===================================================================
                  THE ENCYCLOPEDIA METALLICA NEWSLETTER
                          ISSUE #37, 22 Apr 1999
                         http://www.encycmet.com/
===================================================================

EDITORIAL. This will be an issue dedicated to the symphony concert in San
Francisco. Metallica is currently rehearsing for the show with the
orchestra which will include two new tunes. Always check
http://www.encycmet.com for the latest updates

                                           Sem Hadland (Editor)
                                           http://www.encycmet.com






==== SYMPHONY REHEARSAL ===========================================
You've never heard "Master of Puppets" quite like this.


Nor, in fact, have Metallica, who rehearsed the title cut of their 1986
album and other tunes Monday with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra at
the Berkeley Community Theater.


The heavy-metal band and the orchestra will do it for real Wednesday
(April 21) and Thursday, in two shows that may be the world's first
concert-length marriage of thrash and symphony.


Though they were playing "Master of Puppets",  "The Call of Ktulu" and a
new song, "No Leaf Clover," together, Metallica couldn't hear the
orchestra, which was on risers behind them, and the orchestra couldn't
hear Metallica. Nor were they supposed to. 


Each outfit was listening to itself in headphones while playing to the
beat of a single conductor, who waved a baton in different patterns to
indicate time changes.


"It's really like playing in the studio with a click track, except you've
got the guy doing it manually," said Metallica singer/guitarist James
Hetfield. "You have to go by the maestro's click track. When he does the
pentagram, that's when I come in."


"[The members of the symphony] know there are soloists and they know that
the soloists are 10 times louder than they are, but they can't actually
hear what James is singing," said conductor Michael Kamen. "They can't
hear what Jason is playing. They can't hear it but they can feel it. They
know there's a huge barrage of sound and a great deal of energy pushing it
out of the front."


On Monday, the first full-blown rehearsal for the shows, the theater was a
maze of microphone cables, lighting trusses, road cases, caterers, sound
engineers, roadies, publicists, members of the media, video crews and
recording equipment. Behind Metallica's gear -- two electric guitars, a
bass and a drum kit -- rows of risers climbed to the back of the stage and
held more than 100 musicians, along with their oboes, cellos and
Stradivarius violins.


A trippy splash of color burned and floated around a 25-by-30-foot video
screen like rainbow quicksilver as Hetfield, seated on a stool, plucked
the intro to "No Leaf Clover" over the swooping of violins and violas. A
harp -- that's harp, not harmonica -- dripped into the mix, and Metallica
eased back a bit, leaving room for the full orchestra to sing out from
behind the ironclad wall of the band's sound.


The song stopped midstride. Snippets of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony drifted
out from the string and woodwind sections; distorted guitars cut blues
riffs across the 3,500-seat auditorium. This was the mating call of
Metallica and the symphony.


"It's going a little slow here and there," Hetfield said later as he sat
on a couch with Newsted, just outside the hall.


"It's the first day," Newsted said, "and it's going a lot better than I
expected, actually, with so many people doing all this different crazy
stuff all at once that they're not familiar with. ... I didn't realize
that it was going to be that colorful and have that many dimensions.
They're not just copying riffs of ours. They're all over the place."


Kamen, who has written concertos for rock guitarist Eric Clapton and jazz
saxophonist David Sanborn and orchestral arrangements for Bob Dylan and
Pink Floyd's The Wall, orchestrated the strings for Metallica's 1991
ballad "Nothing Else Matters". For this week's shows, he wrote orchestral
accompaniments for more than 20 Metallica songs; he and the band hope to
release the results as a live album.


Kamen said he is impressed with the "ungimmicky and undeliberate"
intricacy of Metallica's music.


"When I was a student," Kamen said, "one of the things that we used to
fuck around with all the time ... was strange time signatures. We only
played with it. We were messing around. These guys do it for real, and
they eat, sleep and drink this stuff. That song 'Master of Puppets' --
they don't know what the time change is."


Kamen, in fact, explained the time changes in Metallica's songs to the
band. He said he once did the same for Dylan, when orchestrating "A Hard
Rain's A-Gonna Fall" for the 1994 Great Music Experience in Nara, Japan.


As they played, Hetfield stood at stage right, Newsted and guitarist Kirk
Hammett at stage left. Drummer Lars Ulrich was center-stage, next to Kamen.


Sound from 96 microphones in the orchestra ran across the stage and out
into a truck that housed a 96-channel mixing console. A sound crew mixed
the orchestra's music in the truck and sent it back to the public-address
system in the hall.


Metallica's sound travelled through another set of cables into a different
truck where it, too, was mixed and sent back.


The four members of Metallica could hear only their own mix in their
headphones, which forced them to watch Kamen's baton as attentively as do
the orchestra members. The members of the symphony heard themselves and,
through carefully placed speakers, a rough mix of Ulrich's drumbeat.


Kamen's baton and Ulrich's beat were the lynch pins holding the
100-plus-piece combo together. Just as Metallica have learned to "watch
the stick," so Kamen has trained the symphony members to listen to Ulrich.


"What I've said to them is, 'You listen to that drummer. Those drums are
now in your face.' They're sitting in a little speaker next to them, and
they've basically taken the rest of the band out of that speaker, so the
speaker is a click track to them."


Kamen said the members of the symphony are thrilled to play with
Metallica. "They're used to dealing with world-class virtuosos and ...
music that was written by dead guys a long time ago. It's not often that
they get to play live music written by guys who are alive and in the
hall." 
   Source: www.sonicnet.com/




==== TRACKLISTING =================================================
Here are the list of songs that they will probably perform at the symphony
gig
     Enter Sandman
     Master Of Puppets
     The Thing That Should Not Be
     The Call of Ktulu
     Nothing Else Matters
     Devil's Dance
     For Whom the Bell Tolls
     Fight Fire With Fire
     Hero of the Day
     Fuel
     The Outlaw Torn.
     No leaf Clover - NEW SONG




==== SCHEDULE ETC =================================================
Wednesday, April 21, 8:00pm SOLD OUT
Thursday, April 22, 8:00pm SOLD OUT

Berkeley Community Theatre 
1930 Allston Way
(between Milvia and Martin Luther King Jr. Way)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 644-6863




An ordinary newsletter will follow this weekend with more news, reviews
and reports. Stay tuned




Now go to my site at http://www.encycmet.com


==================================================================
 ARCHIVE  :     http://www.listbot.com/archive/EncycMet
 COPYRIGHT:     Feel free to copy the stuff here, but please always 
                credit Encyclopedia Metallica with URL / text link
 OUR URL  :     http://www.encycmet.com
 E-MAIL   :     mailto:sem@encycmet.com
 MEMBERS  :     There are currently 16.688 subscribers to this list
===================================================================