Free Metallica: Enter Night by Mick Wall Page A

doing a few pieces on the local LA scene for Sounds . He was also now doing some work with local radio station KMET – an album-oriented rock station known to its many listeners as The Mighty Met – supplying records via the store for a weekly metal show hosted by DJ Jim Ladd (soon to be famous as the ‘fictional DJ’ on Roger Waters’ 1987 Radio K.A.O.S . album and tour, among many other notable cameos he has made on disc and film over the years). The fact that Lars also ‘lived so far away’ meant Slagel ‘didn’t really see him as often’ any more. All that was about to change, however, when Brian had the idea of putting out his own independently produced compilation album, tentatively titled The New Heavy Metal Revue Presents…Metal Massacre . Inspired by the earlier Metal for Muthas , ‘What really motivated me,’ he says now, ‘was the fact that there were actually some good bands playing in LA and nobody knew or cared that they existed.’ Bands like another of his faves from those days called Exciter, featuring George Lynch on guitar, who would later find fame with the band Dokken. ‘I just loved that band,’ says Slagel, ‘and nothing ever happened with them – because nobody cared. That really bummed me out.’
    A couple of years down the line, seeing the next generation of LA club bands like Mötley Crüe and Ratt, Slagel decided to do something about it. He went to some of the importers he worked with, the guys supplying records for the shop’s loyal metal clientele, and told them: ‘Hey, if I put together a compilation of local LA metal bands would you guys sell it? And they all said, “Sure.” All motivated by what happened with the NWOBHM scene, Metal for Muthas and those sorts of compilations. I thought it would be a cool thing to try and put something like that together for here in LA.’ At high school Slagel had worked part-time at Sears, a commission job selling typewriters and cameras, from which he’d been able to save a little money to ‘go to college at some point’. Now he put every penny of those savings into the Metal Massacre album, along with $800 borrowed from a kindly aunt, plus a little from his mother. John Kornarens also put in what he could, in exchange for ‘assistant producer’ credit. All the bands had to do was volunteer their music. Says Slagel, ‘I just went to all the bands and said if you can record something I can put this compilation album out, and they all said, “Sure, why not?” It was kind of the only exposure they were gonna get, you know?’ Even then, ‘I was barely able to scrape enough money to press twenty-five hundred copies.’ The 2,500 albums would cost him ‘a little over a dollar a unit, so maybe three or four thousand dollars total’. At a time when regular albums sold for $7.99 in normal stores, Metal Massacre would retail for just $5.50. ‘They probably cost about a dollar-fifty to make, then probably another fifty cents on top for shipping, then maybe we got three bucks, maybe $3.50 for them, then we had to pay the bands a little bit. So really it wasn’t a money-making venture. I didn’t really care about that. I just wanted to get exposure for all these bands in LA. I didn’t even think about starting a label or anything, this was more an offshoot of the magazine.’
    With all the deals done with the bands ‘on a handshake deal because we had no money to pay for a lawyer or anything’, nothing was put into writing until a recently graduated lawyer named William Berrolm, who happened to have an office on the floor above Oz Records, offered to help Slagel draw up contracts for a cut rate $10 an hour. ‘I thought I could probably afford that, maybe. So he ended up doing some contracts and we went back to the bands to get them to sign off on something. He’s still our lawyer today,’ Slagel adds. (Berrolm would go on to represent artists of the stature of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Garbage, Nirvana producer Butch Vig and ‘a ton