JUSTICE REVISITED
Thirty years on from its release, Metallica’s landmark …And Justice For All album is getting the reissue treatment, and we spoke to James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett about the recording of arguably the band’s greatest release.
Their last album with Danish producer Flemming Rasmussen, it finds Metallica between their period as an ambitious thrash-based band and the arena-conquering force they would become on the Black Album three years later. Tonally, compositionally and thematically it’s a hugely-influential album for musicians and it sees Hammett at a creative peak as a lead player. Hetfield would never again be as political in his lyricism with the record’s bleak tone echoing the themes. The band were still coming to terms with the tragic loss of bassist Cliff Burton on tour in Sweden in 1986, but rather than dwell on the well-worn controversy of the album concerning Cliff’s successor Jason Newsted and his lack of bass presence in the mix, we wanted Hetfield and Hammett to share their own guitar memories of
…And Justice For All – and with unflinching honesty they told us about a creative victory born from pressure…
“I know there are quite a few people that love that record,” James Hetfield acknowledges when we ask him for his take on the album’s dry scooped guitar tone, “there’s a real punchiness to it and because it’s somewhat progressive. You can hear things a little better.
Obviously, there’s not much depth to it as far as thickness goes and you know, it is what it is because Lars and I were trying to venture into producing ourselves and discovering… well you can tell who produced it because the guitars and the drums and the vocals are really loud.”
Although most fans have grown to love that layered sound of …Justice’s rhythms, Hetfield is quick to point out the circumstances of tracking it: “To be honest I’ve got to cut ourselves some slack because when we were mixing that record we were right in the middle of doing the Monsters Of Rock tour. So we started off onthe East Coast, we were mixing it there and it was easy at the beginning but once the tour started moving further west we were travelling a lot. On a day off Lars and I would fly… well fly or drive... I remember at the time limos were a big deal and it actually had leg room for me. Sleeping on an eight-hour drive in a limo to wherever from somewhere in Iowa or wherever when we were mixing in upstate New York. So we were pretty fatigued, ear fatigued as well. That’s a big factor in it I think. There’s a lot more high-end and it had to cut through our deaf ears at that point.”
Hammett remembers being under the gun during the tracking stage: “It’s interesting because when we were recording that album I really didn’t have as much time to do the solos as I’d wanted to,” he admits to TG. “And time was running out, literally. I think we had to leave for the Monsters Of Rock tour on a Saturday and it was Thursday but we were still recording guitar solos. I can remember showing up at 10 or 11 in the morning and working on solos and that leading to two or three o’clock in the morning the next day. It was just ridiculous; 15 or 16 hours of recording. And I had four or five days of that.” Somehow, the guitarist was able to summon some of his most creative work…
“The one thing that sticks out the most,” adds Hammett, “as far as what was challenging for me is I remember the guitar solo for Harvester Of Sorrow and I remember I was so tired, it was so late at night and my fingers and hands were so fatigued that I had trouble bending a note in key to another note. And I remember Flemming saying, ‘Okay, just bend it this much. Just bend it a half step and I’ll take it up with the harmoniser for the other half step.’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is this really necessary? Or can we just stop and do it all over again properly tomorrow?’ But there wasn’t a tomorrow. We had to do it that way.”
The 30th anniversary remaster of …And Justice For All is released on 2 November via Metallica’s own imprint Blackened Recordings as a deluxe box set including: 180-gram double LP of the album; three live LPS from the era; 11 CDS; four DVDS featuring unreleased content; 120-page hardback book. A three-disc expanded CD version, including demos and a live set; a single CD and a double LP version will also be available.