Metallica - Pre-recording chronology

Metallica: pre-recording chronology



1979/early 1980 Obsession was formed

Formed by James Alan Hetfield (vocals/guitar), Jim Arnold (vocals/guitar), Ron Valoz (vocals/bass) and his brother Rich Valoz (drums).

Hetfield got the idea to form a band when he was 10th grade.

They did all rock/metal cover songs like Never say die (Black Sabbath), Rock 'n' roll & Communication breakdown (Led Zeppelin), Doctor doctor, Rock bottom & Lights out (UFO) and Highway star (Deep Purple) which was one of their favorite.

Jim Arnold sang the Led Zeppelin songs, James Hetfield sang Doctor, doctor and the other UFO’ songs, Ron Valoz sang on Purple haze - they would switch off on vocals; when Heaven & hell (Black Sabbath) had just come out, they started doing that too as well as Scorpions; they mostly played backyard parties.

They practiced on Friday and Saturday nights at the Valoz’s house on Eastbrook in Downey; the Valoz brothers were like electrical geniuses, they wired up lights all over the place and they built this loft in their garage, Dave Marrs and Ron McGovney would sit up there and work the control panel doing the lights, strobes and stuff... it was like this whole show in a tiny garage.

Ron McGovney first time met James at East Middle School in a music class.
James was the only guy in the class who could play guitar; but he didn’t really start hanging out with James till their freshman year in High School, also Mc Govney remembers Hetfield in his driver’s ed class.

This band lasted about a year and a half, at the end they broke away from the Valoz brothers.

1980 Syrinx was formed
During his Senior Year at Brea High School James Hetfield, Jim Arnold and his brother Chris Arnold formed a band called Syrinx, all they played was Rush covers but that didn’t last long.
1980 James Hetfield’s mother died when he was in 11th grade and he moved to his brother's house in Brea, which was about twenty minutes away from the rehearsal place, he would come down on the weekends for practice.

Hetfield left Syrinx and came over to McGovney’s house to jam together with friend Dave Marrs who tried to play drums.



1980/June 1981 Phantom Lord was formed.

Formed at Brea Olinda High School by James Hetfield (vocals/guitar), Hugh Tanner (guitar) after joined by Ron McGovney (bass).

At the beginning they didn’t have a bass player and Hetfield suggested to McGovney to play bass, he replied him: “I don’t know how to play bass, I don’t even have a bass guitar”. James answered: “I’ll show you how to play”.

So they rented a bass and an amp at Downey music center and Hetfield showed McGovney the basics, how to follow him on guitar; the band started jamming in Ron’s bedroom - at the time his parents homes were being taken away by the State in order to construct the new (105) Freeway.

McGovney’s parents had three rental houses and one of them was empty and they told him he could live in it since was going to soon be torn down; after graduating from High School McGovney and Hetfield moved into that house and fixed up the garage into a rehearsal studio; they insulated it and put up dry wall and James painted the rafters black, the ceiling silver, the walls white and red carpet.



June 1981 Leather Charm: formed by Hetfield, Tanner & McGovney.

Hugh Tanner decided he wanted to be into music management and leaves.
The band hooked up with a drummer named Jim Mulligan, whit whom James went to school, they put out an add for a guitar player and Troy James answered and joined the band.

Hetfield wanted to be the singer/frontman so it was just James on guitar.
The band did kind of a glam thing, like Motley Crue, Sweet and the British glam band Girl (which featured Phil Lewis and Phil Collen), they also did the song Hollywood tease plus other covers as well like Pictured life from Scorpions, Wrathchild and Remember tomorrow from Iron Maiden and Slick black Cadillac from Quiet Riot (Randy Rhoads era).

Leather Charm started working on three original tunes, one ended up to be Hit the lights, another song called Handsome ransom and a song called Let’s go rock ‘n’ roll.
The combined riffs from Handsome ransom and Let’s Go Rock ‘n’ roll became No remorse.

This lineup never really played any gig and Jim Mulligan decided to leave because he wanted to play more progressive Rush type of music.



