"Metallica Loves You!"

...did he just say what I think he just said?!?! At the end of an incredibly intense and precision-executed evening of kick-butt thrash-metal by super-band Metallica, the rough and tough lead vocalist and rhythem guitarist James Hetfield says with genuine and tender love and with sincere affection to the crowd... "Thank you very much Columbus [Oh]... Metallica Loves You... Goodnight!". and I think he sincerely wanted to give us all a hug that night. ...and then I had my epiphany. ...but let me come back to that in a minute.

Some obligatory background details:

I used skateboard to Metallica when I was 12 years old (in 1984) in my nice safe suburban neighborhood. I loved them. My mom was worried about the music I listened to. In all fairness to her, I don't blame her. Metallica was dark, angry, sang about death, violence and suicide and pioneered a whoally new genre of music defining crazy, hard-core, thrashing in music while we were trying to be hard-core (lol) and thrashing (like idiots) on our skateboards...

I'm 37 now. and I haven't listed to Metallica much in the past 20 years but that's not to say that I would ever say that I don't "like" Metallica anymore. I bought he CDs (first 4) when they came out. It's just that, like so many things in life, I have just drifted away into all the other aspects of life (I don't see the boyhood friends that I used to skate with back when I was 10 anymore either, but I would never say we weren't still friends).

About three months ago, my son, Jake, asked me if I would take him to see Metalica in concert. Jake is 11 and yeah, he got interested in Metallica because of Guitar Hero, but I turned him on to the full albums, and he fell in love with Metalica all on his own. He's just at that perfect age where Metalica speaks to your gut like nothing else can. The problem is that the tickets are expensive and the show is about 120 miles away. Jake didn't understand what he had asked for.

Jake is totally into Metallica now. He loves it. And, unlike my mom, I'm pretty cool with it, but very much like my mom, Lisa is worried ;-). That big discussion aside, if there is anything cool that I can take claim of here, it's that I understand the longing in Jake's request and recognized a real magical opportunity to allow his very first concert to be something I know to be very cool and a life-long memory. (not to mention Jake and I don't do too many father-son things on our own) So I thought; ok, this could be a cool thing.

But I had to make him work for it. I told him that if his grades were good (A's and B's)... we would go. Long story short...his grades were good and we went...

ok. now you're up to speed... :-)

...So, even if you are not a fan and know nothing about "Metallica"... Even if the only thing you think you know about them is whatever accociated silliness you have inferred from watching Beavis and Butthead... Metallica has become a undeniable icon for heavy-metal world-wide and is a recognized name in propably every household in the industrialized world. That said, I think it will suffice to say that whatever image is conjured up in your head about what this evening for us was like... it is probably acceptably correct for the purposes of this blog.

Now I'm not going to waste your time telling you how cool it was (it was SOOOO Cool!!!) and I'm not going to try to explain the appeal of their music to you in hopes of justifying myself to you (but they ROCK!). What I do want to tell you here in this blog is this: ...I get it now.

So, back to the epiphany... there at the end of the concert, it all clicked for me, yes, it made perfect sense. I have grown up and so have they. Metallica has grown-up and have become true entertainers in the best possible sense. Looking back at their earliest album cover, these guys were just kids who were teens when they made their first ground-breaking record. And while they were probably each the directionless angry kids that they were selling themselves as, it would seem that they have grown-up and abandoned true anarchy and endless misery as the focus of their life goals and instead they focused on learning how to really harness their musical prowess and yes, talent, and put it to work in a way that is reminiscent of an actor who has made a career out of playing a villian that people love. For the actor, the movie is an artistic vehicle which provides fans with a safe experiance from which to experiance and contemplete the darker, more disturbing aspects of life that we all must make our peace with. No one would say that Hugo Weaving who played "Agent Smith" in the Matrix movies really wants to see the world ruined (sorry, he was the only example i could think of). But we love him for having done it and feed off of it. --- Likewise, the music of Metallica appeals to the part of us that rages against our own fraility and mortality in a cold and unjust world (and the part of us that just has too much unfocused energy). Yet, this dark musical form is presented to us with an sly smile, a wink and nod on stage which betrays the sincerity of their gloommy lyrics and instead tell us that they are gratful for the decades of success they have enjoyed and intend to provide us with top-quality entertainment. My point is... no one, ...and I mean NO ONE -- at the Metallica concert actually loves death and destruction, pain and misery.... but still these are the defining elements of their brand which resonate deep within us in primortal ways. I (we) love them for it... and they love us back for making it a win-win experiance for everyone involved. I love you too Metallica.... see you at the next show!

P.S. --- Look ma! I'm on You Tube!!!



look for me at frames 1:30..1:33. I'm the guy in the black t-shirt with the farmer's hat standing there passively with my arms folded - lol!