Metallica's former therapist Phil Towle recently guested on the Speak N' Destroy podcast, which is dedicated to all things Metallica. Towle, who was was brought in January 2001 as a "performance coach", discusses his realtionship with the band and the events surrounding his being brought into the Metallica camp. Fans got to know Towle through the Metallica 2004 documentary, Some Kind Of Monster.

Towle: "I have such deep love and respect for the band, the guys and their families. I mean, they're just amazing human beings; every bit as sharp and as wonderful as you would imagine them to be, with their own personalities. The memories of that experience, when somebody asks me, I know how important it is for the fans who are so dedicated, because they've been so moved by Metallica. There's such a loving admiration for them. That just reinforces the force of love and how important that is. To see them at end of a concert, arms around each other, that's what it's all about. So the fans feel that. The music lives on because of the relationship between the fans and the passion about what Metallica does with them and for them, and Metallica's appreciation for the fans." 

Metallica's Some Kind Of Monster documentary, released in 2004, took an intimate look at the turbulent inner workings of the band over a three year period. It won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2005 and was re-released by Metallica, including a bonus documentary, in 2014 to celebrate its 10th anniversary.

Co-director / co-producer Joe Berlinger recently spoke with Tom Cridland for the Greatest Music Of All Time podcast and looked back on the making of the documentary. Watch the clip below. Check out the complete interview here.

On the initial screening of the film for the band members

Berlinger: "Each band member is in a different corner of this big screening room, and the management is kind of up in the back, huddled in the back. The movie was ultimately, two hours and 20 minutes; this was probably a three-hour-15-minute rough cut because we wanted everything in there. We knew we had more editing to do, but we wanted to know if any scenes were gonna trouble them. We were basically looking for their blessing, which is a very precarious position for a filmmaker to be in. So, the movie plays... literally not a peep through the whole screening. Not a laugh, not a moment of recognition, just total silence. And it wasn't feeling good."

On discussions with the band and management about what needed to be changed following the screening

Berlinger: "It went from a conversation where literally every scene was either going to be changed or put on the chopping block to, 'You know what? We're not gonna ask for any changes. Make the film you wanna make and we're happy with it.' They asked for zero changes. So, there's nothing on the cutting room floor that was taken out because they requested it. It is truly our film (created with Bruce Sinofsky), and that was a magic moment of going full circle and James (Hetfield) realizing that: 'Let's put it out there.'"