Michael on working with Metallica (1999)

Published on his website - September 23, 1999

Metallica

"I live in both worlds - now so does Metallica.

Combining one of America's most powerful orchestras, the San Francisco Symphony, with the world's most powerful rock band, Metallica, was really about imaging music on top and alongside of their songs.

Conducting a conversation between two different worlds that share the language of music. Creating a dialogue between two worlds that celebrate the power of music.

I began by listening to and absorbing Metallica tunes and really believing that I was a symphony orchestra playing along, listening to the orchestra in my head and writing down what I heard. I reacted to the songs, inventing melodies and counter-melodies that wove themselves around the tunes and adding orchestral color and texture to songs that were already complete!

Rock bands invent their own parts to play. Orchestras rely on a composer and a conductor to tell them exactly when and how and what to play. They will read 'fly specks' on paper if necessary, and add their own expressive skill to each note, making it come alive.

The first contact with the audience was a frightening roar, which terrified the orchestra, more accustomed as they usually are to polite applause. The crowd's reaction was like adrenaline on stage, and we all thrived on it. That kind of approval is inspiring! The event was in a 'formulated' setting with orchestra members in ties and tails, ushers in uniforms, and band members and audience in stage and street gear. The beauty of nearly one hundred musicians - each of whom has dedicated their entire life to perfecting their ability to speak and express themselves through the music and their instrument and playing together - reacting to each other and the music is why the orchestra was originally formed. They play concertos accompanying solo piano or violin at almost every concert, but this was something else, a Brave New World!

As the evening unfolded there was a breaking down of barriers -not only between audience and players, but players and players. The band wandered around the stage and into the sections of the orchestra, orchestra players leapt to their feet, excited to be making music, on the edge of their seats. We were not simply supporting: and certainly not 'sweetening' instead, the symphony actually became the 'fifth Beatle' - a member of Metallica.

After two evenings of sturm and drang – I think the thing that sticks most in my mind was the sheer balance in power between electric and natural instruments. The massiveness of it all was fantastic! I keep returning to Metallica's Rolling Stone quote: 'We don't expect easy listening -the band will match the 100-piece ensemble with full-on amplification - we can still find different ways of getting off. 'When the evening was over, it didn't feel like it was made up of
individual songs - just one very mood provoking storm of sound.

"Imagine taking a very stark black and white picture, thorough and relentless, unpredictable yet hypnotic - as black and white as a piece of music on paper - as driving and powerfully honed as pumping guitars, bass, drums and voice can be, and adding orchestral light and shade, bursts of color, and surprising blocks of sound from all the incredible expressive musical instruments that have been created over hundreds of years to speak and sing our passion, our lives.

They think it was my idea, I think it was theirs!
So thanks to Lars, James, Kirk, Jason (and to me too) and every member of the orchestra for taking it on and making it fly!”

- Michael Kamen
September 23, 1999