Mid 1981 Metallica was born

James Hetfield hooked up with Lars Ulrich through Hugh Tanner.
Hugh brought Lars to McGovney’s house and Troy James had already quit the band so James had to go back to playing guitar.
When Lars and James first jammed, the drummer couldn’t keep a beat and compared to Mulligan, he just couldn’t play.

So McGovney told them to do whatever they wanted to do because he was just gonna stick to photography, at the time he was taking pictures for bands like Motley Crue. Anyway, Lars came over and McGovney watched him and James jam together and it got better and better but he still didn’t feel like getting back into it.

At that time James was working at a place called Steven Label Corporation in Santa Fe Springs making stickers; he used to bring home all these stickers like “Danger: Explosives” and “High Voltage” which they stuck all over the rehearsal studio. McGovney was working for his parents truck repair shop. Lars was still in high school, he was a year behind the mentioned.
He lived down in Newport Beach so he had to commute from Newport to Norwalk to rehearse with James.

James had told McGovney that they had a guitarist coming over for an audition. McGovney remembers that he opened up the front door and saw this black dude with a Jamaican accent called Lloyd Grant; he came in and they started jamming to Hit the lights-the old Leather Charm song.
Lloyd Grant just had answered an ad published in the Recycler: “Heavy metal guitarist wanted for music much heavier than the L.A. scene”.

They had a bass player at the time for about two or three weeks, probably named Glen - who had long black hair- he couldn’t really play too good so they fired him.

Lars had borrowed a 4-track TEAC machine to record a demo, so it was James playing the rhythm guitar riffs and singing, Lars on drums, Lloyd Grant playing the leads and McGovney on bass.

Soon Lloyd Grant was kicked out and Dave Mustaine (previously in Panic) joined.

Dave Mustaine did not play on the first version of Hit the lights which ended up on the Metal Massacre compilation album.
On the very first pressing of Metal Massacre, they kept Lloyd’s lead tracks, Lloyd actually only came over twice and then James and Lars ended up recruiting Dave Mustaine on guitar-they had kept the ad running in the Recycler, they only planned on using Lloyd as a fill-in.
Dave Mustaine played two leads on Hit the lights but they kept the second lead which Lloyd played because James and Lars liked it more.
Lloyd couldn’t take it over his lead to Ron McGovney’s house to do the recording so James and Lars brought the 4-track over to Lloyd’s apartment and he did the solo on a little Montgomery Ward amp; anyway, now on the second pressing of the Metal Massacre album, it was all Dave’s leads; in the beginning of 1982 Metallica was a four men band.
They would all get together after work; at the time James wasn’t working anymore and Lars was working a graveyard shift at a 24 hour gas station, Dave was... self employed.

Dave was the one playing guitar and James was singing only.
It got to the point where James had said that he didn’t think he was too good of a singer and he only wanted to play rhythm guitar, so they found a singer named Sammy Dijon who was in a local band called Ruthless-he rehearsed with Metallica for about three weeks but never played a show with them.

So they told him it wasn’t working out and James went back to singing again.
Right after they recorded on the 4-track TEAC a demotape which featured 6 songs: Hit the lights, The mechanix, Killing time (from Irish band Sweet Savage), Let it loose (from British band Savage), The prince & Sucking my love (from British act Diamond Head).

After they had heard that Saxon was gonna be playing the Whisky in Hollywood.

So McGovney went over to the club with the demo and while he was walking up, he run into Tommy Lee and Vince Neil from Motley Crue (who he was taking pictures for at the time), they said: “Hey Ron, what’s up?”
He told them that Saxon was doing a gig at the Whisky and he wanted to try to get his band to open up for them. They replied: “Yeah, we were gonna open up for them but we’re getting too big to open. Come on in and I’ll introduce you to the chick that does the booking”.

