Metallica hopes PSA will help find fan's killer

Metallica is lending a hand to the FBI to help solve the murder of a 20-year-old college student who disappeared after a 2009 concert by the heavy metal band in Charlottesville, Va.

James Hetfield, lead singer and guitarist for Metallica, has recorded a plea for information in a video released by the Virginia State Police on Wednesday.

Morgan Harrington, an aspiring teacher and Virginia Tech student, went missing after she left a Metallica concert at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2009. About three months later, her skeletal remains were found on a remote farm about 10 miles from the venue.

Her T-shirt was found in front of an apartment building near the Charlottesville arena, but a camera she had with her that night and a distinctive Swarovski crystal necklace she was wearing have not been recovered. She was last seen hitchhiking, according to FBI reports.

An enhanced composite sketch of the suspect is displayed in the video, and the FBI says the suspect has also been linked through DNA to a September 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax City, Va., where a woman walking home from a grocery story reported being grabbed and dragged behind a maintenance shed before being attacked.

The Jefferson Area Crime Stoppers is offering $100,000 for any information leading to an arrest, and Metallica has put up a $50,000 reward. Hetfield’s PSA appears on YouTube and an FBI website dedicated to the case.

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-- Gerrick D. Kennedy

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Critic’s Notebook: Lou Reed & Metallica’s ‘Lulu’ collaboration

Their take on a work by German playwright Frank Wedekind is getting as rough a critical reception as the original did a century ago. Yet it has its moments.

The German playwright Frank Wedekind had a theory about the connection between life on the wild side and happiness: "Search fearlessly for every sin, for out of sin comes joy," he wrote. Wedekind, who lived from 1864 to 1918, abided by this rule, mostly through a cocktail of lust and gluttony.

He’s best known for two works, "Earth Spirit" and "Pandora’s Box," which came to be known as the "Lulu" plays, and it’s this that Lou Reed has adapted in a collaboration with the rock band Metallica using equal parts wrath and sloth. Its 10 songs run nearly 95 minutes, Metallica driving riffs deliberately and repetitively, and Reed’s monotonous voice rambling into atonal realms that at their most obnoxious are quite disturbing. Detractors are lining up to tear "Lulu" down.

But that’s nothing new. When they were first performed a century ago, the plays pushed at the edges of propriety. Their genesis, though, dictated the themes. Before writing the "Lulu" works, Wedekind had been on a two-year Parisian bender during which, according to one biographer (as described by late Wedekind translator Carl Mueller), "He sought to know love in all its manifestations." For his sins, Wedekind was described by critics of the time as "an arch radical" and "the terror of the bourgeoisie, a lunatic, and a criminal who wrote plays of such filth that they are best performed in the gutter."

In the past month, music writers of all varieties have gone on their own kind of bender by joyously seeking to identify all the sins within Reed and Metallica’s "Lulu." A low-hanging fruit if there ever was one, their "Lulu," released Tuesday, has been called "the worst record ever made" by respected British music blog the Quietus (haven’t they heard new Evanescence?); it has also been called misogynist and racist. London’s transit authority banned the "Lulu" poster, which depicts a topless, armless, battered mannequin torso, from its tube stations.

Lou Reed and Metallica join for new album coming ... sometime

Proto-punk fans and metal-heads can breathe easier: The musical meeting of Lou Reed and Metallica at the 25th anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts in 2009 wasn’t just a one-night stand.

Metallica made it official with a post on the band’s website revealing the nature of the group’s new album, which had been hinted at earlier this year as “not really 100% a Metallica record.”

“Ever since we had the pleasure of performing with Lou," according to the post, "we have been kicking around the idea of making a record together."

Here's a link to video from that night's performance: Metallica and Lou Reed Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary shows at RockHall.com.

"Some of you astute Bay Area residents may have picked up news of recent Lou Reed sightings in the greater San Francisco area and we have indeed been working at our home studio at HQ on and off over the last few months," the post continues. “In what would be lightning speed for a Metallica related project, we recorded 10 songs during this time and while at this moment we're not exactly sure when you'll hear it, we're beyond excited to share with you that the recording sessions wrapped up last week.”

Metallica’s website includes a few more details and some photos from the recording sessions. But even without a title or release date yet, it should be a slam dunk that it’ll be a walk on the wild side for both.

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-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Metallica guitarist-singer James Hetfield, left, and Lou Reed. Credit: Metallica.com

Metallica leads a new 'heavy-metal Coachella' in Indio

 

 

Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax made thrash-metal history last year when they performed on the same bill in a string of European shows, and now they will bring their blistering sonic collective to the U.S. on April 23 in a most unexpected venue -- the Empire Polo Field in Indio.

