Hi, I'm Andrew Arganbright from Iowa PBS and I'm here with Andy Hall, host of
Lazer 103. We're going to be talking about the
upcoming S&M2 the Metallica and San Francisco
Symphony concert that's coming up on Iowa PBS.
How did you initially connect with Metallica?
Well, I've been working in the radio business for over 20 years now
00:26 and when you work in rock radio,
inevitably you get to come across some of your favorite
musicians, and with Metallica it was just a case of right place right time.
My first big break with Metallica was being asked to
host the Master of Puppets box set special back in
October of 2017 and it was a pretty big deal for me at the
time. What special opportunities has this
presented you with Metallica over the years?
Many. Metallica have been really good to me over the years, um,
everything from basic interviews when they're in town. I can always count on
getting at least one member of the band to interview, if not more.
I've been flown out to their HQ facility in San Rafael California a couple of
times.
So they asked me to do the S&M2 radio special, which was syndicated worldwide
to radio stations all over the globe. And of course I'm excited to do it.
It's not my first rodeo certainly but it's
exciting nonetheless to know that people in countries that don't necessarily
speak English, or at least not as their first language,
are going to be listening to this radio special is pretty exciting.
Here in 2020 I couldn't necessarily fly out there like I would
have normally so we had to figure out a way to talk to all four members of the
band and interview them about this S&M2
experience to create this radio special. So I actually did the interviews from
the Lazer studio downtown Des Moines. So I talked to Kirk Hammett first and
then in came James Hetfield. Then Robert Trujillo, their bass player,
and then we finished up with Lars Ulrich. And to be honest, I'm happy we finished
with Lars because Lars and I, once we get started, it's, uh,
each member had pretty much agreed to 15 minutes or so.
Lars and I ended up talking for about 35 minutes.
We had a really good time. I got a lot of really great material from them
and in the end we made a really great radio special to promote the album.
How about telling us any of your favorite Metallica performances
or songs? One of my favorite things that band has ever done,
and believe me, I go back a long ways with Metallica,
was the S&M performance back in 1999, so when they decided to reboot it
last year I was super excited. I'm a huge fan of that combination between
Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Two
worlds colliding and it was just a beautiful sound. I'm a huge fan.
How did this initial collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony,
how did it happen in the first place? Well I think it began with the members
of the band being friendly with Michael Kamen, who
at the time was the maestro of the San Francisco Symphony
Orchestra. I think they struck up a friendship.
For sure with Lars Ulrich who already is a fan of orchestral arrangements and
music. So I think that's where it all started and it became kind of a
running joke for a little while like, “hey we should get together and do something
cool,” and in the end it turned out to be one
of the coolest things Metallica's ever done in my opinion.
Okay, so what should we watch for in this special concert?
One thing Metallica's really great at are creating moments throughout the
course of any of their concerts, but in this one in particular
several moments. I would watch for the Cliff Burton tribute. That was one of the
biggest moments of the show.
Anytime Metallica does a show, they're trying to involve the
audience as much as possible. Audience participation is huge with Metallica.
So anytime the audience sort of picks up where they left off
and sings along like they do at the end of the song the Memory Remains,
it's another really cool moment to watch for in this performance.
So what sets this concert apart from other
Metallica concerts? Yeah, aside from the collaboration with the symphony and the
first time around, they did it in a very small theater in Berkeley
this time around they were actually opening up the Chase Center brand new
arena venue in San Francisco so it was a very San Francisco-centric type of show.
But they did bring in fans from all over the world for this one and
both shows, they did two of them total, were sold out in a matter of seconds, not
minutes. I don't think you ever want to miss a
Metallica performance but particularly when it's something
completely different. And maybe you have no history at all with their original S&M
concert. S&M2 was incredible. If I was a fan of the first
one, I'm a super fan of the second one. And I just think the environment that
they created in this show, and this series of shows,
was unlike anything that they ever did
before. And I think that the 2019 rendition of S&M2
is probably among their best performances of all time.
What's really cool about this is that not
only were there Metallica fans in the audience for S&M2, there were also fans
of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra that may not have any history whatsoever
with heavy metal music. When you bring those two worlds together,
it's really unexplainable how powerful it is. And I
would say that if you're not necessarily a Metallica fan, maybe
you're a classical music fan, give it a shot I think you'll be
pleasantly surprised. Andy, I hear you got a pretty amazing
birthday gift from Metallica. Can you show us?
So, Metallica have always been so good to me and this year
was very special. I happened to celebrate my birthday back on September 23rd
and I was given the heads up that the boys in Metallica wanted to make this
birthday an extra special one for me and said to be looking for a
package in the very near future at the radio station.
So one day I walked in, there was this big box. I thought to myself,
“Did they give me a guitar?” That would have been pretty cool
but then I opened up the box and realized that it wasn't a guitar. The
case was far too small. I thought to myself, “A miniature guitar,
that's an interesting gift.” First was the letter which just said
“Happy birthday from your bros in Metallica,” which I thought was a nice
touch. And then I opened up the case
and I got a special limited edition Metallica S&M2
violin to commemorate the combination of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony
Orchestra. And this one's numbered 20 of 100, so
there are exactly a hundred of these in existence.
Don't miss S&M2 on Iowa PBS on October 30th,
9 p.m. Friday night. Stream this program at the same time
on the Iowa PBS video app or go to iowapbs.org/watch.
Follow Iowa PBS and Lazer social media ahead of this concert special
for more Metallica extras.