So McGovney dropped off the tape and she called him back the very next day, telling him: “You guys are pretty good.... you remind me of this local band called Black ‘N’ Blue”.
She also added: “Saxon is scheduled to play two nights; we’re gonna have Ratt open for them the first night and your band can open the second night”.
It was Metallica’s third show, they actually played two shows that night opening for Saxon; during the show James was singing but Ron was the one who talked in between the songs.
After that show they recorded a new 4-track demo in April of 1982, which later was known as the Power metal demo...
It was recorded in McGovney’s garage on a 4-track.
The 4 tracks were: Hit the lights, The mechanix, Jump in the fire and Motorbreath.
Those songs were later re-recorded on the No life till leather demo tape.
James sang differently on it, like on Jump in the fire he would hold the note on the chorus, he was trying to sound like Sean Harris from Diamond Head, but he later figured that he didn’t sound like him so decided to sing gruffer.
It’s funny how that demo was labelled the Power metal demo.
McGovney went to make Metallica business cards to send to the club promoters along with the demo; the card was supposed to just have the Metallica logo and a contact number, but he thought it looked too plain and decided it should say something under the logo, he didn’t wanna to put the words “hard rock” or “heavy metal”, so he coined the term power metal, I thought it had a nice ring to it.
Till that day no band had used that term before as far as known.
McGovney remembers bringing the business cards to the band and Lars got very pissed off at him. He said: “What did you do?! What the hell is power metal?! I can’t believe you did such a stupid thing! We can’t use these cards with the words power metal on it!”.
So, that’s how that tape became the well known Power metal demotape.
At that period the band also rehearsed a couple of time with a rhythm guitarist (Jeff Warner, formerly of Black ‘N Blue) but things did not work out well.
Shortly after Metallica tried another guitar player called Brad Parker, AKA Damian C. Phillips, which was his stage name.
They did just one show at the Concert Factory in Costa Mesa and while James, Lars, and McGovney were getting dressed to go on stage and they heard this guitar solo so they looked over the railing of the dressing room and saw Brad on stage just blazing away on his guitar.
So that was Metallica’s one and only gig with Damian C. Phillips (who later joined Odin) and Dave Mustaine came back.
At that time James also decided to sing and play guitar full-time.
In the summer of 1982 Lars hooked up with a guy named Kenny Kane who got this punk label called High Velocity which was a division of Rocshire Records, an Orange County record company.
He said he wanted to finance the recordings for a Metallica EP.
So they went to an 8-track studio in Tustin called Chateau East and recorded the songs Hit he lights, Mechanix, Phantom lord, Jump in the fire, Motorbreath, Seek and destroy and Metal militia.
After hearing the tapes Kenny Kaye realized Metallica weren’t a punk band so he ended up not being more interested.
So they took the tapes which eventually became the No life till leather demo tape, which was distributed by Lars and his friend Pat Scott, they recorded tapes and sent them out, because they had connections all over the world.
After Lars and James had the idea to take out a full page ad in BAM magazine, it cost $ 600 which was a lot of money back in 1982; McGovney was the only one who got any money, so he wrote out a check for $ 600 to BAM.
Also in the Summer of 1982 Dave Mustaine came over to McGovney’s house on a Sunday afternoon and he brought his two pit bull puppies; while Ron was showering Dave let the dogs loose and they were jumping all over Ron’s car (a ‘72 Pontiac Le Mans he had a rebuilt) scratching the shit out of it.
And James came out and said: “Hey Dave, get those fucking dogs off of Ron’s car!”. Dave replied: “What the fuck did you say? Don’t you talk that way about my dogs!”.
Then they started fighting and it spilled into the house and when McGovney came out of the shower he saw Dave punching James right across the mouth and he flew across the room, so Ron jumped on Dave’s back and he flipped McGovney over onto the coffee table and then James gets up and yells to Dave: “You’re out of the fucking band! Get the fuck out of here!”.
So Dave loaded all his shit up and left all pissed off; the next day he came back crying, pleading: “Please, let me back in the band”.
After they just showed up at a Trauma (a band from San Francisco who got a 1 track demo featuring the song Such a shame that eventually was transferred to vinyl on Metal Massacre II) show at the Whisky.
They were sitting there watching the band and all the sudden the bass player (Cliff Burton) went into a solo as the guitar players were playing rhythm and he was just headbanging his head all over the place; James and Lars were just bowing to him even if they didn’t talk to Cliff Burton that night infact they approached him the next night at the Troubadour.
After there was the Metal Massacre Night in San Francisco with Bitch, Cirith Ungol and Laaz Rockit.
Cirith Ungol had cancelled so Brian Slagel called Metallica at last minute to fill in. It was at the old Stone. McGovney rent a trailer and they loaded their drum kit and all gear and pulled Ron’s dad’s ‘69 Ford Ranger.
They all drove up in that one truck and never been to San Francisco before so driving around Chinatown with his trailer McGovney was getting so pissed off trying to find this club, in the while all the other band members were back there in the camper shell drinking and partying; anyway the show went over really well.
Metallica had no idea that the No life till leather demo tape had gotten up there, they knew all the lyrics of the songs and everything, people started asking them for autographs; instead of when they played in L.A. with bands like Ratt, people would just stand there with their arms crossed.
