Metal Hammer blog: "Why Metallica don't give a **** about you"

 
 
Can they really be this cynical, I wonder...
 
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Another festival headliner, but no new album...
 
The great American philosopher and statesman Benjamin Franklin once wrote “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Make that ‘death, taxes and Metallica touring Europe in the summer time.’ Yesterday's announcement that the San Franciscan metal behemoths are to headline August’s Reading and Leeds festivals had a certain inevitability about it. Metallica have visited these shores for 13 of the last 14 summers, they played both Glastonbury and Sonisphere earlier this year and with Download already having their three main stage headliners in place, a decision to return to the festival they last headlined in 2008 has a clear logic to it for the band.
 
So why are UK metal fans pissed off with the quartet yet again? Well, the outrage appears to be based upon two separate issues: a) for the second summer running, Metallica have elected to play a ‘non-metal’ festival in the UK, thus betraying their core fanbase and b) this commitment to another summer of touring will almost inevitably mean that the wait for a new Metallica album will continue, which will represent, er, a betrayal of their core fanbase. The bastards! The cold-hearted, dead-eyed, soulless bastards!
 
Now, thinking rationally, the first argument here is something of a non-starter. Yes Metallica chose to play Glastonbury this summer, to predictable and not-entirely unreasonable howls of anguish from the most sensitive music fans in the world, but in closing out Sonisphere 2014 they also offered anyone feeling disenfranchised by that decision an opportunity to see them in their natural habitat. And yet there were literally thousands of tickets still available for that particular event right up until the morning of July 6th.
 
The second argument holds more water. Six years have now passed since the release of Metallica’s last ‘proper’ album, Death Magnetic, and in the intervening years it has often appeared that the quartet would prefer to do anything but commit to a new stint in the studio. In their first five years as recording artists the band delivered four stone cold classic albums which remain blueprints for their genre: in the past five years we’ve had one experimental collaboration album (Lulu), one dog’s dinner of a movie (Through The Never), and just one stand-alone new song, Lords Of Summer, which will make its debut on vinyl later this week. This, by any standards, is a terribly poor return for a creative union.
 
But then the harsh, uncomfortable truth is that in the modern age, Metallica aren’t really a band anymore, but rather the custodians of a multi-million dollar brand. The quartet’s co-manager Cliff Burnstein effectively admitted this fact in a 2011 interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We’re a US export the way Coca Cola is,” he stated baldly. “We look for the best markets to go to.” And when the corporation takes a financial hit – as it did with both Lulu, which has sold fewer than 35,000 copies in America, and Through The Never, a $30 million dollar film which recouped less than $8 million at the box office – that shortfall needs to be addressed. Bearing in mind that Taylor Swift is the sole artist to have a million-selling album in America in 2014, one doesn’t have to be a professor of economics to understand that the company balance sheet won’t be tipped into credit by till receipts for a new Metallica album, even if it’s the single greatest collection of songs that James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich have ever written.
 
So, please, dry your eyes. Metallica don’t care about their ‘true’ fans? Guess what? They never did. 14 years ago Lars Ulrich told this writer “One of the biggest misconceptions about Metallica is this whole thing of ‘We’re doing it for the fans.’ No we’re not f***ing doing it for the f***ing fans, we’re doing it for ourselves.”
 
Sod the new album, of course Metallica are coming our way again. Of course they are. Not because they miss dear old England, or because they have an emotional attachment to a festival that has long since stopped caring about metal fans, but simply because it’s time to fill the coffers again. And so once again James Hetfield will stand on a British festival stage, backed up with a setlist featuring almost no songs written this century, and talk about just how important and special the Metallica “family” are. In this, he’s being quite sincere, but let’s not kid ourselves: at this point the Metallica ‘family’ aren’t the poor sods shivering in faded Master Of Puppets T-shirts in the British summer rain, but rather the corporation’s loyal employees, from the highly skilled crew members put on retainers to sit on their arses for nine months a year, to the cleaners emptying the bins in Q Prime’s offices in New York, London and Nashville. All you are to them now is a walking wallet.
 
So, clock in… Hit The Lights baby… clock out. Thank you and goodnight England, see you next summer. Metallica loves you!
 
Paul Brannigan
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Double edged sword.
 
I started listening to them when I was 12 or 13. Their music struck a chord instantly, and they became my favorite band on the spot - but obviously, there was also the whole "we do what we want/no compromise" attitude which obviously spoke to me, and to millions of others, I'm sure.
 
