It’s no secret that James Hetfield didn’t feel entirely comfortable fronting Metallica during the band’s formative years.
Famously, before recording Kill ‘Em All, their 1983 debut album, Hetfield and Lars Ulrich asked their new manager, and Megaforce Records label boss Jon Zazula (aka Jonny Z) to sound out Armored Saint frontman John Bush to see if he might be interested in becoming their lead singer, but the Los Angeles-born vocalist politely declined the offer. Prior to that, the group had rehearsed a couple of times with Sammy DeJohn from local band Ruthless on vocals, and – at least according to an interview he gave to Metal Forces magazine in 1985 – even briefly viewed Dave Mustaine as an option: “I was singing along to to one of our tapes,” Mustaine recalled, “and Lars said, ‘Man, fuck, you’d be a great frontman, have you ever thought about singing?’ and this kinda shit. I said, Yeah, maybe, but that’s about as far as it went.”
By the end of 1983, however, having raised their game with the recruitment of Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammett, Metallica had also elevated their songwriting: on Halloween 1983, the quartet played a gig at The Keystone club in Palo Alto at which four new songs – Fight Fire with Fire, Ride The Lightning, Call of Ktulu (then titled When Hell Freezes Over), and Creeping Death – were debuted, all four songs illustrating that the band were fast outgrowing their original template. Once again, Hetfield and Ulrich felt that their best interests might be served by allowing Hetfield to focus on his guitar playing, and recruiting a ‘proper’ frontman.
With that in mind, Ulrich got in touch with his contacts at Kerrang!, then the world’s biggest heavy metal magazine, to place a ‘situation vacation’ style call-out to prospective singers for the group. Readers picking up the December 29, 1983 would have seen the following:
“Metallica are on the look-out for a raw, rowdy ‘n’ gutsy frontman. Prospective lead vocalist (American or European) should send a tape and photo to the band”.
The address listed on the ad was the Roseburg, Oregon home of the quartet’s friend K.J. Doughton, who at the time, ran Metallica’s first fan club. Another close friend, Brian Lew – author of the excellent thrash scene biography Murder in the Front Row: Bay Area Bangers and the Birth of Thrash Metal – recalls that Doughton was inundated with cassettes from far and wild. But clearly, nothing truly connected.
“We’ve probably auditioned over 50 vocalists and listened to hundreds of demos from others, but we still haven’t found anyone to fit in with what we were doing,” a frustrated Lars Ulrich told Metal Forces fanzine writer Bernard Doe in early 1984. By the time the quartet headed to Ulrich’s hometown, Copenhagen, to begin recording Ride The Lightning with Flemming Rasmussen in February 1984, all serious thoughts of drafting in a new man had been abandoned forever.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.loudersound.com ’
