I’ll get this off of my chest now, before I move on to the real reason I’m writing about this album. ‘Lulu’ the collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica is the worst album I’ve ever heard. The reason I don’t like the album apart from the fact that it sounds awful, is just how pretentious it is. They’ve deliberately created this as a legacy project – in the vain hope that years down the line people will regard it as a work of genius. They could describe it as ‘artistic’ and a project of expression. However, the truly iconic examples of artistic works we’ve seen over time, weren’t created for the egotistical pursuit of legacy (at least most of them weren’t).
If you’ve read the About Me section of this website, you will note that I used to be in a metal band called Wasted. We were a bunch of Metallica wannabes at the time and to be honest, we sounded more like a cross between Venom and a bunch of pissed mates doing their best to be metal.
One cool thing we did was a Metallica medley at a bunch of gigs with a mixture of new and old songs including St. Anger (it had just come out). Recently the guitarist and singer dug out an old VHS tape of one of these gigs and hastily uploaded it to YouTube. I’m proud to say I’m about to post it here. I’m semi-relieved I didn’t suck as much on drums as I thought I did…
Looking around in any bookstore and you’ll see a large number of biographies of rock and metal stars. Of course many rock stars never quite got the chance to write about their life, meeting their maker much sooner than many would have wanted.
Joel McIver’s book is no ordinary book of another dead rock star. ‘To Live Is To Die’ is a book about Metallica’s Cliff Burton documenting his early family life and love of music right up until his untimely death in 1986. Right from the beginning it’s clear that this book is very well researched with interviews quoted from people associated with Metallica right from the very beginning of their existence. McIver even took the time to interview many people himself which is why this is a highly reliable and faithful account of Metallica’s genius bassist.
