KJ DOUGHTON
How one Metallica enthusiast from Oregon ended up running the original fan club from his parents’ basement
When did Metallica enter your life?
“I was living in Roseburg, Oregon and I was still in high school – I was 17 years old. I heard the four-song demo tape they put out around the time they appeared on the Metal Massacre compilation, and I was impressed by that even though the production wasn’t great. Then a friend I tape traded with received another demo tape, and that was considerably better. My friend gave me Lars’s number, so I called him and said, ‘Your demo tape’s amazing, I want to help you guys, what can I do?’ He went, ‘[Amazed voice]
You gotta be fucking kidding?’ You live in Oregon?’ Then he said, ‘You could answer our mail and run our fan club.’”
This was before Kill ’Em All came out. What did it involve?
“I was given the task of sending out as many demo tapes as possible to as many people as possible. That evolved into me selling t-shirts and fan club memberships. I was doing it all in my parents’ basement – their address was on those original flyers.”
What did members get?
“It was pretty grassroots. It was around $5 in the beginning, and you’d get a badge and a button with the Metallica logo on them. I’d send out newsletters quarterly, and later on, around the time of Master Of Puppets, there was this little 12-page booklet with an overview of their history and photos that the band had sent. There was also a folder with their signatures on the back in red.”
What was it like seeing them take off? “It was all so fast. I mainly just remember the feel and the smell of these brown manilla envelopes with demo tapes in them, getting instructions from Lars to send them to key people he wanted them sending to.”
Did you get paid for running the fan club?
“I would send the band the money from the shirts that were sold, and they would give me something like 20%. It was very primitive: ‘Here’s your cheque for the month.’”
How popular did it get?
“Oh, really popular. By the time Master Of Puppets came out, I was getting something like 300 letters a day.
I was just a laidback fan in Oregon; eventually it got too big for me and I just kind of phased out of doing it.”
Did your paths cross later?
“For a while, I felt like I’d been a little bit forgotten about. But then I got a call from their management inviting me to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame when they were inducted [in 2009]. They had a party, and all these people from the early days were there – the small, underground people who were there near the start. It was like a time machine. It was very emotional.”