Metallica: "Enter Night: A Biography of Metallica" by Mick Wall Out Now

While there have been other biographies written about Metallica, Wall's sharp attention to detail and storytelling rhythm make 'Enter Night' an essential read. His chronicling of the group's formative years is especially impressive. Wall takes us back to Lars Ulrich's early days in Southern California, where he first made some of the contacts that would be prove crucial to the band's early success.


Noisecreep recently spoke with Mick Wall about the making of '"Enter Night: A Biography of Metallica". Read excerpts below.
You've been interviewing the members of Metallica since the 1980s. Do you remember the first time you met them?

Lars seemed to be around in London a fair amount in about '84, when I was at Kerrang magazine and going out to gigs and parties every night. That's where we first bumped heads. We then hung out when the band played Donington festival for the first time in '85, and I went out a couple of months later to spend time in the studio with them in Copenhagen making the 'Master of Puppets' album, drinking Elephant beer, snorting coke, and talking bulls---, like we did back then.


Since then, they've obviously had tremendous commercial success. Has your chemistry with them changed?

My chemistry with everybody has changed since I was 25 years old. In the case of Metallica, the big difference, of course, is that they became so enormously successful. Just as the band were getting huge in the mid-'90s, I was going through my own changes. I went broke and I was insane. Then we all got past that, and the last time I spoke to Lars on the phone a few weeks ago he didn't sound like he'd changed much at all. Older, like us all, and as he put it, "Who'd have thought we'd have six kids between us one day?" Well, we have. Doing the school runs aside though, I guess we don't have too many other things in common anymore.

In terms of access to their personal lives, was the band comfortable letting you in since you've known them for so many years?

The band declined to be involved directly with the book, something for which Lars took the trouble to talk to me about. He said, "I knew if anybody would write a great Metallica book it would be you," but they weren't ready personally to shake all the skeletons out of their closet yet, and I wasn't prepared to offer them any say in the outcome of the finished book. I had interviewed them all again recently anyway, but when I invited them to participate in the book I made it clear they would have no control, that it would be objective and honest, come what may. It turned out much better that way.


Read the entire interview on this location.