Metallica Part 1

07/19/22 • 87 min

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Drummer Lars Ulrich was born into an upper-middle-class family in Gentofte, Denmark, on December 26, 1963. The son of Lone and tennis player Torben Ulrich. In February of 1973, Lars' father obtained passes for five of his friends to check out a Deep Purple (Smoke On the Water) concert held in the same stadium in Copenhagen as one of his tennis tournaments. When one of the dad's friends couldn't go, they gave their ticket to the nine-year-old Lars, who fell in love with the band and ran out and bought their album Fireball the next day. The concert and album greatly impacted Lars, inspiring the start of his music career. He received his first drum kit, a Ludwig, from his grandmother around 12 or 13. Lars initially intended to follow in his father's footsteps and become a badass tennis player, so he moved to Newport Beach, California, in the summer of 1980. Despite being ranked in the top ten tennis players of his age group in Denmark, Lars failed to make it into the seven-man Corona del Mar High School tennis team, solidifying his decision to focus on music.

So, while living in Los Angeles in late 1981, Lars placed an ad in the L.A. newspaper, The Recycler, which read, "Drummer looking for other metal musicians to jam with. Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head and Iron Maiden."

Guitarists James Hetfield and Hugh Tanner of Leather Charm answered the advertisement.

James Alan Hetfield was born on August 3, 1963, in Downey, California, the son of Cynthia Bassett, a light opera singer, and Virgil Lee Hetfield, a truck driver. James was nine years old when he first began piano lessons. He then started jamming on his half-brother David's drums, and finally, at 14, he began to play guitar with Robert Okner. He was also in a few bands as a teenager – one was "Leather Charm" with Hugh Tanner, and another was "Obsession." James said that Aerosmith was his primary musical influence as a child and that they were why he wanted to play guitar. His parents divorced in 1976 when he was 13. They were devout Christian Scientists, and following their beliefs, they strongly disapproved of medicine or any other medical treatment and remained loyal to their faith, even as James' mother, Cynthia, was dying from cancer. This lifestyle inspired many of his lyrics during his career with Metallica. For example, the songs "Dyers Eve" and "The God That Failed" from the albums "...And Justice for All" and "Metallica" touch on those topics. His mother, Cynthia, died of cancer in 1979 when Hetfield was 16 years old. After her death, James went to live with his older half-brother David.

Although he had not formed a band, Lars asked Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel if he could record a song for the label's upcoming compilation album, Metal Massacre. Slagel accepted, and Ulrich recruited Hetfield to sing and play rhythm guitar. Lars and James officially formed the band known as "Metallica" on October 28, 1981, five months after they first met.

A funny story; James' and Lars' first encounter was anything but promising. As Mick Wall wrote in his biography of the band "Enter Night", "neither James nor Hugh had anything good to say about [Lars]. The kid was 'weird' and 'smelled funny' [and] he couldn't even really play drums."

Deeming the entire encounter something of a waste, James later recalled (in Wall's bio) that "we ate McDonald's, he ate herring. [Lars'] father was famous. He was very well off. Spoiled – that's why he's got his mouth. He know what he wants, he goes for it and he's gotten it his whole life."

When asked what Lars remembers about their first meet up, in a Blabbemouth.com interview, he said:

"I remember connecting with him," Lars responded. "I could see that, even though he was painfully shy or whatever, that there were some distinctive similarities. I spent six months talking to people about heavy metal, and they'd mention STYX, JOURNEY, KISS or whatever. I'd talk about ANGEL WITCH, DIAMOND HEAD or TYGERS OF PAN TANG. He had a connection to the music and the things I was throwing out there that seemed a little more authentic or trustworthy. Not much happened during that first meeting because he was kind of the wing man, or the plus one, for a guy named Hugh. If James was sitting here, he'd tell you that the drum kit I showed up with was in such bad shape that every time I hit the cymbal, it kept falling over — which is accurate. Hetfield and I ended up staying in touch, and when I came back from travelling in Europe a few months later, I called him up and said, 'Hey, do you want to play and see what happens?' And he was up for it."

The band name, "Metallica," came from Lars' friend Ron Quintana, who was brainstorming names for a fanzine and was considering MetalMania or Metallica. After hearing the two monikers, Lars wanted Metallica for his band, so he suggested Quintana use Met...

Guitarists James Hetfield and Hugh Tanner of Leather Charm answered the advertisement.

