“This is either going to be the most expensive home movie ever or we will never have any friends in the music business again!” Lars Ulrich talking to the camera during the making of The Black Album.
It’s 1990 All Over Again
I hear those words and just like that I’m back again. Back in One On One studio in North Hollywood. I can smell the wood paneled walls and leather couches and hear the subtle buzz of millions of dollars of recording equipment standing ready to memorialize whatever musical greatness a musician decides to create. It’s the fall of 1990 and I can hear the quiet whine of the movie camera motor as it hums by my ear. In front of my camera is Metallica. And their new producer Bob Rock. And his engineer Randy Staub. And they’re making jokes about somebody or something to cut the ever-present tension of recording a masterpiece and trying to get it right. Although they don’t know it’s a masterpiece just yet. It sounds pretty cool but there’s still a lot more work to be done.
Of course I’m not really in 1990. I’m in 2019 and I’m in an editing room looking at movie footage that I shot in 1990. There rolling out before me is over 50 hours of film footage now digitized of Lars, James, Kirk, and Jason recording their album “Metallica” which everyone calls by the only name that matters, The Black Album. The raw footage is incredible mainly because it shouldn’t exist at all. In the fall of 1990, Metallica was known as the group that didn’t make music videos, didn’t pander to MTV, and defied the musical trends of the day by making their own music and taking it to the people in frenetic live shows. By all rights, there should be no documentary called “A Year And A Half In The Life of Metallica.” But thankfully for history there is. I was fortunate enough to film Metallica from 1990 through 1992 as they recorded The Black Album, all the way through the subsequent tour, documenting the band as they blew past everyone’s wildest expectations (except maybe Lars’) and became one of the greatest bands in rock and roll. Along the way I shot a lot of footage. Some of that footage was used for a one-off record listening party at Madison Square Garden. Some more of that footage was used for a video about the band that opened the tour dates. Some footage became the music video to “Nothing Else Matters.” And still more of that footage became a double VHS feature length documentary called “A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica, Parts 1 and 2.” The documentary has passed into metal music history. The music video continues to run to this day. And the footage was sent to an archive which I imagine looks something like the final shot of Citizen Kane. Packed up forever. Until now.
In 2018, Lars said it was time to open up the time capsule again and revisit the footage for the upcoming Black Albumreissue set. Awesome! It’s a rare gift for a director to be able to revisit, reexamine and reedit early footage let alone nearly 30-year-old footage. I couldn’t wait. As fortune would have it, I was already working on a film project called “Murder In The Front Row” with Jack Gulick, the original producer of “A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica” and Sean Fullen, the original editor of the same. It was like old home week.
Going through the footage again was like Christmas (or Hannukah) morning. And because Metallica had the incredible foresight (at the time they thought it insanity!) to spend the extra dollars and shoot 16mm film, everything has that classic timeless look. It looked like Woodstock. You know why people care about a rock concert that happened in August 1969? Because there was a movie camera there shooting film and it became a legend. Altamont plus movie camera equals legend. Remember the huge concert at Watkins Glen in 1973? Nope. That’s my point. So Metallica shot film and history is rewarded.

What’s In The Box?
The first job was to figure out the storylines and expand upon what we edited in 1992. When I started filming, I only covered certain songs. When I edited the footage in 1992, we didn’t have time to go into too much depth. Now we had a chance to dig deeper. Here is a little bit about the segments we created:

