Biography
The band was founded 1981 by Lars and Jaymz. Lars had putted in a advertisement in a paper called The Recycler. He asked for people to jam with. James started, so did Ron McGovney on bass and Dave Mustaine on lead guitar. The band was operating in Los Angeles.
In the begining they practised in the basement in the house of Ron's parents.
People started to discover Metallica in clubs in LA. There was something special with Metallica, because they played a new way of metal, trash metal. This was new then so people liked it.
After
a while, Ron was replaced by Cliff Burton and Dave Mustaine by Kirk Hammett. The
only thing Cliff wanted, was that the band had to move to San Fransisco, and
since they wanted him ro join so badly, they moved.
As told above, Kirk Hammett joined, and that happened in 1983. They first saw him on a gig in the Bay Area with his former band Exodus. They was so impressed that they spoke with him after the gig, and said they would call him. This was on April the first, so Kirk thought they were kidding, so when they called him, he couldn't believe his own ears. The rest is history.
Their first album got good critics, and their next albums confirmed their position as the best metal band in the world.
In the beginning of the 90's they were more popular than ever. In '91 their 6th album was released, and it sold in over 15 million copies.
Metallica
didn't have a name in the beginning, so they had to find out something. Then one
of Lars' friends, Ron Quintana came up with Metallica. Lars said something else,
and said that it was better, so Ron would forget it. Then he used it for his own
band.
The first song Metallica had on a record was Hit the lights on the album Metal Massacre 1. Also the first recording of Hit the lights was with Lloyd Grant, that never was a real member of the band.
Metallica got a deal with the record company Megaforce in 1983. Megaforce was the record company that released Metallica's 2 first albums in North America, then Elektra took over.
When
Metallica were going to record their first album, they hadn't got a car, so they
stole a U-haul. (Just to make their first meeting!!).
In 1986 they released their 3rd album, Master of puppets.
