Some Kind of Monster

As you probably already know, "Some Kind of Monster" is the Metallica documentary that came out a few years ago. The film begins in 2001 when their bass player quits the band and they are having a hard time getting started recording their new record, "St. Anger." They are pressured by management to bring in a celebrity psychiatrist to help resolve interpersonal tensions and get the record done so that everybody can make their money.

Metallica in Therapy is a promising hook and much of the film is good, but there is an awkward tension between what is onscreen and what is really going on. One gets the feeling that the documentary filmmakers have to answer to the label, and to the band, and even if they actually do have some autonomy then there seems to be some self-censoring going on. There are scenes where the band confronts the filmmakers on-camera about whether they actually want the documentary made. These are important scenes for a lot of reasons -- mainly because they address the issue of whether the film crew's presence alters the reality of the bandmembers and their creative impulse (of course!) -- but in the end the filmmakers come off as lackeys of the band, too eager to play nice, too eager to walk away or just fall into step. It's clear that the documentary is only a Rockumentary--a promotional tool--and not investigative in any way.

From this week's New Yorker on biography: "What those uncooperative witnesses want--and what the famous people themselves want, too, when as has sometimes been the case for Secrest, they are still alive and competent to make trouble--is what everbody wants in life: to control the narrative."

The problem is that the band just isn't that interesting. The whole situation is kind of interesting (lead singer Hatfield disappears for a year in rehab, band in therapy, the puppetmasters all coming in to try and steer the foundering ship) but the people aren't so bright and it goes nowhere (for 2 hours and 20 minutes).

More interesting stuff comes when the band decides they are going to cut off the psychiatrist after 2 years on the payroll (at $40k/month). We learn that the psychiatrist is moving his family out to San Francisco to be closer to work (the band) and for the first time in the film the band kind of comes together to gang up on him. After encouraging the lyric writing of the songs to be spread out among all the bandmembers instead of being the sole territory of the lead singer, we see the psychiatrist himself submitting lyrics. He thinks he's part of the band! He's gotten used to it... and when the band tells him he's not needed anymore he backtracks and looks uncomfortable and says, "The work isn't finished. There's still a lot to do on tour." He looks so disappointed.... Haha. This is great great stuff but it gets buried...

Most interesting to me, though, is real story--the psychiatrist's presence and the need for harmony in the band cause EVEN MORE TENSION than before.... St. Anger is, by all accounts, the worst Metallica record ever. Just go to Amazon and check out all the one-star reviews from hardcore fans. The band jams for two years, trying to find good songs collectively, and the results just SUCK. The songs on St. Anger are AWFUL. Hatfield is emasculated as the creative fountainhead of the band and told that he has to accept lyrics from all of the others. No one is in charge. They are supposed to work in a group and because they have to defer to each other's opinions the results are a Frankenstein's monster of compromises. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the film's title.

There are plenty of other bands like this... where the members demand more creative control at the expense of the overall product. Billy Corgan wrote and played all of the guitar parts on the Smashing Pumpkins records for their first three hugely successful records. The band wanted to be more included in the studio instead of just being a tour band. What happened? They started to suck. The Cardigans last record was a similar story. Everyone wanted to contribute instead of letting the original songwriter do everything. Frank Black broke up the Pixies when Kim Deal tried to exert too much influence. Thank God, because I'm sure a series of mediocre records would have followed (nothing against Kim Deal--I have all of her records--but she's certainly no Black Francis...).

(A counter-example of this is XTC, which always seemed to have four or five ABSOLUTELY INFERIOR songs on each record by the bass player, Colin Moulding. I always wondered why Andy Partridge allowed this, but to him, and to them, I guess, band harmony was more important than quality...)

The gf and I have this argument all the time. Collaboration works to a point, after which it stifles individual vision. On the other end of the spectrum you have non-genius-auteurs like Robert Rodriguez, who make decent but not-brilliant movies, all by themselves. They could use a little collaboration. But three people in a room, being told that all of their opinions have equal weight.....well, it just doesn't work.

Harmony in a group setting and producing great work are incompatible. Someone has to lead and someone has to follow.