As Metallica slowly issues its recent, jaw-dropping 30th anniversary shows — the first arrived late Friday — it offers an opportunity to take stock on three decades of metal.
The four gigs at The Fillmore earlier this month were a celebration of a career that has seen the band go from a group of young, club-playing Los Angeles misfits to one of the most important bands in rock history.
It's self-titled 1991 platter, often referred to as "The Black Album," is the best-selling album since SoundScan started keeping track of the number of albums sold in 1991 at 22 million copies worldwide.
Those are staggering numbers of which most musicians only dream, figures that only hint at the idea some estimated 1.6 million people in the crowd in this video.
The group has seen the pendulum swing the other way, too. Just last month, the band released Lulu (right), a collaboration album with Lou Reed which has received savage reviews. ("It's quite possibly a candidate for one of the worst albums ever made," says one reviewer.)
As a distant observer to the 30th anniversary shows — I wasn't alone as some Craiglisters were asking prices in the thousands for the $6, fan club-members-only stubs, shutting out a lot of interested parties — it was exciting to see the setlists from each night. (Night 1, 2, 3, 4.)
The band didn't gloss over any period in its history, playing songs from Lulu, cuts from Load and ReLoad and 2003's much maligned St. Anger as well as classics from the black album and the group's '80s records.
That fact alone didn't make these shows fun to watch even from a distance, however. There were songs which were never played live before, such as "Carpe Diem Baby" or "To Live is to Die." There were songs which had not been played or played in full in a live setting in years, such as "No Remorse" or "Dirty Window."
Each night, members of the fan club were invited on stage to play a song with the band.
Each show marked the debut of an unreleased song written during the Death Magnetic sessions in 2008, with the four being issued last week on iTunes as Beyond Magnetic.
But most surprising was the guest list: Reed, Apocalyptica, Marianne Faithfull, Kid Rock, John Bush, Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington, Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell, Pepper Keenan, Glenn Danzig, Rob Halford and a mostly reunited Mercyful Fate (video at top), just to name a few.
Every living former member of Metallica was invited to the stage on the final night, including founding guitarist Lloyd Grant and bassist Ron McGovney, both of whom left the lineup before the group recorded its debut record in 1983. Also joining were Dave Mustaine, who founded Megadeth after being dismissed from Metallica, and Jason Newsted, who bowed as bassist at the start of the '00s.
Oh, did I forget Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne? Yeah, they were there, too.
Two other guests were Sean Harris and Brian Tatler, both associated with the band Diamond Head. Metallica fans will know Diamond Head from "Am I Evil?," a staple of the group's live act.
Tatler and Harris hadn't appeared on stage together in more than a decade following a rift over the creative direction of Diamond Head that led Harris to split the group.
That tiny little story brings to mind something else about Metallica.
In the documentary "Some Kind of Monster," audiences saw the band mature and grow on camera, sometimes in painful ways, during the making of St. Anger (left).
In live performances since then, a clean and sober James Hetfield often tells fans "Metallica loves you," a significant shift from the "Metal up your a--!" war cry of the group's early years.
When Metallica opened its 2007 performance at the Bridge School Benefit with a performance of Rare Earth's "I Just Want to Celebrate," it felt less like a cover and more like an anthem from a group that had battled each other as well as its own demons.
Thirty years on, it's a kinder, gentler, older Metallica.
The shows and the slew of guests spoke to a collaborative spirit about the band both as a creative entity, but also in a human way. The members of Metallica aren't just growing and changing themselves, but their music has the power to bring people back together. It repaired the relationship between Tatler and Harris to at least get them to perform together.
It also welcomed Newsted and Mustaine, who have both shown scorn throughout the years for their former band members, back with open arms.
It was a celebration that wouldn't have been possible at the band's 20-year mark.
The 30th anniversary gigs were a celebration the likes of which few bands ever get to put on.
They showed Metallica's evolution as a band, but also as human beings.
That's more important than any number of years as a band or number of records sold.
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