Introduction to Metallica

I had this song playing at the beginning of my College Comp II class one day. The point was not to assault them with the sheer sonic bludgeoning of Metallica. Rather it was to illustrate an important point that I wanted them to consider in an upcoming essay - the importance of beauty - or (in this song's case) - recognizing greatness.

We had been studying the Joshua Bell experiment that the Washington Post conducted a few years ago. Bell is one of the foremost musicians on earth. His value is measured in thousands of dollars - for each minute he plays.

That's how phenomenal he is as a violinist.

The Post decided to set him up outside a busy business hub. They put him in street clothes, but they allowed him to play his priceless (well, priceless for us mere mortals, for I think the value of his instrument is in the millions) violin. He played some of the most beautiful and moving music ever written by man.

The test was to see if the average person rushing to work would A) recognize Bell's greatness and B) take a moment out of their busy day to stop and soak up the beauty of his music.

It didn't happen. The sheep just rushed along, oblivious to the beauty around them.

Now, this did not surprise me. For I would have walked right by too - with my iPod plugged right into my ears. But how often do we hear news stories of parents who forgot their babies in their car seats on their way to work instead of dropping them off at daycare only to have the infant die in the car? In a society where that happens, passing by a world-class musician playing the greatest crafted music in the history of the world isn't that big of a thing.

After reading the story, students wrote and discussed the idea of beauty or greatness. We touched upon such subjects as what is beauty? How might we define it? Are there some beautiful things that we all can agree on? Or is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder?

I have always maintained that if you can't recognize true beauty, you should at least be able to appreciate it. Or learn to appreciate it.

So, I played "Battery" by Metallica as a way to illustrate how I first encountered 'greatness' in music.

I understand that metal is not for everyone. But my point was to elaborate on how I was able to determine what was so great and shocking to me about it because it totally changed my worldview concerning the music I listened to.

I wanted to illustrate that this is what happens when we encounter something truly 'great' or 'beautiful.' If we don't immediately recognize it, how can we then understand or begin to relate to what is great and beautiful.

First, I think it changes you. Second, I think it gets inside of you and makes the world appear different . . . forever.

Now, this is exactly what happened when Mom bought me Master of Puppets at Pamida in Crookston in early 1986. These were the days when you couldn't sample music immediately on the internet. Furthermore, Metallica was receiving zero airtime on the radio, so I was just going off interviews and reports I read in Hit Parader and Circus.

Furthermore, I had been used to such standard "crotch rock" in the 1980s as Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Van Halen, Aerosmith, Ratt, Autograph, Krokus, Ozzy, and so on.

So when Mom stopped at Hugos to get groceries, I opened the cassette and popped it into my Walk-man (again, loooooooong before the iPod was ever a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye).

"Battery" was the lead track.

It started off normal enough with a classical style accoustic intro.

Well, this is interesting I thought.

Then a thunderous guitar broke in over the accoustic guitar. This almost had an operatic sound to it.

What is this Queen?

The drums were on part with Bonham from Led Zeppelin, pounding away.

This is great. Just what I wanted, I thought.

Then exactly at the 1:06 mark, a riff unlike anything I had ever heard in my entire life issued forth from the headphones.

I was too in shock to even think anything. The guitar was so raw and gutteral that it felt like I was at the dentist having a cavity drilled.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Exactly seven seconds later, the drums, bass, and guitars came into sync and began an all out blitzkreig on my senses.

This is the fastest damned music I have ever heard. It is most certainly not radio oriented. I mean this is so fast people wouldn't even know what to think. There's no sense of beat or catchy synthesizer or chorus. It was an all out thrashing. All I could do was try to hold on.

And then the lyrics hit with James Hetfield's choppy delivery of the short, jab-like phrases. It felt like I was one of those small punching bags boxers show off on, hitting it so fast that it becomes a blur.

And I found myself totally hating it.

There's ten bucks down the drain, I thought. It was not like I got a cassette all that often, so buying a terrible one was really a downer.

But since I had bought it, I decided to give it a few more listens.

And before I knew it, I couldn't stop listening to it.

Initially, I hated it because it was unlike anything I had ever heard before in my life. They even made Iron Maiden sound boring.

But the more I listened to it, the more the oddness wore off and the true greatness sank in.

And that's what I wanted to share with the students.

Too often we are too quick to dismiss something just because we don't instantly like it, rather than learning to appreciate it or wrestling with something to come to a better understanding.

Metallica revolutionized my love for music.

I still liked all that 'crotch rock,' but now I knew what serious music sounded like. I mean in all reality it probably took Ratt ten seconds to write "Round and Round." But there was no way, given the guitar work and tempo changes in Metallica's music, that it took them a few seconds to comprise this.

Then there were the lyrics. While Steven Tyler of Aerosmith sang "The Cheerleader was a real young bleeder" in "Walk This Way" or Gene Simmons of Kiss sang "I want to rock and roll all night and party every day" or Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister sang "We're not going to take it . . . no, we ain't gonna take it," Hetfield was singing "Pain monopoly / Ritual misery / Chop your breakfast on a mirror" in "Master of Puppets" or he was singing about H.P. Lovercraft's Chuthulu mythos in "The Thing That Should Not Be" or scam artist televangelists in "Leper Messiah."

This was a thinking person's type of music.

I never listened to music the same again. All because of that one moment.