SCARE METAL
Metallica’s Kirk Hammett shares his love of classic horror memorabilia in new ROM exhibit,
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER Dressed in a silk floral shirt, with black jacket and pants matching the chipped polish on his fingernails, Kirk Hammett looks every bit the rock star you’d expect when meeting the lead guitarist of Metallica.
But instead of swinging an axe, Hammett is holding court in the Royal Ontario Museum, effusively talking about his passion for collecting classic horror and science-fiction ephemera, which comprises the current exhibit, It’s Alive.
Recently opened at the museum, the exhibit is a showcase of classic genre-film posters from the past century, rounded out with statues, toys and a collection of guitars that have designs inspired from his favourite films.
It’s fun hearing a 56-year-old rock god — whose band helped define the thrash-metal sub-genre with albums like Ride the
Lightning and Master of Puppets — being incredibly passionate and, indeed, nerdy about the joys of collecting.
“I find myself so emotionally attached to this. I have such a sentiment for this stuff,” he says. “It feels like I need this stuff and this stuff needs me. And it’s so real. Yesterday, I was asked, do you want to be known more as a musician or as a collector? I thought about that, and you know, what I want to do is blur those lines. I want to be known an the musician collector. Or the collector musician, who uses his collections to fortify his music and uses the music to fortify his collection.”
He says he’s been picking up these pieces his entire life, but started seriously collecting in the ’80s, and, like all real nerds, used to take some grief about it.
“Yeah, I heard it a lot from family and friends. I would just get a lot of eye rolling or shaking their heads, like, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And, for the longest time, I just said, ‘Because I like it.’ … I didn’t feel like I needed a reason. I just knew that I enjoy this stuff and I liked having this stuff around me and that should be reason enough.” Time and money — Hammett joined Metallica in 1983 and the band was a commercial force by decade’s end, with four platinum albums and many more to come — made for an ever-expanding collection that he shared with other artists. (The general public first got wind of Hammett’s hobby in 2009, when he turned out to be the winning bidder of $1 million (U.S.) for Frank Frazetta’s cover art on Robert E. Howard’s book Conan the Conqueror.)
Hammett says his fellow artists were often blown away, and he kept hearing suggestions about creating an exhibit.
“‘Hey, you should do a show. I know people who can get you into museum.’ I started hearing this consistently and I thought, wow, maybe there’s just some
truth to that,” Hammett says. “You know, who the biggest proponent was for that? Lou Reed. I invited him over because I heard he loved this stuff and, within 10 seconds, it was, ‘Oh my God. Why isn’t this stuff in a museum, Kirk. Why? I can get this stuff into museum right away. I know people.’ I mean, he wouldn’t stop for half an hour.”
The collection is full of posters from classic films, such as the 1931 Frankenstein directed by early horror hero James Whale, Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi) from the same year, 1962’s The Day of the Triffids and 1979’s Alien.
Behind the collectibles, there are stories.
Hammett points out that with many of the early films, the colour poster was the only depiction of the movie that wasn’t black and white. He talks about posters made for foreign markets, where artists designed them from a synopsis, so they sometimes depicted scenes that never appeared in the film. He offers details about lithography, the process by which most posters were made, about finding old pieces that had managed to retain their colours, and rare discoveries like “three sheets,” which are larger posters made up of three pieces of paper.
His collection is extensive, but, for him, there is still a white whale out there.
“Yeah, there’s a movie that was made in1932, and Bela Lugosi is in it, called Murders in the Rue Morgue, an Edgar Allan Poe story,” he says.
“I love that. I love that movie poster. There’s a one-sheet, and there is only one known to exist. It’s locked up in collection. You know, if I had that piece, it would make my collection that much more complete. But I’m pretty convinced that there is not a copy out there.
“But I’ve said that about other posters and, lo and behold, they’ve shown up — like a Frankenstein three-sheet that showed up three years ago, and I couldn’t believe it, because that’s a movie poster that I used to sit around and fantasize about having.”
That particular piece was found in a locked-up projection room in Canada, and is now part of the ROM exhibit. It’s believed to be the only one of its kind left.
Beyond being stunning pieces of pop art with broad appeal, the ROM’s curator for the exhibit says it’s also possible to see commentary on historical events in some of the posters.
“The ROM is looking to diversify its audience and try to tap into people’s different interests, and we just thought this would be a good fit,” says Arlene Gehmacher, the museum’s curator of Canadian paintings, prints and drawings.
“It seems to be a very popculture piece, but this speaks to a huge audience — everyone goes to the movies, or watches on Netflix, and while it’s a different time period, it’s the same sort of thing.
“As well, it’s combining both history and art. When you look at the posters and the movies that were made during the Cold War, a lot of them seem to be metaphors for angst and trepidation for what was happening post-World War Two. But also in some the European pieces from the 1920s — so between the world wars — like when you see Frankenstein and The Mummy, (you) can make connections politically within North America in response to some of the things that are happening in Europe at the time.”
Hammett thinks part of the show’s draw is that different people can savour different parts of it, from the horror nerds gawking at the film collectibles to the metal heads geeking out over the wall of guitars. It seems like he’d much rather talk about this stuff than be poked and prodded by reporters about his music.
“Oh, absolutely. But you have to also understand that I am forced to talk about my music a lot. When people ask questions, you know they have expectations that I have to answer to.
“But with this, it’s more about my passion and I am a walking repository of information on this stuff. I can talk about this stuff for friggin’ hours and I do with my friends, too, who love this stuff. We sit around we make ourselves comfortable and we just talk about movies, comic books and monsters and the actors’ performances and music, just bouncing all around it for hours.”