BEFORE: Just two films left to go after tonight, and I think I can safely say which music stars have appeared in the most films. The clear winner is Paul McCartney, with 18 appearances (either being interviewed, performing in concert or just in archive footage). He was in just about 1/3 of the films, and it turns out you almost can't make a rock music documentary without at least referencing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. In second place is John Lennon, with 14 appearances, and Ringo Starr with the same number. In third place is Mick Jagger with 13 appearances, and George Harrison and Keith Richards are tied for 4th place with 12. I'll take all this into consideration at the end of the year when I do my round-up, but these guys are all going to be near the top of the charts, fittingly enough.
Robert Trujillo carries over from "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne".
THE PLOT: A documentary crew followed Metallica for the better part of 2001-2003, a time of tension and release, as they recorded their album St. Anger, fought bitterly and sought the counsel of their on-call shrink.
AFTER: This is a case where the documentary filmmakers set out to make one kind of movie, and then the situation changed, and they had to roll with the punches and make a different kind of movie. They had a deal to follow around the band through the production of their next album, and then the band opted for therapy to deal with some long-standing issues, plus one band member went into rehab, so that not only slowed down the album and the film, it meant the whole process went kind of sideways. But then they all came out the other end with the album, the film, and a new attitude - and a new bass player.
Much of this I've seen before over the course of the Rockumentary chain - band gets famous, gets rich, gets drunk and stoned, and at some point those creative juices start drying up, but there's all kinds of pressure from the record company and from within the band to make a new album, get back out on tour, and start feeding the machine again. Because it's never enough, really - even for THE biggest band of the 1990's, they apparently couldn't just say "OK, we each have a few million, we're in a good place, so let's just, umm, stop." That's just not how this crazy thing works.
Even when the band seemed to be down to just three members, then two during Hetfield's rehab, it feels like nobody seriously considered calling it a day, because they all believe in the collective, that somehow the collective is bigger than the individuals that comprise it, and instead they decide to work toward some new form of balance, where the collective still exists, but each individual member has an equal share in the creative process, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, or whatever new-agey psycho-babble they can come up with to justify their actions, as long as it results in more money down the road and keeping the crazy train on the tracks. So they hire a band therapist at an enormous monthly fee, and spend time sitting in a room talking about their feelings and learning better ways to communicate with each other.
This is so not metal - and part of me agrees with their bassist, Jason Newsted, who found the therapy sessions "lame" and chose not to participate if this is the way the band was going to be, going forward. Hey, some people just aren't ready for therapy, can't sit in a room and be vulnerable - or maybe he just wanted to keep rocking out, which is what he signed up for in the first place. But this also makes you wonder, would other bands have stayed together longer if they had thought to go to some form of therapy or counseling together? Would the Beatles not have fought so much during the "Let It Be" sessions if they had a therapist on the payroll? Would the Eagles not have broken up in 1980 if Glenn Frey and Don Felder had found better ways to channel their anger and work together?
Would Ozzy still be Ozzy if he had gone into rehab sooner? Would anyone from the "27 Club" still be around if they'd seriously considered getting clean and sober?
Look, any band is going to have a few people who are just more creative, or better at songwriting, than the others. The Beatles had Lennon and McCartney, two genius songwriters, so the path was clear, they'd bounce song ideas off each other, and through collaboration and friendly competition, they'd usually land on a hit song. George Harrison developed those skills later, so by their last few albums, he was really on a roll, while Lennon and McCartney were writing songs individually, but still sharing credits. So even over the course of just a few years, those roles are going to shift or change - Glenn Frey and Don Henley are another great example, together they wrote most of the Eagles songs, but not all. But an imbalance is created when one or two people write the majority of the songs, and then you've got your Harrison or your Don Felder who feel like their song contributions are not being considered, or are somehow being diminished. There might be no "I" in "team" but there's definitely one in "I wrote this song, why isn't it being considered for our album?"
Things get more complicated when you then throw relationships and family into the mix. Can a band member be committed to his music and also have a wife and kids? And then even if he finds that proper balance, what then happens when he goes out on tour? What happens to the kids when Daddy's on the road for months at a time? Can he bring the wife and kids along, but then what does THAT do to the band? What about staying faithful and/or sober while on the road? The very nature of touring is a virtual minefield of problems, but then not touring creates a different set of problems. I think I'm ready to conclude that most people would be better off not becoming famous rock stars in the first place - but for some people that just doesn't seem to be an option.
I do believe in therapy, it was very helpful to me for a couple years after I got divorced, to help me sort out whatever doubts were in my brain about the nature of the world and how I needed to approach the next chapter in my life - but one of the hardest things about it is knowing when to end it. And if you don't, that's fine too, as long as you're still getting something out of it that's equal to or greater than what you're putting into it. Once I'd sorted myself out, I realized that the therapist was never going to tell me I was "cured", or perhaps that wasn't even the right term, that he sort of had a vested interest in keeping the sessions going, not letting anything completely resolve, and that the decision to end the sessions had to come from me, if I had the strength and the determination to carry on without them. So that's what I did.
I feel I should point out that when I started this chain, I saw that I could use this film as a link to get to the end, but I didn't have a copy, and it was NOT available on Netflix. OK, fine, my wife said she probably had a copy somewhere (though she couldn't put her hand on it at the moment) and anyway, there was always iTunes, I was already planning to watch 5 or 6 films via iTunes, so what's one more? But then Netflix ADDED this doc to their service when I was about a week in to the chain - now that's some quality service. So I didn't have to pay an extra fee to complete my plans.
However, they're running it as a "series" of two episodes - Episode 1 is the original film, and Episode 2 is a 26-minute "update" set 10 years after the original doc's release. I happen to know that Netflix is trying to turn everything into a "series", like if you pitch them a feature, their development team may ask you how they can make a series out of it. But two episodes does not a series make, and there's really nothing new in Episode 2, except some bits about Metallica's next film "Through the Never", which is a completely different animal. Other than that, it's just a re-hash of what was seen in Episode 1, so it can easily be avoided. Unless you like hearing people talk about their thoughts on what it means to make a movie about people talking about their thoughts on what it means to make an album. That's way too meta for me.
Also starring Kirk Hammett (last seen in "Lemmy"), James Hetfield (ditto), Lars Ulrich (ditto), Jason Newsted (ditto), Pepper Keenan (ditto), Dave Mustaine (last seen in "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"), Bob Rock, Phil Towle, Eric Avery, Mike Inez, Danny Lohner, Scott Reeder, Jeordie White (aka Twiggy Ramirez), Chris Wyse, Cliff Burnstein, Peter Mensch, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, Dylan Donkin, Brian Sagrafena, Zach Harmon, Peter Paterno, Steven Wiig (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn").
RATING: 5 out of 10 rejected album titles
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