Metallica: Enter Night by Mick Wall

‘I’ve got this classic letter that says: “My band’s called Metallica and we rehearse six nights a week and it’s going pretty good.” I think he says, “The guitarist is pretty fast, you’d like him.” He doesn’t mention his name but I presume it’s Dave Mustaine. This would have been in early ’82. And I think he sent a cassette of “It’s Electric” to Sean [Harris] because they must have done a demo of that as well [which] we were flattered by – that somebody had bothered to work one of our songs out.’ Mustaine, he adds, had ‘worked the solo out note-perfect and that was impressive’.
    Certainly there was a new focus to the band. Ron recalls him and James coming home from work each day and meeting up with Lars, who still lived at his parents’ house but had recently taken a job working behind the till at a gas station to help pay his way in the band, and Dave who had his own apartment and ‘was self-employed in “sales”, if you know what I mean’. With the four-man line-up now seemingly set in stone, the band ventured forth to play their first gigs, beginning with a shaky set at Radio City, in nearby Anaheim, on 14 March 1982, where the set comprised largely of their three-track demo, plus one other original and a handful of Diamond Head covers posing as originals: ‘Helpless’, ‘Sucking My Love’, ‘Am I Evil?’ and ‘The Prince’, interspersed with ‘Hit the Lights’ and their only other original tune ‘Jump in the Fire’, a new number that Mustaine had brought with him, plus the NWOBHM nuggets: ‘Blitzkrieg’ by Blitzkrieg, ‘Let it Loose’ by NWOBHM hopefuls Savage and ‘Killing Time’ by Irish band Sweet Savage. As Lars later confessed, ‘Our trick back then was not to tell people that these songs were covers; we simply let them assume they were ours. We just didn’t introduce them, so we never actually laid claim to them, but…well, you get the idea.’
    At this stage James was still trying to make it work as a guitarless frontman. With Ron sticking mostly to the shadows as he studiously plucked away at the bass lines James had taught him, and Lars gurning furiously at the back, any early showmanship, including song introductions and audience interaction, was conducted by the comfortably voluble Mustaine. ‘There were a lot of people there,’ James later recalled. ‘We had all my school friends and all Lars’ and Ron’s and Dave’s buddies. I was really nervous and a little uncomfortable without a guitar and then during the first song Dave broke a string. It seemed to take him an eternity to change it and I was standing there really embarrassed.’ With the exception of the prematurely ‘seasoned’ Mustaine, none of them had ever played a regular club show before. ‘Dave was the only one who really looked comfortable,’ says Bob Nalbandian, who was also there. ‘You could tell he was used to being up on a stage, he had no fear. The others didn’t look like they really knew what they were doing.’ Lars’ later diary entry for that first gig read: ‘Crowd: 75. Pay: $15. Remarks: 1st gig ever. Very nervous. Only band. Dave broke a string on the first song. Played so-so! Went down pretty good.’
    More memorable, and impressive, were their second and third ever performances, playing two opening sets for authentic NWOBHM royalty Saxon, at the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Strip. The band had recorded a three-track home-made demo, featuring a newly recorded ‘Hit the Lights’ with the new four-man line-up, Sweet Savage’s ‘Killing Time’ and Savage’s ‘Let it Loose’. When they found out that Saxon was booked to play the Whisky, Ron took a cassette of the demo over to the club, where he happened to bump into Tommy Lee and Vince Neil, drummer and singer, respectively, of then up-and-coming LA glam-metal outfit, Mötley Crüe, who he’d recently taken pictures of.
    McGovney recalls: ‘They said: “Hey Ron, what’s up?” I told them that Saxon was