The Making Of Enter Sandman
“Enter Sandman!” What can I say? It still amazes me when I hear the song today that I was there when it was recorded. That’s what I quickly noticed as I watched back this footage. Everything is iconic now. It’s taken for granted that “Enter Sandman” sounds like “Enter Sandman.” But back then each creative decision was still up for grabs. Do they go this way or go that way? What emerges is often the foundation that lies beneath any great work of art, thousands of mini decisions combined to create something astonishing that has stood the test of time. It’s amazing hearing the song come together because even this many years later…nothing rocks like “Enter Sandman.” The thundering drums, the layered guitars, the crisp vocal, it just crushes. There’s a nice little moment at the beginning of this segment where a clearly exhausted Bob Rock is trying to organize the next day to do some vocals and guitar tracking. Lars and Kirk are like schoolboys joking around and not being serious while poor Bob comes off like the put-upon principal at heavy metal detention class. It really shows the dynamic between the band and their new producer because this kind of stuff went on all the time. Yet through it all, the focus was still on making the greatest music possible and it comes through powerfully in “Enter Sandman.” One specific memory comes to mind. The band had been recording for many months and there were still months of work to go so it was probably around April 1991. A very important radio convention was coming up wherein program managers from around the country get a preview of new music coming out. Again, another reminder of a different time before the internet. Metallica’s managers wanted to give the radio world a sneak preview of the kind of music that Metallica was making in the studio to get them excited and pave the way for airplay. Bob Rock did a rough mix of the first two minutes of “Enter Sandman.” We listened as it thundered through the studio’s mighty speakers. I remember thinking “oh man, what could ever top this record?!” I could not believe it. Metallica did not attend the radio convention, but we heard back a few days later that the track blew doors off everything else that was presented. And they wanted more Metallica! This was an early warning sign that Enter Sandman was going to be a monster.
The Making Of The Unforgiven
I remember being in the studio and hearing the songs that Metallica were laying down and being just blown away and none more so than “The Unforgiven.” This song really shows Metallica branching out, trying new sounds and ideas. James talks about putting the Spanish acoustic guitar at the beginning. Listening to it now in 2019 it’s like, “well of course it starts with acoustic guitar, any idiot can hear that” but back then it was just another creative choice. I’ve always considered Kirk’s solo on “Unforgiven” to be one of his finest. The solo developed over time. I think Kirk, like a lot of musicians, could hear the solo in his head and then had to work to make it a reality. I don’t think I ever filmed him doing the exact solo that’s on the record, but the alternate solo take here is pretty close and it is just stunning. A lot of experimentation went into this song especially with the use of sound effects to build the eerie mood at the beginning. This segment shows much more of what went on to create “The Unforgiven.”

The Making Of Sad But True
Bob Rock made many great contributions to The Black Album beginning with having the band record together in the same room which they apparently had never done before. You can see the band members communicating with each other musically and the results are on the tape. Over the course of making the record, I would film odd little interviews with the band members wherever I could or sometimes film them as they were interviewed by others. I used a few of those interviews here and there in these reissue segments. In October of 1991 I filmed my first formal sit-down interviews with the Lars, James, Kirk, and Jason. These interviews were used as the backbone of the pre-show video on tour. We filmed in Chicago because the stage was being assembled nearby. As I watch them today, I can still feel the residual effects of the epic hangover that I had while filming! The night before was a night out in Chicago. Much beer and Jager was consumed by many of us. The next morning I had to pick up film equipment while the rock stars slept in and showed up no worse for the wear. Lesson learned: Filmmakers are filmmakers and rock stars are rock stars. Don’t try to keep up with the rock stars!
The interviews came out well and it’s interesting to hear the guys reflecting on the brand-new songs. “Sad But True” is one of the heaviest of Metallica’s heavy songs. Jason’s contribution is very obvious here. There’s a nice moment of James and Jason working together to get the bass line for the song. I remember Jason telling me with a craftsman’s pride that he completed his bass work for all the songs on the album in just three weeks. Jason was always prepared and had an easy-going attitude in the studio. He brought a lot to The Black Album. I would later realize that Jason’s true time to shine was on the  concert stage as he gave one hundred and ten percent every single night. It was a real pleasure working with Jason and I’m glad this footage shows the thoughtful musician that he is. There’s also a nice moment when Bob Rock compares “Sad But True” to “Kashmir.” He’s right!

Jason and James working on “Sad But True” as the girls look on.

