June 20, 2004
Band on the Couch By CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
There is a scene midway through the documentary ''Some Kind of Monster'' that defines the film's vision; it's arguably the movie's most emotional moment and certainly its most archetypal. We see the rock group Metallica -- commercially the biggest heavy-metal success in history -- sitting around a table with a therapist, trying to establish how the band will finish recording its next album. The process has already been complicated by the departure of the bassist and by the drinking problem of the lead singer, James Hetfield, who has just returned to the band after a lengthy stint in rehab. Fifteen years ago, Metallica drank so much that it was referred to by fans as Alcoholica, and the band members all thought that was hilarious. But now things are different. Now Hetfield can work only four hours a day, because the other 20 hours are devoted to mending a marriage that was shattered by alcohol (and the rock 'n' roll lifestyle that came with it). The rules have changed.
Metallica's drummer, a kinetic 40-year-old Dane named Lars Ulrich, is having a difficult time dealing with these new parameters. He paces the room, finally telling Hetfield that he is ''self-absorbed'' and ''controls inadvertently.'' Everyone slowly grows uncomfortable. ''I realize now that I barely knew you before,'' Ulrich says, despite the fact that he has known Hetfield since 1981. The language he uses sounds like outtakes from an ''Oprah'' show on self-help books -- except Ulrich punctuates every sentence with a very specific (and completely unprintable) expletive. The scene closes with Ulrich's mouth six inches from Hetfield's ever-stoic skull, screaming that singular expletive into the singer's face. It's perhaps the most intimate, most honest, most emotionally authentic exchange these two men have ever experienced.
This is also the scene at which -- if you are in the audience -- you will probably laugh.
I've seen this film twice in screening rooms, and it happened both times. Virtually everyone in the theater snickered like condescending hyenas, just as they did during every other visceral, meaningful moment in the documentary. And so did I.
Now, perhaps that's cruel, and perhaps that's predictable. But it's mostly because ''Some Kind of Monster'' presents an uncomfortable kind of realism: it's the most in-depth, long-form psychological profile of any rock band that has ever existed. It's also the closest anyone has ever come to making a real-life ''This Is Spinal Tap.'' You could even argue that ''Some Kind of Monster'' is a rock 'n' roll film that really has nothing to do with music, and that it's actually a 2-hour-20-minute meditation on therapy, celebrity and the possibility that just about everyone is a little damaged. That's because the men who made ''Some Kind of Monster'' (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the directors) and its on-screen therapist (a sweater-clad 65-year-old named Phil Towle) seemed to need therapy as much as Metallica.
''If you strip down all human beings to their core, you'll find the same stuff,'' claims Towle, who calls himself a ''performance enhancement coach'' (he is not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist). ''You will find fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of being controlled, fear of being unloved and the desire to love and be loved. That becomes more complicated with hard-rock bands, because -- when you exist in a mode of instant gratification -- you're never hungry for depth of intimacy. Sex, drugs and booze are glorified in rock 'n' roll, but those are really just symptoms of the desire for relief.''
This is all probably true. In fact, part of what makes ''Some Kind of Monster'' so compelling is that Towle seems to have as many insecurities as the band he was paid $40,000 a month to help. There is not one person involved in ''Some Kind of Monster'' who could safely be described as ''O.K.''
And it's entirely possible that this is the point.
Twenty years ago, there was no band on earth who seemed less likely to release a documentary about dealing with interpersonal issues; in a way, it still doesn't seem possible.
Formed in 1981, Metallica became the first important speed-metal band; they played faster and harder than just about every group who came before them. While other 80's metal bands wore spandex and sang about girls, Metallica wore jeans and sang about Armageddon; its first album was called ''Kill 'em All.'' Hetfield was the front man, a scowling gun enthusiast who was raised as a Christian Scientist and now hated the world. Ulrich, the drummer, was a former tennis prodigy in Denmark who moved to California with his family as a teenager, bonding with the antisocial Hetfield over unpopular British metal bands like Diamond Head and Angel Witch.
Metallica's lead guitarist is Kirk Hammett, a dark, androgynous personality spawned from a broken home; he spent his 16th birthday trying to stop his father from pummeling his mother. Hammett has always been the personality buffer between Hetfield and Ulrich (if Metallica truly were Spinal Tap, he would be the Harry Shearer character). The group's original bassist was a swivel-necked San Franciscan named Cliff Burton, who died in a bizarre tour bus accident in Sweden in 1986, while Metallica was touring through Europe. He was quickly replaced by Jason Newsted, a longtime Metallica superfan who had always dreamed of performing alongside his heroes; after being asked to join the band, Newsted was hazed by the three other members for more than a year. These are hard people.
