After almost an entire year of trying to nail down an interview, the answer finally came six hours before showtime. The call came at 3:17pm yesterday: “Metallica is willing to talk.”
We showed up at the Air Canada Centre at the appointed time and after a half-hour wait, we were marched into the bowels of the building, past an army of security and through a phalanx of nervous-looking fans who were winners of a meet’n’greet contest. Our minder led us through a maze of corridors lined with Metallica road cases.
Our backstage passes (marked “’Tallica 26 Oct/Toronto WORKING”) seemed to get us past the checkpoints guarding each layer of the Metallica onion.
We could smell fresh seafood wafting from the catering room. Metallica’s employees are obviously well fed. Finally, we ended up in a sealed, windowless room marked “darkroom”(They still have darkrooms?) and were told to wait for Kirk Hammett.
After about half an hour, we were told he’d arrive in about ten minutes. Fifteen minutes later, a slightly pale-looking Kirk Hammett walked in. “I’m not feeling that great,” he said. “Yesterday, I was in Hawaii. Then I flew in to San Francisco for overnight. And now I’m here. I think I have the flu. I’ve this headache since Friday. But if I can stand up, I can play.”
Not wanting to waste any of the precious fifteen minutes we had, I immediately launched into the important stuff.
I have to point out that whenever Kirk encountered a fan, he was brilliant. Our minder had brought his young nephew with him and Kirk could not have been kinder, more patient or more attentive to this newbie Metallica kid. THAT’S how a rock star should take care of the fans.
On the way out through the same maze of corridors, I quite literally ran into Lars Ulrich who was double-fisting some beers back to the catering room. We had a brief talk about Kirk’s health and the night’s setlist. I thought about bringing up the whole Napster thing, but Lar’s security guy was larger than most SUV’s. Another time, perhaps.