The Making Of Nothing Else Matters
In 1991, Metallica shot concept music videos for the first two singles from the album, “Enter Sandman” directed by Wayne Isham and “The Unforgiven” directed by Matt Mahurin. Both videos are great and in the signature style of their creators. “Nothing Else Matters” was scheduled to be the third single off the album but it presented a unique problem. It’s pretty much a love song even if it never says the word “love.” Lars called me up in late 1991 and asked if I could pull together footage from the studio into a music video. If it didn’t work, the band was going to have to go out and make another concept video. We labored for a couple of weeks, but the footage was all there, and the resulting music video was a heavy rotation hit on MTV. So people have seen a lot of this footage. But now we had a chance to get into the other footage of “Nothing Else Matters” a little more. It’s great to watch now because you can see how uncertain the guys are about it. They’re really out on a limb on this one. They are trusting their instincts to make the song they “feel” but it’s all new territory for Metallica. The happy result is that “Nothing Else Matters” is beloved by audiences around the world and a staple of every Metallica concert. And a favorite wedding song. Myself included. Try dancing your first dance to that for six minutes and forty-three seconds in front of all your friends and family! There’s a nice moment of James, Lars and Bob Rock talking about the meaning of the song. You can tell that James is still very cautious about the song lest it be seen as just a ballad. There’s also some footage wherein they tried string arrangement almost like a foreshadowing of the S&M concerts Metallica would do years later with the symphony orchestra.

The Making Of Don’t Tread On Me
This song was not featured much in the original documentary, so it was nice to show how it developed here. There’s another cool solo by Kirk. And there’s a good discussion with Bob and James about how the chorus of a song will work in a concert setting. As I finished writing this piece a viral news article was making the rounds about a woman who was hiking and encountered a cougar. The cougar was stalking her, and she scared it away with her iPhone by playing Metallica’s “Don’t Tread On Me” which is an amazingly appropriate song for the moment. Even better is the fact that the mighty Hetfield heard about the story and called the woman for a few kind words about the incident. At the time of recording, “Don’t Tread On Me” was just another in the batch of songs Metallica was laying down. It didn’t have the seductive hook of “Enter Sandman” nor the grandeur of “Unforgiven,” but it was heavy in its own way. What is evident watching the footage is that just as much effort was put into making “Don’t Tread On Me” as was put into any of the more well-known songs. Clearly the band had set out to make a great record and there were no “filler” songs to pad out the content. Listening to The Black Album all the way through is like listening to any of the great rock albums like AC/DC’s “Back In Black” or Aerosmith’s “Rocks.” “Don’t Tread On Me” is part of that “both sides of a record” rock album experience.

And now a few words about Kip Winger
The first time Metallica actually used my footage was in 1991 as they prepared for the “Wherever I May Roam Tour” to support The Black Album. I put together some of the footage for a listening party at Madison Square Garden on James’ birthday August 3, 1991. Can you imagine? A listening party at MSG! I then took that footage and edited it into a longer fifteen-minute film about Metallica’s history which played before the band took the stage every night. There was no opening band, just the film! The film would end, and Metallica would come out to the opening notes of “Enter Sandman”!
Let me address something that has repeatedly come up over the past 28 years and that is the footage of the dart board with Kip Winger’s face on it. Here’s how it happened: In the studio lounge there was a dart board. There were usually several rock magazines around the studio as well as some pornographic magazines (hey, it was the 90’s ok!). People get bored in the studio. There’s always something to wait for. Waiting for strings to be changed. Waiting for tape to be spliced. Whatever. So on any given day, a photo of some unfortunate rocker, usually a hair band rocker, was clipped from the magazines and combined with something clipped from the porn magazines to make something completely inappropriate. Sometimes a photo of a hair metal god might wind up on the dart board until he was ripped to shreds by a hail of well-placed darts. So there was nothing special about Kip Winger’s face appearing on the dartboard. It could’ve been Bret Michaels. Or that dude from White Lion. Whatever. But the day I was filming it was Kip. So Lars was firing away with the darts, and I was filming. Lars rather gleefully exclaims “Die Kip!” as he hurls darts into Kip’s smiling face, and it was funny. Maybe a year later in the edit room, I added the Kip footage to the tour video, and it got a big cheer every night. I also included Kip in the Nothing Else Matters music video. And the documentary. Now I’ve got nothing personally against Kip Winger. I’ve never met him. I’m not a big fan of his music and looking back these days at the music video for “Seventeen” is kind of embarrassing and a little creepy. But I wasn’t out to get him. It was just a funny scene. Over the years I’ve read a few interviews where Kip has lamented that Lars throwing darts at his face helped ruin his career. I doubt it. I think changing musical tastes had a lot more to do with it. And I also think that a lot of lazy music journalists like to provoke trouble by asking Kip stupid questions about dart boards instead of talking about music. But I will say that instead of complaining, it would have been much cooler if the Kipster had made an answer music video where he’s throwing darts at Lars’ face! That might’ve boosted his career! I’ll just leave it at this…what happened to that White Lion dude was way worse!

