In this world there are three ways you can
fly: first class, club class and cunt class. Ross Halfin, who
has just been voted one of the world’s Top Rock
photographers by the readers of Creem magazine (all unfortunate halfwits to a man),
has his arse plonked squarely in a first class,
access-all-alcohol, $2,000-seat. To his right is Rod Stewart
and entourage. Rod is looking incredible for a guy who in a
matter of hours – at the stop-over in Lisbon, on the
stroke of midnight, London time – will be celebrating his
40th birthday. He’s sporting an LA tan and LA blond locks
swept up in traditional Stewart cock-sparrow style. Every
picture tells a story and Rod’s eyes, his face, even his
nose, are a perfect picture – old rock money built on
three ancient Stones guitar riffs and a Dylan love song from
Bob’s younger days. Seated on Halfin’s left are the
boys from AC/DC, who over the years have acquired the unhappy
habit of completely ignoring the existence of any living thing
outside their own familiar sphere. Very little of any cogent
value lies outside their own sightless cosmology of band
managers, roadies, bodyguards and immediate family members.
Malcolm Young nods a ‘hi’ to Ross, and Ross offers
a copy of the new Kerrang! to drummer Simon Wright. Simon sneers into
Ross’ face and declines. Ah… us and AC/DC, we
don’t get on any more… It goes without saying that
The Kid has his half-starved arse parked in the pig-sty
humorously referred to as economy class, along with the Rod
Stewart Band, several dozen reptiles from Filth Street (the Daily Mirror, The Sun, the Daily Express, The Observer;
everybody wants a holiday in the sun!), a gaggle of competition
winners on a Trip Of A Lifetime, and a couple of hundred
for-real passengers with only one question they want answered.
So tell me, my old doughnut, are you going to the Rock In Rio
festival? Yes, we thought so…
I catch up with Lars Ulrich on a grey and
chilly afternoon in North Hollywood. He’s in the
recreation room at One On One studios, where Metallica have
been holed-up these past six months, recording their new, as
yet untitled, album with neo-legendary producer Bob Rock.
Neither Kirk Hammett’s saw-toothed guitar nor Jason
Newsted’s belly-rumbling bass are required at the studio
today. But James Hetfield is seated in the next room –
studio one – guitar cradled on his lap, patiently laying
down the ponderous melody that makes up the cyclical guitar
part to a song called ‘The Unforgiven’. Lars chomps
on a hastily slapped together cheese-and-pickle sandwich and
shows off the amenities: pinball machine, video game, pool
table, punchbag... Punchbag?!? “For fucking
tension!” Lars exclaims, crumbs sputtering from his lips.
“You know that shit; you’re in a studio and
you’re trying to get something down and you can’t
get it down right and you just need to hurt something. Then you
receive the bill for it next week. You can hurt that and not
have to pay for it.” James has been using it a lot
lately, apparently. “But now that Jason has started doing
his bass he uses it a lot too!” he chortles loudly. Cut
to a side room further down the corridor. MTV is murmuring from
a screen in one corner and – nine-line phone positioned
on a table by his side – Lars settles his whip-thin body
down into an armchair and fixes me with that piercing,
squinting stare he reserves for such occasions. “So what
do you want to know?” he spitballs in his graceless
Danish-American drawl.
New York City: the Warwick Hotel over on
West 54th Street. It’s 2.30 in the morning and in room
1110 the telephone is ringing. A sleepless hand reaches out and
grabs the receiver, lifting it tight to a sleeping head.
“Yeah?” the word crawls out of my gob like a snake
from a sandpit. On the other end of the wire is Bruce Payne,
manager of Deep Purple. “What happened?" he barks
down the line. “Ritchie waited in the bar for you for two
hours! And you didn’t show! What happened?”
“Whaddayamean Ritchie waited in the
bar for two hours? I get straight off the plane and make it
over to the hotel in double quick fashion. I don’t even
know for certain if there’s going to be a room reserved
for me, I don’t know when, where or how I’m
supposed to be getting together with Ritchie, so what do I do?
It’s Friday in New York, do I go out on the razz and hit
the clubs? Do I crawl on my hands and knees into the bar and
launch myself ass-first into a bottle, any bottle? Do I fuck! I
sit in my hotel room and wait. I need instructions, I need
orders and I am a good boy and so I wait and nothing do I hear,
no more do I know until this very phone call… Shit, so
what do I do now? Can I talk to Ritchie tomorrow? Is he pissed
off? Has the whole deal been shot down in flames and am I about
to be the proud receiver of a Kerrang!-sized boot up my ass?”
It all began when a man named Ward
approached me in the bar of the Soho Brasserie in London and
began babbling excitedly about Russia, punching the air with
his fist on certain key phrases like “Media
event!”, “History in the making!” and, most
ominous of all, “Once in a lifetime experience!”
That did it. The shutters came down. I have accepted enough
offers of a ‘Once in a lifetime experience’ to know
to steer well clear of anyone, blind or stupid enough to offer
me another one now. Nevertheless, something about his manner
endeared Ward to me. He was 30-ish, dressed in a crumpled suit
and worried tie, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in
several days. He spoke in rapid bursts, like quick-fire speech
bubbles, and he had the wild red eyes of the True Believer. He
began to throw a few names around – Bon Jovi, Ozzy
Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, the Scorpions. Then he stirred
in a few ripe images – Moscow gripped by such a fearful
heat everyone that can flees the city: Red Square at night
beneath the shadow of the Kremlin: the vast and imposing Lenin
Stadium getting ready to Make A Difference... I had to admit,
it sounded like my kind of scene. Jon Bon Jovi in the back of a
Russian-made Zil limousine waxing lyrical about Nelson Mandela,
Bob Geldof and the impossibility of obtaining a cold beer in
Moscow; Ozzy in Red Square in the pissing rain, philosophical
as ever: “If I was living here full time, I’d
probably be dead of alcoholism, or sniffing car tyres –
anything to get out of it. I can understand why there’s
such an alcohol problem here. There’s nothing else to
do!” The Scorpions hamming it up onstage at the Lenin
Stadium with a turbo-charged version of ‘Back In The
USSR’... I could see it all splayed out before me like a
giant map.