The second show in San Francisco was in October of 1982 was at the Old Waldorf on a Monday night; the people went nuts at that gig and Cliff Burton also came to that show; things started bad happening back at McGovney’s house... because his things would be missing.
The worst thing was when Metallica played with McGovney’s Jim’s band Kaos, and Roxx Regime (who later became Stryper); apparently one of Dave Mustaine’ friends stole Ron’ back-up Ibanez bass guitar and also his leather jacket was missing.
So McGovney was really starting get tired of this situation; also Lars and Ron butted heads a lot, because Lars showed up late and used him all the time, according to Ron who also would have to drive all the way down to Newport Beach to pick Lars up, so he told him: “If you can’t make it, it’s not my problem”.
Every time they did a gig up in San Francisco Ron had to borrow his dad’s truck, pay for the gas and had to rent the trailer out of his pocket, he also paid for the hotel rooms on his Visa card and San Francisco was expensive even for a cheap room; he also paid for all of this and they couldn’t understand why he was nervous, they said: “Well, you’re getting the check after the gig”.
But they were only getting paid a $100 for gig at the most, which didn’t even cover the hotel room; plus they drank a couple hundred dollars worth of alcohol; Ron was always saying to them: “If I’m a part of this band, why is it up to me to pay for everything while you guys get the free ride?”.
He also suggested to get a manager or somebody that could back them because he was really getting tired of this, and they just laughed about it and said: “Have a sense of humour”.
According to McGovney, they just didn’t understand, so they interpreted it as him having a bad attitude; he was mostly pissed off that James that was his longtime friend was siding with Lard and Dave and McGovney suddenly became the outcast in the band; also Ron heard the others talking about Cliff Burton and had some idea.
At the end of November of 1982 Metallica went up to San Francisco for the third time; after that show it was raining like hell and Ron saw Cliff, all in denim, just standing there in the rain, he said him: “Hey dude, do you want a ride home?”, he kind of felt sorry for the guy.
Maybe he kind of saw the writing on the wall…
The next day Metallica played at the Mabuhay Gardens, it was a little hole in the wall, it was the last gig McGovney did with Metallica.
Driving back home to L.A. they stopped at the liquor store, Ron was driving and they got a whole gallon of whisky; James, Lars and Dave were completely smashed out of their minds and they would constantly bang on the window for Ron to pull over so they could take a piss and all the sudden he looked over and saw Lars lying in the middle of Interstate 5 on the double yellow line. It was just unbelievable! And McGovney just said: “Fuck this shit!”.
Then one of his friends told him that they witnessed Dave pour a beer right into the pickups of his Washburn bass as he said: “I fucking hate Ron”; the day after of course his bass didn’t work. and Ron’s’ girlfriend at the time also told him that she overheard that they wanted to bring Cliff in the band.
After Dave trashed Ron’s bass up, he confronted the band when they came over for practice and said: “Get the fuck out of my house!”
He turned to James and said: “I’m sorry, James, but you have to go too”.
And they were gone within the next couple of days, they packed all their gear and moved to San Francisco.
That’s what happened around the first week of December of 1982.
In early months of 1983 Metallica relocated to San Francisco and recorded with new member Cliff Burton a 4-track demotape on March 5th 1983; a bit after Metallica signed a management and album deal via New York’s Johnny Zazula and his Megaforce label as well as his Crazed Management Company.
Gigging around the States in a truck, freezing but having a good time, they were very happy with their deal, but a final change was to occur before Metallica achieved total stability; Dave Mustaine was starting to become a problem, road excesses took their toll on his performance and his actual adaptability as a guitarist was not wide enough for what Metallica wanted to achieve.
Right after Dave Mustaine was fired and Kirk Hammett, from the Bay Area band Exodus was contacted, flown out to the East Coast (where Metallica was based for a short time), proved himself highly able and became the lead player; sure enough, recording took place six weeks later and the album Kill ‘em all hit the States (on Megaforce) and Europe (on Music For Nations).
Ron McGovney was so disgusted with the whole thing that he sold all his equipment: his amps, cases, he even sold a Les Paul which would now be worth about $1,200.
Then in 1986, his friend Katon De La Pena (formerly singer of Hirax) convinced him to get back into the music biz, Ron had some cash in the bank at the time so he went and bought a Fender Precision bass and a Marshall half stack bass amp; so Katon and him started jamming and formed a band called Phantasm; it was more like progressive punk, it’s hard to describe, the lyrics were punk but the music had tons of different changes in it.
Their first two shows with Phantasm were on the same two nights as Jason Newsted’s first shows with Metallica, when they played the Country Club & Jezebel’s. On November 7th and 8th of 1986; they played Fenders Ballroom in Long Beach with about ten other punk bands, also they played Fenders opening for the Plasmatics in front of 1,500 people - it was the biggest crowd McGovney had ever played in front of.
But Phantasm broke up even because Ron just kept getting stressed with the Metallica thing and the band got sick of it; lots of people came to their gigs just because he had been in Metallica.
When they went to play Phoenix all the guys from Flotsam And Jetsam were jumping off the stage and after the show everyone asked him for autographs.
So it just faded away after that and Ron McGovney haven’t been in a band since.