Kip gets the point!
The Tour
After filming Metallica in the studio for almost a year, Lars invited me along on The Black Album tour. There was so much footage from that experience that I decided to pick one thing that still stands out in my mind to this day and that is the Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert For AIDS Awareness. As Metallica was enjoying the incredible success of The Black Album in 1991, Freddy Mercury succumbed to AIDS. It was a terrible wake up call to the world, especially the rock world. Metallica had recorded one of the great Queen covers with “Stone Cold Crazy,” so they were particularly saddened.
In April 1992 the surviving members of Queen held a huge benefit concert at Wembley Stadium to raise money to combat the disease. Metallica were invited to play. This was a big deal. A very big deal. Metallica were on the bill with the who’s who of rock nobility. It was a beautiful acknowledgment of Metallica’s rising fame, and it was incredible for me to be along for that ride. The show was broadcast around the world and Metallica opened the show!  They played three songs that day, “Enter Sandman,” “Sad But True,” and “Nothing Else Matters.” I don’t know how but Metallica managed to pull whatever strings needed for me and Vinny to film the rehearsal and the show.

Wembley remember Freddie - April 1992

Metallica Plays The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert For AIDS Awareness
I remember interviewing some of the British young people outside the stadium and they were so sad because losing Freddy was like losing a family member. Many of them had seen Freddy rock Wembley and it was terrible to know he would rock no more. Little could they realize that all these years later the film Bohemian Rhapsody would celebrate the ever-present magic of Freddie Mercury.
There’s a great moment in the dressing room before the show when only the four members of Metallica are working out the arrangement of the songs. I love this moment because it could be any band in any town anywhere but it’s Metallica at Wembley.
At showtime we were allowed into the photographers’ pit for Metallica’s set, but it was a super busy place. Photographers from around the world jockeyed for position at this globe spanning event. Our camera was blocked by other photographers and the broadcast video crew. Some of this footage made it into the original documentary but looking back at it now, it’s really amazing to just see it all in its unvarnished glory. Sure we had to fight our way to the front but when we got there, we would be rewarded with an amazing shot of one of the guys. So this is the longest running clip because you can see our raw footage from end to end. There’s Metallica and they are playing for Freddy and playing for the world! And one more thing: you can see that the broadcast camera guys were filming Kirk during the solo for “Nothing Else Matters.” Sorry guys, James plays that one and we got it!
Afterwards in the dressing room, Metallica knew they had crushed it. You can see how happy James is! I did not include the now famous and infamous meeting of Metallica and Spinal Tap because I had used every bit of that great footage in the original documentary. I will add that this great meeting of the minds is one of my favorite things that I have ever filmed!
I got to film many rock stars that day and they’re in the original documentary. One thing that I wish I could have filmed but didn’t was this one moment actress Elizabeth Taylor walked through on her way to the stage to speak. She was a tireless supporter of AIDS causes having lost her friend Rock Hudson years earlier. We were all in the hubbub backstage and suddenly security started moving everybody, rock stars included, to the sides of the passageway. I thought maybe royalty was coming through. In a way it was. Liz Taylor walked through, and no one was allowed to film her. Wow, she had more charisma and style than all the rock stars! She walked slowly but with the strength of purpose. She looked no one in the eye. Everyone hushed and just stared like watching a rare bird. And then she was gone, and the chaos resumed. Damn, that’s real rocks star stuff!
Then James went out and played Stone Cold Crazy with Queen and Tony Iommi. He did an amazing job! But the backstory to that is our other tour clip!
Rehearsal Day With Queen
The day before the big show everyone who was going to play with Queen went to rehearse with Queen at Bray Studios outside London. We accompanied James there. He was a bit nervous which was unusual for him. When we arrived at the studio, I found out why. James wasn’t just performing with Queen. Tony Iommi was playing with them as well. If you want to see James Hetfield as a fan boy, check out this segment at one minute and forty-nine seconds in as the mighty Hetfield is standing between the twin guitar masters Brian May and Tony Iommi. James looks over at our camera and smiles as if to say, “Pinch me because I must be dreaming!” And who could blame him? How cool is it to be performing with your idols! We showed some of this footage in the original documentary, but we intercut it with other shots. In this segment we let the footage run so everyone can see this amazing performance of “Stone Cold Crazy” with these stone-cold legends! There’s one more nice moment that we found in the footage at the end. James and Tony enjoying a pint at the bar after rehearsal. Although I didn’t think of it at the time, watching the footage now, it really seems like James is being welcomed into the top tier of Heavy Metal rockers. And surely if there is a gatekeeper for such a place it would have to be none other than the riffmeister Tony Iommi.