Originally a cult band for burnouts and speed freaks, Metallica went on to become the Led Zeppelin of its generation. The band has sold more than 90 million albums worldwide; while other metal acts were buried by the early 90's grunge movement, Metallica became stronger. And the driving force behind its invincibility seemed to be the fact that the band did not care about anything. It fueled its tours on Jagermeister. (Hetfield used to drink a bottle every night.) The members ''betrayed'' their fan base in 1996 by cutting off their hair, the speed-metal equivalent of Dylan going electric. When kids started illegally downloading Metallica songs off Napster, the band had the audacity to threaten to sue its own fan base. Metallica actually did what other rock bands only aspire to do: by ignoring trends, it became immune to cultural change. It was, it seemed, unbreakable.
But then (of course) it started to break. A 2001 Playboy interview illustrated a growing sense of discontent within Metallica, which had resulted in Newsted's decision to quit after 14 years of service. Sensing the possibility of losing an extremely lucrative artistic entity, Metallica's management team (an organization called Q Prime) put Metallica in touch with Towle, a former gang counselor in Chicago who worked with the St. Louis Rams during their 2000 Super Bowl run and had unsuccessfully tried to save another of Q Prime's clients (the political rap-metal group Rage Against the Machine). The hope was that Towle would stop Metallica from imploding; coincidentally, the therapy sessions began just before Berlinger and Sinofsky started filming the band's attempt to record its next album.
They ended up filming for 715 days.
Berlinger and Sinofsky had sustained a relationship with Metallica since the 1996 HBO documentary ''Paradise Lost,'' the chronicle of three teenage Metallica fans accused of ritualistically murdering children in West Memphis, Ark. Metallica allowed the directors to use the band's music in ''Paradise Lost'' free, and the two parties kept in touch, discussing the possibility of working together on a larger project.
However, in the period following ''Paradise Lost,'' Berlinger and Sinofsky's own professional relationship began to fray.
Berlinger is a workaholic, but he is also an egomaniac who is obsessed with getting approval from other people. Though he had collaborated with Sinofsky for years, he began to question the value of their partnership. Essentially, he wanted to go solo. In 2000, Berlinger broke away from Sinofsky to direct ''Blair Witch 2,'' the big-budget sequel to ''Blair Witch Project.''
That decision almost ended Berlinger's career.
''I presided over one of the biggest flops in cinema history,'' Berlinger says. That's something of an exaggeration, but it's not far off -- critics hated ''Blair Witch 2,'' and it made very little money. Berlinger was devastated. He became a recluse and melodramatically considered quitting film altogether. Meanwhile, Sinofsky feared his collaborative relationship with Berlinger was finished. ''We had serious problems that we never addressed,'' Sinofsky says. ''We remained friends, but -- when he went off to do 'Blair Witch' -- I was envious. And I was fearful that he wouldn't come back.''
But he did come back. A depressed Berlinger longingly watched ''Paradise Lost'' at home one night, and -- upon hearing the ominous strains of the Metallica song ''Welcome Home (Sanitarium)'' -- he suddenly remembered the forgotten idea of making a rock movie. He contacted Sinofsky, and then contacted Metallica. The original plan for this project was strange: they were going to film the band in the studio and make two 60-minute infomercials (yes, infomercials), which would be broadcast on late-night television. The idea was that people would see these infomercials and order Metallica's next album. It was going to be this innovative, weird way to sell records.
But then things got weirder.
When production on this unnamed ''Metallica infomercial project'' began in 2001, the group was already mired in turmoil: Newsted had officially quit the band after only one session with Towle. Newsted still considers the idea of rock-band therapy to be a little ridiculous. ''Something that's really important to note -- and this isn't pointed at anyone -- is something I knew long before I met James Hetfield or anyone else,'' Newsted said in an interview from his ranch in western Montana. ''Certain people are made to be opened up and exposed. Certain people are not. I'll leave it at that.''
For the first 30 minutes of ''Some Kind of Monster'' (roughly three months in real time), you see a band whose members don't necessarily like one another, struggling with a record no one seems completely enthusiastic about creating. But then -- suddenly, and without much explanation -- Hetfield disappears into rehab. Ulrich and Hammett have nothing to do in the interim except talk to their therapist. This is the point where ''Some Kind of Monster'' starts to change; what it becomes is not a glorification of rock 'n' roll but an illustration of how rock 'n' roll manufactures a reality that's almost guaranteed to make people incomplete. Metallica's massive success -- and the means through which they achieved it -- meant they never had to mature intellectually past the age of 19.
''I think most people in rock bands have arrested development,'' Hammett says now. ''Society doesn't demand people in rock bands do certain things. You're able to start drinking whenever you want, and you can play shows drunk, and you can get offstage and continue to be drunk, and people love it. They toast their glasses to an artist who's drunk and breaking things and screaming and wrestling in the middle of a restaurant. Things like that happened to us, and people cheered.''
To some, that might sound like a cliche sentiment for a millionaire musician to express. It almost blames society for making guitar heroes wasted and lawless. But this kind of self-discovery is part of what makes ''Some Kind of Monster'' a strikingly modern film: by fusing the accelerated culture of therapy with the accelerated culture of celebrity, it illustrates why the people inside those two realms can't keep up.
