Curious music way how Metallica raised the mental health debate

The trajectory of Metallic It was marked by a series of obstacles surpassed. Of the death of a member – the bassist Cliff BurtonIn 1986 – to the internal demons that some of its musicians had to face, the group had to overcome the challenges imposed by destination.

In one of these situations, the band took the saying “If life gives you lemons, make a lemonade”. Happened in the early century, when its label, Elektradecided to produce a documentary about what would become a new album.

It was one of the most turbulent periods of Thrash Metal’s group’s trajectory. They faced criticism for being positioned against the Napster file sharing program, lost the bassist Jason Newsted and saw your frontman, James Hetfieldenter a rehab clinic to treat alcohol and drug addiction. Hence the album that would become the most criticized of his career: ST. ANGER (2003).

All of this was filmed and released in the documentary Some Kind of Monster (2004), which also portrays the group’s option to bring a therapist, Phil Towle, to mediate and resolve conflicts – one of the situations that led to Newsted. Like the album, the feature film was also questioned, in this case by excessively showing a number of internal problems.

More than 20 years later, Lars Ulrich It shows no regret. On the contrary: the drummer and one of the band’s leaders is proud of the legacy established by the work.

In an interview during the American event SXSW (via Blabberouth), Ulrich says that “everything collapsed” when filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky They arrived to record the documentary. The original intention was not to record that amount of conflicts – it just happened that way.

“They filmed all the Mad Maluca that happened. The label, which at the time paid for filming, said, ‘Epsre there, what is it’. We tell the filmmakers: ‘We trust you. If we still have the movie here that you still imagine, why don’t we buy the rights of the record label movie? ‘ So, without disrespect for the label, but we took them out and took control to give the filmmakers, who turned it into Some Kind of Monster. ”

Metallica’s confidence – and the legacy of the movie

It may not seem like it, but Metallica was very confident about Some Kind of Monster. The musicians knew what they were launching to the public. Lars Ulrich scores:

“We were ready for that. We knew exactly how it would happen. It was all about confidence, to trust the filmmakers. Since we had to sit there and say, ‘P#ta m#rda, this is a lot of access and a lot of transparency.’ But we went after the challenge. ”

Also according to the drummer, the initial reaction to Some Kind of Monster It was divided. Many music fans and specialized journalists felt that they were exposing themselves too much. However, the universe of cinema liked what he saw. And the work built a curious legacy.

“In the film community, it was received very positively and received brilliant criticism. As a movie, there was a dramatic bow. Documentaries don’t always have dramatic arches, but this movie had this organic thing that unfolded. And it has become a reference in the mental health community for many psychologists, psychiatric approaches, in the spirit of team construction, to see how the teams that work under pressures, under creative pressures and so on. ”

Finally, according to Ulrich, the music audience started to appreciate Some Kind of Monster Over the years. In his words, it was convincing to offer “This kind of unprecedented access at the time to the internal functioning of a band and the creative processes”.

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