Metallica have sold in excess of 100 million
albums and won seven Grammys. Their journey from scuzzy
Los Angeles garages to the stages of the world's biggest
stadia has been an epic and often traumatic one, and one
of the few truly great rock 'n' roll
sagas.
No music writers have
been afforded greater access to Metallica over the years
than Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, two former editors
of Kerrang. Having conducted hundreds of hours of
interviews with the band, they have between them gained
an unparalleled knowledge of the group's history and an
insiders' view of how their story has developed: they
have ridden in the band's limos, flown on their private
jet, joined them in the studio, been invited to the
quartet's 'HQ' outside San Francisco and shared beers
and stories with them in venues across the globe. There
are countless memorable stories about the band never
before seen in print, tales of bed-hopping and
drug-taking and car-crashes and fist-fights and
back-stabbing that occur when you mix testosterone and
adrenaline, alcohol and egomania, talent and raw
ambition. Perceptive, emotionally attached, and
intellectually rigorous, Birth, School, Metallica,
Death will be the essential and definitive story of
this extraordinary band. Volume I takes us from the
band's inception through to the recording and eve of
release of their seminal, self-titled, 1991
album.
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