At SXSW on March 11th, Lars Ulrich of METALLICA and Zane Lowe of Apple Music discussed the band’s innovative use of technology to enhance fan engagement. Their session, “Breaking The Fourth Wall,” covered METALLICA‘s history of leveraging technology, including their candid 2004 documentary, Some Kind Of Monster, which chronicled the band’s tumultuous period during the St. Anger album creation.
When Lowe mentioned how Some Kind Of Monster brought fans “closer” to METALLICA, Lars went on to say (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Some say too close [laughs] along the way. I remember when the movie came out [in] 2004, there was not a lot of reality TV at the time. There was not a lot of, of that economy and the creator economy and all these different things. It was like a different thing at the time.
“I don’t know if you guys know this, but originally it started out as a… We were making a new record, and these wonderful filmmakers who had done a movie called Paradise Lost, which was absolutely groundbreaking and phenomenal about these hard rock kids that were in all sorts of trouble in Arkansas and getting mixed in and accused of murders and all this crazy stuff.
“Anyway, we provided our music for the soundtracks and we got a relationship with these filmmakers. We asked ’em to come in and film us making the next METALLICA record, but our intent was to do something along the… Remember the Ginsu knives and all those like late-night infomercials: ‘But you also get another one and then you get another one and then you get six more Ginsu knives. And if you order before midnight, then…’, all that s**t. So that was a thing at the time. ‘So the new album, if you order the new album before midnight…’ Anyway, so they came in to film the process of making the next record, and then all hell broke loose and meltdowns. And we kept filming, and then they filmed all the crazy s**t that happened. And then the record company at the time who was financing the filming said, ‘Wait a minute. What is this?’ And so we had a conversation with the filmmakers and we said, ‘We trust you guys. If there is the film in here that you still envision, why don’t we buy the rights to the movie from the record company?’ So, no disrespect to the record company, but we got them out. And then we controlled it. We gave it to the filmmakers, and then they turned that into Some Kind Of Monster. And we were game for it. We didn’t exactly know how it was gonna play out… It was all about trust, trusting the filmmakers. And then it became that movie, and we kind of had to sit there and go, like, ‘Holy s**t. That’s a lot of access and a lot of transparency.’ But we had sort of gone along for the dare, and so we figured that we should stick with it.”
About the initial reception of Some Kind Of Monster, Lars said: “A lot of music fans and a lot of music critics felt that maybe it was too much of a peek behind the curtain and there were things in there that maybe fans shouldn’t see. But in the film world, in the film community, it was received really, really well, really positively and got glowing reviews, because as a film, there was this natural dramatic arc to… I don’t need to go into the details of it. Documentaries don’t always have dramatic arcs to them, and this film kind of had this organic thing that played out…
“Subsequently it became a hit within the movie community,” he continued. “It kind of became a hit or go-to movie within the mental health community and for a lot of psychologists and psychiatric sort of approaches and in the spirit of team building and seeing how teams sort of work under pressures, under creative pressures and so on. And I think eventually it kind of came around to the music fans and the music community to appreciate that kind of unprecedented — at that time — access to the inner workings of a band and the creative processes and all the ups and downs that human beings who play music go through in a collective setting at that point in their career. And so thank God that we had, I guess, the belief in the material and the belief certainly in Joe [Berlinger] and Bruce [Sinofsky], our directors, to hand them the project and say, ‘Do with this what you like. We trust you.’”
Initially brought in to help METALLICA restore harmony within the band, the film depicts “performance coach” Phil Towle—a former psychotherapist enlisted in January 2001 to assist James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Lars Ulrich in mending their relationship with Jason Newsted—gradually becoming more involved in the band’s creative process, submitting lyrics for the album, and even trying to join them on tour.
Some Kind of Monster also captures METALLICA frontman James Hetfield’s struggle with alcoholism and his decision to enter rehab. The film truly picks up momentum upon his return, as he grapples with the pressing question of whether he could continue with METALLICA while staying sober.
Source: metaladdicts.com
