Metallica’s first show was on March 14, 1982, at Radio City in Anaheim, California, and the band – consisting of James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Dave Mustaine, and Ron McGovney – played two originals (“Hit The Lights” and “Jump In The Fire”) and six covers, including four Diamond Head songs: “Helpless”, “The Prince”, “Sucking My Love” and “Am I Evil?”. So was it a surprise when Diamond Head founding axe Brian Tatler heard the cover of “Am I Evil?” on the B-Side to “Creeping Death”, the first single which was released from Ride The Lightning in 1984?
“Lots of people have come up to me and said that they got into Diamond Head through Metallica,” says Tatler who BraveWords spoke with recently at the Bangers Open Air in São Paulo while he was performing with Saxon. “Lots, because they heard ‘Am I Evil?’. I knew Metallica covered Diamond Head, because the very first gig that they did they played a bunch of Diamond Head songs. I’ve known Lars since 1981. And I knew that he formed the band Metallica. I knew he was a big fan of Diamond Head. He spent time with me and he spent time with Sean (Harris, singer) in the UK. Then he got in touch with me and said that he wanted to cover ‘Am I Evil?’, and wanted the lyrics. So we did that.. I got the copy of the 12 inch single ‘Creeping Death’, with the cover of ‘Am I Evil?’ and ‘Blitzkrieg’ on the B side.”
BraveWords: I remember buying the picture disc as kid and recently the puzzle.
Tatler: “I don’t own the picture disc, but I’ve seen it. I just saw the Music For Nations copy. Because they were on Music For Nations in the UK. It wasn’t a big deal. To me it was just Lars‘s band, who is a big Diamond Head fan and he covered one of our songs. I can remember listening to it with Sean and we both thought it was a very respectful cover. They worked hard with the solos, the arrangements, it was very powerful and tight. It paid tribute to our version, but it was a bit faster and harder. So as time moves on, I would bump into Lars, and he would invite me to gigs and I’d get up on stage and play ‘Am I Evil?’ with them. I’ve also played ‘Helpless’ with them. Every time Metallica would come to the UK, Lars would hook me up with passes and tickets to their shows. I met Cliff Burton, which not everybody can say, because I was invited to the Birmingham Odeon for the Master Of Puppets tour in 1986. Metallica invited me to play ‘Am I Evil?’ with them that night. And that was the first night I’d met Cliff, James and Kirk. And they were excited to meet me!”
BraveWords: Tell me about the origins of writing that song.
Tatler: “I came up with the riff. I used to put riffs on cassette and we used to rehearse once a week. And I used to play the cassette to Sean and Colin (Kimberley; bass) , the wrist that I came up with the past week . And I remember them both saying oh that’s good. So if we went, we had that riff section. It’s the same riff that actually gets repeated over and over. Sean is singing a verse bridge chorus over the same riff, but the drum pattern changes. And the key changes. It just works. It’s a great chorus, great lyric. Very extreme for 1980.”
BraveWords: Tell me about the lyrics.
Tatler: “Sean wrote the lyrics… ‘My mother was a witch, and she was burned alive.’ It was great. So it was quite extreme for the time. I don’t think we thought that we had a winner, though. Because we had ‘Sucking My Love’, ‘Helpless’, ‘The Prince’. We thought that they were all great. We didn’t signal out one in particular. But back to the song. We added that fast section, that gallop. It had a ‘Children Of The Grave’, kind of feel and then at one point I added the intro. I probably borrowed a couple of different things. Like the chorus from Alice Cooper’s ’School’s Out’. The drum moment. It was also a bit like ‘Child In Time’ from Deep Purple. So we pinched bits from different songs. It took about a year to write that song. The last thing we wrote was the guitar solo. We had gone into the studio and I had a solo, but I wasn’t happy with it. I remember playing it for the engineer and he said that I needed to move the chords underneath. That tapping bit. So we quickly worked that out and it was finally finished then. I felt at last it’s finally finished. And once we recorded it, it was done. We stopped messing with it. Adding to it. We could leave it alone so it could rest. And we could move onto the next song.”
BraveWords: How did it feel when the Big Four performed it in 2010 in Sofia, Bulgaria?
Tatler: “I didn’t expect that. I was completely surprised. I can’t remember how I found out, but somebody must’ve said they were gonna cover it. And I thought, from all the rock songs that you could cover why would you choose ‘Am I Evil?’. There are thousands that they could’ve done. Like ‘Livin’ After Midnight’. Or a Black Sabbath song. But it’s not difficult to play. It was a good choice. So I was flattered. It was a huge crowd in Bulgaria. They probably had a little rehearsal where they chose all their parts.”
BraveWords: But all these guys know this song like the back of their hand.
