ry ago?
DM: I was 6 years old when The Black
Album came out. I was born in '85. I can't
really tell you what I was doing . . . playing baseball in the back yard, stuff like
that.
IE: I bought it while vacationing in
Tennessee that summer. I remember listening to the tape on a Walkman while penning love letters to my first girlfriend. I
told her "Nothing Else Matters" was our
song.
DM: There you go. Did it work out for ya?
They were getting girls to dance for them.
That's what started it all.
IE: In my opinion, Wikipedia distorts the
early '90s. Though Nevermind, Ten, and
Blood Sugar Sex Magik were released
within six weeks of The Black Album, the
early '90s, right then, was The Black
Album. The Black Album was just so dominant. It was in the Billboard charts for
four and a half years. I remember being so
completely head over heels about that
record that I would wear a plain black Tshirt to school, and that was my
10•2015
IE: No.
DM: Aw, that's sad.
IE: "So close, no matter how far."
DM: [Laughs.]
IE: It was the first Metallica album that
girls liked.
DM: Yeah. And Metallica is perhaps the
only heavy metal band that if a DJ played
one of their songs at a wedding, many of
the women would stay on the dance floor.
And there was a revolt and resentment
against that, among heavy metal fans,
because heavy metal is countercultural. In
some senses, it's even subcultural. There
was resentment against the perception
that Metallica was [becoming] mainstream. But that's how rock 'n' roll started:
Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard.
"Metallica" shirt. Nevermind may have
come out at practically the same time, but
it was just years away.
DM: But it's difficult to separate those
albums, too. The Black Album was dominant. Metallica had always joked about
being on a quest for world domination,
and they achieved it with The Black Album.
And one of the refrains of this book is that
Metallica not only became the leaders and
ambassadors for heavy metal, going into
every corner of the planet and creating
space for other heavy metal bands to follow, but the success and popularity of The
Black Album demonstrated to American
radio programmers, MTV, and concert
promoters that there is not only a market,
but a massive market for heavy and hard
music. So even though alternative, grunge,
whatever you want to call it, differs in
10 illinoisentertainer.com october 2015
October 2
Avicii – Hard To Please
Collective Soul – See What You Started...
Cutting Crew – Add To Favourites
EODM – Zipper Down
Janet Jackson – Fast Forward
The Jokers – Hurricane
Squeeze – Cradle To The Grave
October 9
Clutch – Psychic Warfare
The Game – The Documentary 2
Iration – Hotting Up
of Montreal – Snare Lustrous Doomings
St. Germain – St. Germain
The Zombies – Still Got That Hunger
Collective Soul
October 16
BORNS – Dopamine
!!! – As If
Coheed and Cambria 8