Metallica: all the members

James Alan Hetfield (1981-), vocals/rhythm guitar
Ron McGowney (July 1981-December 1982), bass
Hugh Tanner (Summer 1981), guitar
Jim Mulligan, (Summer 1981), drums
Troy James, (Summer 1981), guitar
Lars Ulrich (Summer 1981-), drums
Lloyd Grant (Summer 1981), lead guitar
Glen ? (2 or 3 weeks in the Summer 1981), bass
Dave Mustaine (Summer 1981-Early 1983), lead guitar
Sammy Dijon (About 3 weeks during the Summer of 1981), vocals
Jeff Warner (A couple of rehearsals during Summer of 1981), rhythm guitar
Brad Parker, AKA Damian C. Phillips (Just 1 show at the Concert Factory, Costa Mesa, Summer 1981), rhythm guitar
Clifford Lee Burton (Early 1983- Died on September 27th of 1986), bass
Kirk Hammett (Early 1983-), lead guitar
Jason Newsted (October 1986-January 2001), bass
Bob Rock (2001-2003), bass
Robert Trujillo (2003-), bass


Discography:

1st Demotape, March 1982
Power metal, demotape, April 1982
No life till leather, demotape, late 1982
4 tracks demotape, March 1983
Kill ‘em all (Megaforce/Music For Nations), album, 1983
Ride the lightning (Megaforce/Music For Nations), album, 1984
Master of puppets (Vertigo), album, 1986
The 5,98 EP: garage days re-revisited (Vertigo), EP, 1987
…and justice for all (Vertigo), album 1988
Metallica (Vertigo), album, 1990
Load (Vertigo), album, 1996
Reload (Vertigo), album, 1997
Garage Inc. (Vertigo), double album, 1998
S & M (Vertigo), double album, 1999
St. Anger (Vertigo), album, 2003


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