The seven "Big Four" shows were major music moments, with a Bulgaria date yielding a bestselling boxed set (bundling CDs with DVDs or Blu-rays) and an HD satellite broadcast that reached fans in hundreds of movie theaters. Tickets for the one-night show go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Ticketmaster.

The metal extravaganza will be staged the Saturday after the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, and the organizers of that California festival are behind this surprise booking. 

The show came together quickly. Promoter Paul Tollett, the founding figure behind Coachella and its country cousin, the Stagecoach Festival, found himself with an empty weekend between the two massive multi-artist shows and, after a casual conversation with Metallica manager Peter Mensch, the two came up with a bold way to fill the calendar gap.

-- Geoff Boucher

Photo: James Hetfield of Metallica. Credit: Jason Merritt / Getty Images for Activision

U2, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica special releases coming Nov. 26 for 'Back to Black Friday'

Continuing their efforts to reward music fans who still patronize independent record stores, a coalition of small retailers will be offering exclusive releases on Nov. 26 from rock, pop, R&B and country artists including U2, Metallica, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison, Jimi Hendrix and many others.

The special releases are part of indie retailers' "Back to Black Friday" promotion for the day after Thanksgiving, typically the heaviest shopping day of the year.

Many are being released on vinyl, which gives rise to the "back to black" theme. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Cee-Lo, Iron & Wine and Drive-By Truckers are among the other acts participating.

"These exclusive pieces not only create nice sales, but a lasting memory and connection between the customer, the store, the employee and the artist, whose importance can't be overstated," Mike Batt, who owns Silver Platters, a Seattle indie music store, said in a statement Thursday.

The store owners also seek to increase awareness of existing retailers each spring with National Record Store Day, which also has become something of a cause celebre among pop and rock stars.

"Many of the great indies have disappeared in recent years, but Record Store Day is giving us yet another chance to show appreciation to this wonderful endangered slice of Americana," Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers said in the same statement.

Among exclusive high-profile reissues coming to the indie stores for the holiday season are a special edition of Harrison's 1970 solo triple-album "All Things Must Pass" and a Hendrix holiday EP, "Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year."

-- Randy Lewis

Metallica's Lars Ulrich on label future, Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger

Reporting from Austin, Texas — Metallica was in Austin last week for a not-so-secret show at the South by Southwest music festival designed to promote a new edition of the video game Guitar Hero, due out this month. But the band's outspoken drummer, Lars Ulrich, took the opportunity to set the record straight on key issues facing the group, including its relationship with its longtime label Warner Music Group and the proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger.

Metallica's 2008 release "Death Magnetic" was the last the group contractually owed to Warner, and Ulrich said he's ready to consult with another famously anti-corporate artist, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, about surviving outside the major-label system.

When asked if the band needed a major label, Ulrich, despite being surrounded by Warner reps, didn't mince words. "Without offending any of the good people from the record company in the room, no," Ulrich said. "Let's cut to the chase. . . . The primary -- not the only, but the primary -- function of a record label is to act as a bank. When you're fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don't need to rely on record companies as the banks. . . .

"We're doing a bunch of shows with Trent this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what's on his radar."

Live: Metallica at the Forum

James Hetfield might be the frontman for one of rock’s most formidable entities, but when it comes to stage patter he's a bit of a corn dog. "I have an announcement to make," said the faux-hawked singer and rhythm guitarist Wednesday, commencing the first of his band's two night's at the Forum. "Metallica is alive and well and ready to kick some. . . . " Finishing his thought with a mild expletive, Hetfield sounded more like a bridegroom who'd grabbed the microphone at a wedding reception than like a knight of the Heavy Metal round table. But it didn't matter. At a Metallica concert, actions speak louder than words.

The California band, which razed and reconstructed the edifice of heavy metal in the 1980s only to grow sluggish and surly in the decade following, has returned this year with a strong new album, “Death Magnetic,” and a stated desire to recommit -- to its audience, its trademark "heavy" sound and itself.

This tour, and particularly the shows at L.A.'s iconic arena for hard rock, furthered the band's renewal in several ways. In two hours that relied on no filler beyond Hetfield's amiable admonitions, the four members of Metallica played at top volume with focused ease and strength, right on top of the crowd but in unbreakable communion with one another. The performance made a musical case for the band's new songs by juxtaposing them with favorites from throughout the group's nearly 30-year career, unleashing the powerful exchange of energies that defines Metallica's purpose and its appeal.