it before, they thought he was brain dead, so they just kept him alive just to see what would happen.

I think they were conducting experiments on him, but the song like Well, the movie was all this internal dialogue. I tried to present it at first with just footage from the movie, but it didn't make any sense because you couldn't understand what you know, all the dialogue was, I mean, basically drums. I mean, if you use it silently, it's really just a guy lying in bed, so I had to open it up and try to sell it. The rest of the time there were no other videos that had incorporated dialogue that had a real narrative. Well, it was because I didn't think it was working, I thought I was supposed to be introduced to it when I had.

I was mainly an editor at that time and I had taken a lot of everyone in and at that time every studio had some big singer singing their theme song and then I would put a lot of clips from the movie in it, but there was always a lot of action, people were laughing, you know, cars flipping, whatever it was. The movie was and I think maybe that's why they suggested they come on and I realized it was just a guy sitting on a bed and you know there's a dialogue in his head that happens on the soundtrack, but if he cut all that out, it's just a guy lying in bed and it was pretty boring so I thought I'd expand it to the rest of the movie and try to incorporate the whole piece and I don't know if that's what you want.

The boys wanted it but I had to try something good, actually mm-hmm the first time I handed it to them there was a mm-hmm. I remember having a long, nice discussion with you on the phone where there was a lot of swearing and there was a lot of this is our video, it's not about the movie and everyone hates it and you have to take all this out, so I cropped it and cut it into a performance, only I think that was the directive at the time. Cut all this out and let's see what the performances are like and that actually, yeah, became the improvised version.

Actually, I'm curious, Rob, what was your impression when you first saw that video? Well, you know it's funny because I had seen the first videos. When I was in high school, there was a class with Neil Bogaerts Casablanca Records and I saw the Joan Jett video. I love the rock and roll in the video of Gary Myrick making plans for a Nigel, so all of a sudden, you know, here's this. You know, the video goes totally against the grain and you know, but as a metal lover I thought it was amazing, you know? And again coming back to the appearance and everything about him broke all the rules, how did you wait for the pictures? of the body and like she saw the movie when I was a little kid, you know, so I had an idea of ​​where this band was going with that and creatively I thought it was brilliant that one and the way that all the songs on the album really they function as a piece that is ultimately summarized in the cover, which is the statue of justice, but he is blindfolded and tied up and you use him on stage and particularly when the statue falls at the end of justice , It was like this.

It was really the beginning as well of your approach to performance art, which is that kids need more than just four guys playing there with a backdrop. Did you feel that was a step forward? Were you worried that it was being adapted to Broadway? What was your feeling about taking this on the road and making it visual and physical two words Iron Maiden and Eddie Iron Maiden paved paved that way I mean, you know, when we got the crosses, you know, I mean, a lot of this has to see with resources, so set up the lightning when a background with a silver logo made of aluminum foil because that was the budget, there was nothing beyond that, then in the puppet shop we have the crosses, excuse me and all that and and You know we were using the same guys that worked on Iron Maiden, named Charlie Kael, he was the designer ofstage number one and Iron Maiden every record they put out somewhere in time and the power and the calmness and all those records, that was it.

It was just about incorporating some kind of imagery into the setting, they were the road map at the time and they were the ones who did it better and cooler than anyone else. They always seemed to go above and beyond on fan-friendly type of things. that people could really connect with and so they were totally the road map and when there were finally some resources and we were playing bigger venues we went to Charlie Kael again and I think you know Peter Mensch was pretty instrumental in a lot of those things at the time and I think the Doors were a little inspired by Pink Floyd, the wall, the wall where the whole wall collapsed.

I think they did some legendary shows and were in Los Angeles or New York or something like that. I built the whole wall and then it collapsed and someone said we should do our verse. I mean, it's not a copy or anything, it's kind of an inspiration, they build it up and then it falls apart. Okay, we can do that, but actually, it takes the whole idea of ​​justice for all, which is the last line of the Pledge of Allegiance, and, you know, makes it visual. Like Doris, the statue of Justice, doesn't Not only is she blindfolded and tied up, but she's basically broken at the end of the song, yeah, what's the song, I mean a lot of those things, a lot of those things at that moment and we talked about this a lot. times and along the way, I mean, there were very, there were very few Jean movie book references, someone would have a cool title, someone would say hello and justice for all and then I think in that case I remember saying wait, there was a Al.

