PLEASE give a link and line of credit if you use our News stories! Check News Archive at the bottom of this page for older news. Got a scoop? E-mail Zach, our News Director and fill us in!  SEPTEMBER 1999 NEWS
Featured bits:
What do you think of each other's bands?
James: They're good guys. Dave's quirky, he's interesting live and he's been fighting a very hard long time. Plus they've got great songs.
Dave: Well, all I can say is Metallica are inspiration. They started playing a kind of music that wasn't on the radio and worked really hard doing their own thing until they made it.
How does this compare to other tours? James: Nothing changes as far as we're concerned. People come to watch us and when we bring a new record out they don't want to hear the whole thing (laughs).
Do you prefer to do traditional shows or things like the recent classical concerts in San Francisco? James: Well, doing something for the first time is always exciting. You feel like a virgin playing acoustically or with a symphony orchestra. But at the same time, we know we play hard music best and can't deny that.
Will Metallica be doing more of that sort of thing? Lars: Now we want to make another studio album and reinvent ourselves again. Do the leap we did from the Justice album to the Black album. We took that as far as we could with the Load/Reload project and now it's time for something drastic again. We have to challenge ourselves, maybe change producers. We're gonna change other things. Not do hours and hours of interviews, not sign thousands of autographs. There's only so many hours in the day and we don't have unlimited energy. We've got children, relationships, we need time off to balance that, I want Metallica to have another 10 or 15 years and we won't if we continue at a crazy level.
How are the four of you getting along at the moment? James: laughs Lars: Well we're all very comfortable, thank you. The most important thing for me is how the vibe is when the four of us are in a room or on stage together. For some reason, after the Black album, lots of the pressure went away. We used to fight alot. Now, especially me and James, we share alot more of the same vision about what we wanna do, where we wanna take it. The creative game of being in Metallica is alot easier than it was five years ago. ....I feel better about Metallica than ever.
There's someone else itching for a fight at the moment. Bruce Dickinson said that Iron Maiden are better than Metallica, and that you wouldn't dare play with them. James: Oh, so what? Congratulations. I don't care what they say. I like Iron Maiden, so I only hope they haven't got back together so that they're mor epopular than Metallica. It's not a popularity contest. Lars: Yeah, but I know when we play live we're the best band there is. In the last two months we've had pantera, Sepultura, Fear Factory, Biohazard playing with us and I still feel we go out and play this better than anyone else. When we play 'Battery' we wipe the floor withe everyone. And it's ridiculous anyway. There's no other kind of music wher epeople have these issues. It's possible to play hard and heavy music withou sounding like anyone else.
Pick up the issue for more, including all three guys on fatherhood, why Lars says: "I think Marilyn Manson is responsible for everything bad on the planet," what James says about gun control, and what James says about his tattoo and what inspired it.
|