And then I grew up, and Metallica kept on evolving. And I thought it was pretty cool that they tried things. I mean if my taste evolved, why wouldn't theirs? Those guys were spending years on the road, meeting all kinds of people, going to all kinds of places - and growing older.
 
It only seemed normal to me that they'd mature as musicians and integrate actual chords and harmonies and even  other instruments in their music. If Hetfield grows fond of country music and suddenly writes a riff on a tele w/ a B-bender, that's that - it's exactly what that "we do what we want/no compromise" is all about.
 
It's not about what I like, and it never was. And I grew up and moved on, but I always appreciated that they tried things.
 
I always thought it was a lot more honest from them to move on and not pretend that they were exactly the same guys who wrote Metal Militia. I mean, they're not 20 anymore, they're not starving, they're not poor - they're frickin' millionaires, and at that point, the biggest metal band on the planet.
 
You can't do it for fans. Anyway, as Hetfield mentioned in another interview, you put 10 Metallica fan around a table and they all have a different opinion of what Metallica is and what it should be.
 
As egotistical as the guys is Metallica may be, their fans are a hundred times worst. They only want the no compromise attitude when it coincides exactly with their own aspirations and tastes. It's all about form and not content and principle. I'm actually glad Metallica pisses those people off. :P
 
 

craigb
Yeah, but what have they done since they got rid of Dave Mustaine anyway? 
 
()

Who wants to be in a band w/ Mustaine? According to the latest news, not even his own band.

 
 
I can't quite make up my mind if the blogger is being serious or whether it's all meant to be tongue in cheek.
 
 

I wonder if the "fans" would feel better if the band announced they wouldn't be playing any festivals because they didn't have any new music?
 
Somebody felt these guys could sell enough tickets to guarantee them a large sum of money for doing the gig. What are they supposed to do? I can't see Lars saying "Nah....just doesn't feel right".
 
Randy

Not to mention that all they want to hear is Seek and Destroy and For Whom the Bell Tolls and the rest of the oldies.

My take is more optimistic. The paradigm has shifted back to the days when live performance was the primary source of a band's income. As long as audiences are willing pay to attend a performance, even one that's not a travelling advertisement for some multinational corporation's products, it means live music isn't dead. That, I think, is a good thing.

Fans take "their" music way too seriously. Seriously, it's not "their" music, it's the band's music. And the band can do what ever they want. I would never want to be doing something just because the masses were controlling me.

I think Iron Maiden has it all figured out - they do their own tribute tours.
 
As for Metallica, check out this set list from Heavy Montreal last summer, based on fan submitted requests...
 
SETLIST MAIN SET  
1. Blackened
2. Master of Puppets
3. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
4. Ride the Lightning
5. The Unforgiven
6. Lords of Summer
7. ...And Justice for All
8. Sad But True
9. Fade to Black
10. Orion
11. One
12. For Whom the Bell Tolls
13. Battery
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter Sandman
 
ENCORE  
16. Creeping Death
17. The Four Horsemen
18. Seek & Destroy
 
Not ONE song from any album post Black album, except their new "Lords of Summer".
 
That's 23 years worth of material obliterated - over 2/3 of their career.
 
People who criticize would criticize no matter what.

I give their effort ****.

I never went to a concert to hear a band's new stuff.... Although I knew they might have had a new album coming out, I wanted to hear the old stuff I knew and could sing along with.
 
Yup.... album sales are down so the money is in touring.... if it's done right, and MERCHANDISING...... selling those T-shirts at obscene profit margins.
 
At a country concert several years back, the band (Brooks & Dunn) had tour busses and semi's in the parking lot. The Semi's were for the merchandise..... not the gear.  The PA was the venue system or rented.... and the stage gear likely fit in the storage compartment if the tour busses.
 
A band caring about the fans?  Bwahhahahahaha....  Their money maybe..."walking wallets", funny.  I like that..... but aside from that....nahhhh.  Although country artists will try to convince you otherwise..... and maybe some do..... but it all becomes about the income stream sooner or later if you want to have a career rather than being a flash in the pan one hit wonder.
 

bapu
hair bands were a flash in the sPANdex

"You can take the man out of the 80's, but you can't take the 80's out of the man!"
  ~ Paul Gilbert

Guitarhacker
I never went to a concert to hear a band's new stuff.... Although I knew they might have had a new album coming out, I wanted to hear the old stuff I knew and could sing along with.
 

Please see the second quote in my signature
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