Pacino's movie, but it's called Injustice Fall and then James and I would sit and watch that and there was something there that was inspiring, maybe maybe not whatever it was and then it was like we were very open to whatever was going. around us other creative works to provoke something in us. I don't remember, but I remember you and me watching that movie. I don't remember what came out of watching the movie, but I think the people who made it told us what we wanted. the cover must be like them, I don't remember exactly, but I remember seeing that we were working with some designers and II Airfix, well, everyone I think it was Andy Airfix at the time, I think it was, I don't know what it was, but there we were very open to a lot of input from different people at the time and certainly the performance material which was definitely inspired by Iron Maiden's approach to bringing album covers to life with a mascot or Steven Gorham, you know. but definitely Peter Mensch has a lot to do with stage production and ideas and things and hey let's make this come to life and there's a really cool idea and another guy that Peter brought in um like Peter would say he invented it.

I invented that guy. a guy named John Broderick who ended up doing our theater productions and our lights for 20 years came from the theater world, so yeah, really the opposite of yeah, you know, the rock of the greats, just a bunch of flashing lights, al contrary, yes, a lot of new, so popular rock. bands would be doing or whatever, a lot like he's saying theatrical, yeah, simpler with a little more quality instead of just you know, being Danish, how did you relate to not being Danish, how did you relate to this concept? That line comes from the Pledge of Allegiance, like how did you relate being in America to what in a sense James was writing about in songs like Justice?

We weren't sure, man, I mean, when I came to the United States, all this, all the things that came up. from the television. I remember this blew my mind. I got there right around the time that Jimmy Swaggart was on TV in Baker and this whole organized religion thing and there was so much stuff about how he was the guy's guy in Virginia Farrell. Falwell Jerry Falwell Falwell and all that, what was this PMRC thing and all that and James and I mean we would just have fun being contrary to all that? We sat around the cause and at home we watched television and read the occasional newspaper.

Picking up on the things that were happening around us and, you know, coming from Denmark, um, just embracing the weirdness of it all and feeling, and James was like we were just loners, we didn't feel like we belonged. Any part of the world that came into our living room from the world around us and that's where we found solace and discovered that we belonged to something for all the people who were feeling lonely, we all banded together and created our own. group and that's when we felt like we belonged to something and then as the years went by that group grew in size and at one point even I maybe became bigger than the main group, that was like the craziest thing, one of the things James said when I

interview

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On the Snake Pit tour we were talking about politics and the way that justice had almost summed up Metallica as a hip band, a political band, and one of the things you said was that they called us a political band and justice for all and that. It really scared us because that's not what we want to write about forever. Did you find that when you came to justice, when you finished it, when you finished that tour and you've been playing those songs for you know 18 months or so, that was kind of the final point that you needed to change the way you saw the world or that the world had changed around you, yeah, I just don't know anything about that, it was actually more like we don't like to be labeled no matter what it is. is that we don't want to be labeled as a political explosion because we certainly aren't, I mean, you know, I think the punk-rock part of us was, you know, we just want to complain or you know we're 20 years old and you know this it's our university this is where we're discovering our opinions what we think about the world you know we read a book and now we know everything you know we don't like the way things are and we have a voice we can say it I think at the end of the day it polarizes people and I think we realized that early on, so when you speak from the heart, when you speak from your story, your experience, people can say whatever they want about it. but they're not going to change their minds, they're not going to know that this will always be right because this is my story and I think everyone has an opinion, it's controversial and we don't want to be a controversial band. we want to be solid we want to be we want to be real we want to tell the truth yes we feel alienated who doesn't know that?

If you follow us, you also said that actually on that tour that we were talking about, even actually on The 88 tour that you were talking about maybe it has reached a point in the composition and the speed of music things in the that you know you can't go much further, like you actually said this, there will always be someone faster. that you and you seem to realize that even on the Justice Tour, which suggests that what later became the Black Album was already germinating. I agree I agree you know competitions are a big thing you know we were driven by a lot of hate and I was really afraid that we weren't good enough so those two things combined got us where we needed be an injustice to everyone and I think at the end of the day we realized what we were doing.