''Metallica's evolution as people was aborted by their surreal existence,'' Towle says. ''Kirk Hammett once told me that coming off tour was like experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome; he said it was like leaving a war and re-entering real life. When I asked him why he felt that way, he said, 'Because now I have to empty the trash.' The profundity in that statement is in its simplicity: rock stars are infantilized by people who do everything for them. We insulate them from a reality that would actually be good for them.''
This unreality does not apply only to drinking and garbage removal either. That becomes especially clear when Hetfield returns to the band from rehab as a completely changed man. Slowly, the deeper issue of ''Some Kind of Monster'' emerges: Hetfield and Ulrich have spent their entire adulthood intertwined, but they've never been close; they've never needed to have a real relationship with each other. And that is what you mostly see over the last hour of this film: two middle-aged men fighting through their neuroses and confusion, earnestly talking about intimacy and emotional betrayal and how they feel about each other.
It is important to remember that these two men wrote a song called ''Seek and Destroy.''
Why Metallica allowed Berlinger and Sinofsky to film this process remains baffling. ''Lars felt the therapy sessions were actually enabled by the presence of the cameras,'' Berlinger says. ''He felt the cameras forced them to be honest.'' There's certainly no question about how much the band believes in this film: when Elektra Records grew concerned over the project's escalating cost, the label considered turning it into a reality TV show. By that point, both the filmmakers and the group saw this solely as a theatrical release. They wanted complete control, so they bought the rights. Which means Metallica wrote Elektra a check -- for $4.3 million.
That, obviously, is a lot of money. But Metallica has unbelievable wealth. That's another strangely personal insight in ''Some Kind of Monster'' -- you get to see just how mind-blowingly rich these guys actually are. And particularly for Metallica, money is not something they want to brag about. The core Metallica disciples tend to be alienated, working-class males. You wonder how these people will react to an extended sequence in ''Some Kind of Monster'' in which Ulrich sips Champagne and sells his collection of modern artwork at a Christie's auction for $13.4 million. Hetfield and Hammett would have preferred to see the auction scene removed from the film (Hetfield described the footage as ''downright embarrassing''), but Ulrich wanted it in. He says he feels it is an essential aspect of his personality. And as he explains his position, you can hear two years of therapy dripping off his voice. He has no problem talking about anything, even if it's ''downright embarrassing.'' I suddenly find myself wishing that every rock star I interviewed had spent 24 months in therapy.
''Art is my passion,'' Ulrich says. ''It just so happens that art operates in those kind of high financial neighborhoods. If people find that distasteful or obnoxious, I can't control that. If you're going to paint a portrait of the people in Metallica, that has to play a role, because that is who I am. And if people want to focus on the financial elements of art instead of the creative elements of art, I can't control that either.''
"I hate to think about this film as just being pro-therapy or anti-therapy,'' Berlinger says when asked about the philosophical message of ''Some Kind of Monster.'' ''To me, it's more about how it's O.K. to admit you have issues.''
Well, maybe so. But it's impossible to watch this documentary without drawing certain conclusions about the process it explores. On one hand, everyone I interviewed for this story conceded that -- without Towle's assistance -- Metallica would have most likely broken up. But is this ''enlightened'' Metallica much better off? If a band's entire aesthetic is based on the musical expression of inexplicable rage, what's left when that rage is vanquished? You could suggest that Towle has exorcised the singular demon that made Metallica relevant. Moreover, the depiction of Towle's behavior in the final third of the film validates every criticism ever directed toward therapists. Over time, Towle slowly seems to believe that he is a member of Metallica. And when a (completely reasonable) Hetfield tries to end the group's therapy, Towle tries to convince him that this is a mistake, that Hetfield is simply struggling with his inability to ''trust,'' and that the band still needs his $40,000-a-month assistance.
Not surprisingly, Towle denies any confusion over his role with the band.
''A documentary is subjective, and it's affected by what footage is selected by the documentarians,'' he says. ''The way that it's portrayed implies that I was pushed out the door, and that's not what happened. I don't want to sound defensive about this, but the film makes it seem like I just wanted to extend my gravy train, and anyone who knows me would know that nothing could be further from the truth.''
Regardless of how you view Towle's motivations, it's hard to attack his results: the guys in Metallica are, without question, much happier humans. I interviewed James Hetfield in 1996, and it was one of the worst conversations of my professional life -- he was surly, impenetrable and unable (or maybe just unwilling) to think in the abstract. When I interviewed him for this article, he was affable, nonconfrontational and willing (almost wanting) to chat about his feelings. In fact, when I asked him about Towle's attempt to keep Metallica in therapy that was no longer needed, Hetfield gave the most reasonable answer imaginable.
''Phil has issues, too,'' Hetfield said. ''Every therapist has issues. We're all just people. We've all got some brokenness inside us. Phil's abandonment issues came up, and he tried to mask them by saying, 'You're mistrusting me.' And it's like, wow -- that's a really important point in the movie.''
And a really funny point, kind of. But sometimes the difference between self-actualization and self-amusement is far less than you think.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/magazine/20METALLICA.html
