Light Reading on Heavy Metal

Metallica: This Monster Lives, the written account of a documentary, written by Joe Berlinger with Greg Milneris, is sheer pleasure for those of us who still harbor a soft spot for heavy metal.  Although the documentary films about the band weighed in for a large quantity of the book, the reigning kings of heavy metal, James Hetfield, Kirk Hammet, and Lars Ulrich, pushed their way through.  The book essentially chronicles the filming of  Some Kind of Monster, a documentary about the near collapse of the world’s greatest heavy metal band.  The musings of these real-life characters reach out to both the common air guitar hero and to anyone who has stepped inside him or herself to wrestle with their own monsters. 

There were parts my heavy metal heart and soul could not get enough of, thanks largely in part to James Hetfield, who tells us something about himself: "It's like, I wanted to fit in, but I definitely did not want to at the same time.  Because I grew so comfortable with the 'no one really knows me' part of my existence."  To go from the unabashed leader of ‘Alcoholica,’ as the band was aptly nicknamed, to being able to have this kind of an insight makes me wonder if a modern revamping of the antiquated 12-step program is in order. 

Another memorable moment is when the band's therapist gets the Metalli-boot and cries about it: "You form a relationship...and then you feel a little jilted when you discover the limits of that relationship."  It's like making a new friend over the summer only to find that relationship no longer exists when it is time to go to back to school in September.  Or it’s like bonding with a co-worker over a bottle of wine only to have them exploit your drunken digressions to your boss. 

This Monster Lives also addresses the recent conflict between the drummer, Lars Ulrich and the music file-sharing website Napster.  Ulrich’s insistence on monetary reparations from Napster for illegally downloaded Metallica songs resulted in a rift between the band and the fans.  The book does well to shed light on the side of the story that the media did not report, the side in which Metallica fights for reparations on behalf of all musicians, especially those who cannot afford for their music to be handed out freely across the Internet. 

The only major drawback is the near absence of lead guitarist Kirk Hammett.  Perhaps this is largely due in part to Kirk’s penchant for privacy, but is that not the job of an author: to flesh out the transparent? 

By the book’s end we are familiar with the ins and outs of documentary filmmaking and the ways in which the presence of a film crew can compromise not only the film’s objectivity, but also the band’s ability to open up during their therapy sessions, which were filmed in front of a camera crew.   Similarly, the writers apparently do not consider privacy a virtue. Instead they dutifully expose the monsters of Metallica.

--Dawn Johnson