James after sharing a laugh with Tony Iommi. "Am I dreaming?"

Enter Cameraman
And all this brings us to the last segment of the reissues, the one I called “Enter Cameraman.” I knew that I was accepted into Metallica’s world when they started hazing me and that started almost immediately. I was given a generous helping of verbal abuse from almost my first day there. James and Kirk stole my camera and had a catch with it. James threatened me with a knife (because I was trying to film his lyrics) and a taser (just because). No biggie. Lars told me everything I shot was shaky and out of focus and sucked. Bob Rock berated me whenever I turned on the camera (that’s ok, I got him back by bringing his early new wave Bob Rock records to the studio!). Endless middle fingers into my lens. Me and my camera/soundman Vinny Giordano rolled with the punches. So we put together a segment giving the viewer a taste of what was going on. And by the way, I would happily do it all again!
D.A. Pennebaker
During the writing of this article, D.A. Pennebaker passed away. For anyone who doesn’t know, Pennebaker is the master documentary filmmaker who nearly single handedly created the genre of rock documentary. It is Pennebaker whom we have to thank for visuals of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” word signs, David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust and the absolutely indelible image of Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire at Monterey. He was one of my all-time cinematic heroes and I was fortunate to meet him once and thank him. I saw “Don’t Look Back” and “Ziggy Stardust” while at film school in New York and the raw power of those sequences never left me at a time when MTV was initiating a new combination of film and music. When I began to film “A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica” there was precious little to look to in the way of rock star documentaries. But there was Pennebaker as a guiding light. His mantra of being the fly on the wall documentarian became my mantra as well (when I wasn’t having things thrown at me!). So a celluloid salute to the maestro D. A. Pennebaker whose influence runs through every frame of all music documentaries!

D.A. and A.D. in June 2017
A Cinematic Journey
Since 1992 when the original “A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica” came out, I’ve had a lot of people tell me that it gave them their first look at how a record is made. I’ve had people quote lines from the documentary like it was a Tarantino movie. I hope these new clips give people a little more insight into the work that Metallica did to create The Black Album. There’s a lot of joking around but at the heart of it is a bunch of guys who are master musicians focused on making great music.
As I reflect back on this cinematic journey one thing stands out and it is incredible: Metallica allowed me into their very private creative world with a movie camera. Today it seems obvious but back then Metallica was probably the least likely candidates to do this kind of thing. And yet they did. And so this remarkable document exists of a band in their creative process making something incredible and taking it to the next level. When The Black Album went on sale, people lined up at record stores around the country to buy it! It’s unthinkable in our downloaded age when people line up to buy sneakers, not records. And one more thing struck me as I watched this footage of a more innocent time. No cell phones! It’s fascinating because people actually talk to each other and pause and think and then talk some more. No one is looking down at a screen to check a message or see what’s going on elsewhere in the world. That pause. That moment to reflect and then continue on without distraction is an amazing difference from our present-day world. Maybe that concentration went into The Black Album too. Whatever it is, the music is as powerful today as it ever was and I’m grateful to have been a part of it all. Thanks Metallica!

Adam and Vinny as filmed by Lars