Know? Did you listen to this other band? they're faster than us and so what you know, so what do you know, what else, what else do we have, we have, you know, come on, let's do it, let's make it more muscular, let's make it more powerful, you know, I don't know. It helped us change our direction by realizing that it was a futile goal to be the fastest or the most complex or you know, the craziest riff on the planet. You know those are finite things. You know that for us we can only go like this. now someone else will do something else let's be unique let's be ourselves and be honest with ourselves and you know what we want to do next this is really one for the court so maybe everyone can take a turn on this one when they play. songs from Justice Now and I've seen you play Justice several times over the last few years.

What normally goes through your head. What is the next part? It's similar for me. Do I remember the guitar solo or not? I think touching it reminds me. from our stage back then and I remember you trying to figure out this part of the song while you're on stage trying to figure out how we play this. I'm not so worried about what the next part is coming just from Sorry, but it reminds me of that tour, yes, it certainly reminds me of that tour. Out of the way, Justice Doris will hit you, yes, at some point, yes, when a part of her will end up on you or in the crowd there.

There are a few times where right at the end of Justice we would have a big explosion and some of the lighting would waver and then inside it would fall out and there are times where it wasn't the fault of the road crew or the set. or whatever, but inevitably every few shows, doors would jump in front of the stage or there would be someone in the wrong place, you know, and there weren't many mishaps on that tour, all related to that song. because there's a lot of production on that song and you know there was a learning curve with that song as well as playing it live and I'll always remember when the album first came out we started playing that song I mean like you said before Lars for At the end of the song there were some long faces and the good thing is that we had an explosion inside because it actually seemed like that would wake them up.

You know, Doris head-butted me. Yeah, I remember the motion of the rigging almost killed me one time because I completely forgot about it and then I heard the explosion and I just jumped forward, you know, because I knew the only thing that fell in the explosion was like doors falling apart and a big piece of lighting that swayed back and forth and there was a part of the song where it's a little tricky, yeah, to do both, it was multitasking for sure, at the end of that song, as a fan, when you play Justice, now , what's going on in your head, well, it feels like a very orchestrated piece, there's a lot of layers, which I think is cool.

You know again, it reminds me of a symphony orchestra, it's a very big phonic sin, but it's funny that you talk about this because the other day I met the guitarist Johnny Five, who plays a Marilyn Manson band and he told me that I was accidentally absorbing I was on Rob Zombie, okay, wrong band, Rob Zombie, anyway, knocked something over or tripped over a wire or a line or something that took down the whole system and Lady Justice. He came down early and said that Lars, the sack, yeah, Lars scolded him, gave him a verbal beating and he was scared in his pushups exactly, yeah, and I just, so I'm listening to this now and I'm in, you know.

Three nights ago I was here in this story, you know, and thirty years later, yeah, in a discussion, well, I just want to say one thing that's been on my mind the whole time we've been sitting here, and that is, you know when to sit down. 30 years later it's like every record has a lightning bolt, it's this, you know, and the sound bite for the puppets is this and the sound bite for justice is this and the sound bite for the black album and then it loads and then you know the haircut album and then came the garage, you know, the album cover, then came Symphony, it's all like that, like justice is aggressive, you know, the rhythm guitars and the drums, the bass , you know, it's like, I think it's a little bit more than that and I think that for me. when you focus on a lot of it, it's about what came before and the path that led to what happened in '88 and '89 and I think, sitting back and trying to like what you were thinking, 1988 is like, I want I mean, I think you mentioned a lot of things, it's like, uh, yeah, I'm sure sorry, but I think you just have to remember that a lot of this stuff was us just moving forward and considering what you were thinking about and whether you planned so many things. at the time it was instinctive and it just moved and it's part of a longer story or a longer journey that is still going on and will hopefully continue for years or decades to come, but in the way that we're sitting here now. it's just today it's just part of it's still part of that story well, the story continues tonight when you gentlemen take the stage here in Pittsburgh.

I want to thank you from the tuning room Kirk James Rob Lars Michael, gentlemen, congratulations on 30 years of Justice in 30 Years and more chaos. Greetings, thanks Dave.