When asked what Lars remembers about their first meet up, in a Blabbemouth.com interview, he said:

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Cyndi Lauper

www.iconsandoutlaws.com

Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper Thornton was born June 22, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York City, right here in the U.S., to Catholic parents, Fred and Catrine. Her mother was from Sicily. She has two siblings, a younger brother Fred (nicknamed Butch), and an older sister, Ellen. Her parents divorced when she was five.

Her earliest childhood days were spent in Brooklyn, but when she was about four years old, the family moved to Ozone Park, Queens, where she lived in a railroad-style apartment through her teenage years. Growing up, Lauper felt like an outcast. She grew up listening to such artists as The Beatles and Judy Garland. Then, at only 12 years old, she began writing songs and playing an acoustic guitar that she got from her sister.

Cyndi was primarily raised by her mother, who worked as a waitress to support the family. Mom loved the arts and frequently took Cyndi and her siblings to Manhattan to see Shakespeare plays or visit art museums. However, Cyndi did not do particularly well in school. She was reportedly kicked out of several parochial schools in her youth. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith, Cyndi Lauper recounted in Boze Hadleigh's "Inside the Hollywood Closet" the time a nun attacked her after catching a nine-year-old Lauper scratching a friend's back: "A nun ran in, ripped me off her back, threw me against the lockers, beat the s**t out of me, and called me a lesbian."

As many kids do, she expressed herself with various hair colors and eccentric clothing. She took a friend's advice to spell her name as "Cyndi" rather than "Cindy." Unfortunately, her" unusual" sense of style led to classmates bullying her and even throwing stones at her.

Lauper went to Richmond Hill High School, where she was expelled but later earned her GED. In her book, Cyndi revealed that after her stepfather threatened to sexually assault her and her sister and then secretly watched her take a bath, she left home for good. Cyndi left Home at 17 to escape her creepy ass stepfather, intending to study art. Her journey took her to Canada, where she spent two weeks in the woods with her dog Sparkle, trying to find herself. She eventually traveled to Vermont, taking art classes at Johnson State College and supporting herself by working odd jobs. Money was sparse, so she waitressed, served as an office assistant, and even sang in a Japanese restaurant for a time. At one point, her boyfriend at the time hunted and shot a squirrel, which she cooked up and ate. Lauper also faced an unplanned pregnancy, which she wanted, but her boyfriend did not. So, Lauper terminated the pregnancy.

"Nobody wants to run in and do that," She later told HuffPost. "It's just that I didn't want to have a kid that I love come into the world and not be able to share the kid with a dad." During this period, Cyndi got around by hitchhiking. Unfortunately, she put herself into close quarters with some potentially crappy individuals, such as the man who gave her a ride and forced her to perform a sexual act on him. "I just wanted to be able to live through it, get to the other side of it." On another occasion, she was assaulted by a bandmate and two accomplices.

Sometimes, it all understandably got too overwhelming for Lauper. "A lot of times I couldn't take it anymore, so I just lay in bed all the time," Lauper wrote. "When I really couldn't deal with anything, I used to get the shakes, just complete anxiety attacks."

In 2019, Lauper gave the commencement address at Northern Vermont University-Johnson, the academic institution that now includes Johnson State. At this event, NVU awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

In the early 1970s, Cyndi performed as a vocalist with several different cover bands. One of those bands, Doc West, covered disco songs and Janis Joplin. A later band, Flyer, was active in the New York metropolitan area, singing songs by bands including Bad Company, Jefferson Airplane, and Logan's favorite, Led Zeppelin. Although She was performing on stage and loving that part, she was not happy singing covers. One night, while singing a cover of Kiki Dee's "I've Got the Music in Me" in 1974, her voice gave out. But it came back shortly after, and Lauper continued to sing in cover bands and a Janis Joplin tribute act. Then, in 1977, Cyndi's pipes said no more. Her voice disappeared again, and doctors discovered that she'd suffered a collapsed vocal cord.

Recommended by her temporary replacement in the Joplin cover band, Lauper sought the help of vocal coach Katie Agresta. She helped heal Cyndi and provided her with the tools and techniques to prevent it from happening again. Agresta also helped her realize that she was singing the wrong music entirely, discovering that she was more suited to pop, not hard rock. As Lauper wrote in her memoir, "[I realized] what I was aching for — to sing...

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