Loud magazine's Brendan Crabb recently conducted an interview with British rock n’ roll journalist Mick Wall. In the interview Wall talks about his newly released book, METALLICA: Enter Night - The Biography. Excerpts from the interview are below:

Loud: I’ve been reading the new Metallica biography and what really struck me about it is how meticulously researched and detailed it is. Just how difficult was it to compile a book such as this one?

Wall: "Incredibly difficult. It’s like trying to travel across the desert; you start out with a map and a fair idea of what you need to do. Then you get about halfway through and you think, ‘oh my God, I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what I’m doing, why did I start this?’ (laughs). ‘I’ll never do this again when I finish’. But eventually, you do get there. I think it’s a bit like what people say about having kids. If you knew what was involved, you would probably never do it in the first place. But then once you start, there’s no turning back, you know? Of course it really is not just eventful and sometimes soul destroying, but at the end of it, in the case of a book you do have something to show for it. It took me more than a year to write the damn thing and 25 years to get to the point where I was able to write it. You do these books because you think you know something about it to begin with, but it’s not really until you do a book that actually you know the story at all. So much of it, apart from interviewing people, researching and reading all the other books, going back and revisiting the music and your memories – and I’ve known these guys for more than 25 years. A lot of it is actually just thinking, trying to think clearly. It’s so easy just to repeat the same old guff that other people come up with, including the band. You know, the band have got used to coming up with the same old stuff year in, year out (that) they even believe it. Stuff like, oh, after Cliff (Burton, bass) died, the band carried on because that’s what Cliff would have wanted. You find yourself going to write that, before you suddenly think, ‘hang on a second, is that true?’ And actually, of course it’s not fucking true. The band carried on because that’s what James (Hetfield, vocals/guitars) and Lars (Ulrich, drums) would have wanted. So you have to kind of think, you really have to try and rid yourself of the clutter of all these years of people talking nonsense and giving the band the benefit of the doubt at every turn.

Conversely, even those bits where the people who say they were bad guys, like with Napster. Again, you have to kind of really try and clear away the clutter and see what you actually really think about it. In the case of Napster, there’s no doubt that they were absolute fools to go about that the way they did. I mean, threatening to sue more than 300,000 of their own fans – I mean, how ridiculous can you get? But when you actually research it and look into it, you discover things that people don’t talk about, like the fact that Napster were actually so antagonistic, refused to discuss the thing, insisted on going to court and in fact were even more bolshy about it than Metallica. You discover that at the time they launched that action against Napster, they had recently sued six, seven, eight different people, all of whom were absolutely trying to rip the band off, from people selling Metallica perfume to people selling bootleg albums. So you have to at every turn, you can’t just re-tell the story as it’s been told again and again. You really have to go, ‘actually, let’s pretend this is the first time anybody’s heard this. What really happened?’ So that’s kind of what keeps you going during the months where you think you must be a nutter to have even attempted it (laughs). It’s the fact that you’re trying not just to re-tell the same old crap, you’re re-telling it as far as you can for the first time, you know?

Loud: One of the more intriguing aspects of the book is the investigation of the “alpha male”-driven power struggle between Hetfield and Ulrich, but there’s an intriguing twist on that with respect to Dave Mustaine’s tenure in the band. At one point, Hetfield outright admits that Mustaine “had to go” because he was a threat as a potential band-leader. Is that a part of the story you felt hadn’t been made widely recognised throughout the years?

Mick Wall: “Definitely. Either the kids are too young to even know that Mustaine was in the group, or they know he was in the group, but it wasn’t very significant, he didn’t play on any of the albums. Or you get the kind of MEGADETH devotee who feels that Mustaine was the secret genius of Metallica and they were complete bastards to get rid of him. The fact of the matter is that none of those things are really true. He was undoubtedly a hugely important member of the band while he was there and a fantastic character. I’ve known Dave as long as I’ve known Metallica and he’s never been less than a fascinating character – a tremendous guitar player, a very under-rated songwriter. But the fact of the matter is I think Dave Mustaine doesn’t really get this either; is that if they hadn’t sacked him, if he had stayed with the group, there’s absolutely no guarantee that they would have made it. There’s no guarantee that they would have gone on to be this victory, come-what-may group. I think that had he stayed, bizarrely it would have made them weaker in many ways - less unified and probably more likely that they would have just broken up after a couple of albums. I think that when they fired him they didn’t just do themselves a favour, they were doing Mustaine a huge favour as well. I mean, talk about wake the fuck up, you know? That’s the biggest wake-up call you can get, when people say, ‘actually, you’re a fucking drunk, you’re a pain in the arse, we don’t want you around anymore’. That’s a hell of a message when you’re like 20 years old and on the verge of recording your first album. It finished off Ron McGovney (ex-bassist) and it finished off lots of other people in the business. It didn’t finish Mustaine off and in fact, they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I think it did make him stronger. But he’s still bitter about the whole thing today. I think similarly with Cliff; it was a real Sliding Doors moment. If Cliff hadn’t died, as the book makes clear, Cliff and James were talking about getting rid of Lars at that point and/or just walking out on the band and doing their own thing. But even if that hadn’t happened and somehow they’d kept it together, would they have made the Black Album? I don’t think so. Would they have done Load and Re-Load? I would say absolutely not. So they might have made some better records, because even they will admit Master of Puppets is still the best album they’ve ever made. But would they be where they are now? Which is like… They’re not like IRON MAIDEN or BLACK SABBATH or MEGADETH or SLAYER. You have to put them in the same category as THE ROLLING STONES, LED ZEPPELIN and U2. Like I said, it’s big Sliding Doors moments and I think ultimately it left it in the hands of Lars and James and all those guys had ever really wanted to do was be the biggest fucking band in the world. And they got there, didn’t they?”

To read the entire interview go here.