Tatler: “Yeah, but I played with Metallica a lot of times. Five or six times over the years. We went to the 30th anniversary in San Francisco in 2011, Sean and I, and we did all four Diamond Head songs: ‘Am I Evil’, ‘Helpless’, ‘The Prince’ and ‘It’s Electric’.
BraveWords: When I was a kid in high school buying Kill ‘Em All as a new release. I never thought that 40-plus years later they would be the biggest band on the planet.
Tatler: “No idea and that first album was done pretty cheaply. Music For Nations were not a big company. Same with Megaforce Records. So they wouldn’t have had a huge budget to spend on that record. And then it takes off. And then you got Ride The Lightning then Master Of Puppets. And I remember reading when Master Of Puppets had sold 1 million copies, and I started thinking they are much bigger than Diamond Head ever were. How has this happened. And they also got the Ozzy gig on that tour. It’s a fascinating story. To see a band go from nothing. Because they were nothing. They didn’t have any helping hands.”
BraveWords: They had the Zazulas, Brian Slagel and a few others.
Tatler: “That’s it, that’s all. I’ve ticked bands that I thought we’re going to be big and got it wrong. But I wouldn’t. I would not have predicted Metallica to be so big.”
BraveWords: Was there any band that you predicted right?
Tatler: “No, I’ve only predicted bands that didn’t make it (laughs). One of the things that Metallica has is that Lars is a very savvy businessman. Very much in charge. But he moves everything along. He has so much energy. And vision that he can push it forward.”
(Photo credits: Mark Gromen, James Garvin)
The post DIAMOND HEAD Guitarist Brian Tatler Says “Am I Evil?” Was “Very Extreme For 1980, But I Didn’t Think We Thought That We Had A Winner, Though” appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
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“Lots of people have come up to me and said that they got into Diamond Head through Metallica,” says Tatler who BraveWords spoke with recently at the Bangers Open Air in São Paulo while he was performing with Saxon. “Lots, because they heard ‘Am I Evil?’. I knew Metallica covered Diamond Head, because the very first gig that they did they played a bunch of Diamond Head songs. I’ve known Lars since 1981. And I knew that he formed the band Metallica. I knew he was a big fan of Diamond Head. He spent time with me and he spent time with Sean (Harris, singer) in the UK. Then he got in touch with me and said that he wanted to cover ‘Am I Evil?’, and wanted the lyrics. So we did that.. I got the copy of the 12 inch single ‘Creeping Death’, with the cover of ‘Am I Evil?’ and ‘Blitzkrieg’ on the B side.”
BraveWords: I remember buying the picture disc as kid and recently the puzzle.
Tatler: “I don’t own the picture disc, but I’ve seen it. I just saw the Music For Nations copy. Because they were on Music For Nations in the UK. It wasn’t a big deal. To me it was just Lars‘s band, who is a big Diamond Head fan and he covered one of our songs. I can remember listening to it with Sean and we both thought it was a very respectful cover. They worked hard with the solos, the arrangements, it was very powerful and tight. It paid tribute to our version, but it was a bit faster and harder. So as time moves on, I would bump into Lars, and he would invite me to gigs and I’d get up on stage and play ‘Am I Evil?’ with them. I’ve also played ‘Helpless’ with them. Every time Metallica would come to the UK, Lars would hook me up with passes and tickets to their shows. I met Cliff Burton, which not everybody can say, because I was invited to the Birmingham Odeon for the Master Of Puppets tour in 1986. Metallica invited me to play ‘Am I Evil?’ with them that night. And that was the first night I’d met Cliff, James and Kirk. And they were excited to meet me!”
BraveWords: Tell me about the origins of writing that song.
Tatler: “I came up with the riff. I used to put riffs on cassette and we used to rehearse once a week. And I used to play the cassette to Sean and Colin (Kimberley; bass) , the wrist that I came up with the past week . And I remember them both saying oh that’s good. So if we went, we had that riff section. It’s the same riff that actually gets repeated over and over. Sean is singing a verse bridge chorus over the same riff, but the drum pattern changes. And the key changes. It just works. It’s a great chorus, great lyric. Very extreme for 1980.”
Tatler: “Sean wrote the lyrics… ‘My mother was a witch, and she was burned alive.’ It was great. So it was quite extreme for the time. I don’t think we thought that we had a winner, though. Because we had ‘Sucking My Love’, ‘Helpless’, ‘The Prince’. We thought that they were all great. We didn’t signal out one in particular. But back to the song. We added that fast section, that gallop. It had a ‘Children Of The Grave’, kind of feel and then at one point I added the intro. I probably borrowed a couple of different things. Like the chorus from Alice Cooper’s ’School’s Out’. The drum moment. It was also a bit like ‘Child In Time’ from Deep Purple. So we pinched bits from different songs. It took about a year to write that song. The last thing we wrote was the guitar solo. We had gone into the studio and I had a solo, but I wasn’t happy with it. I remember playing it for the engineer and he said that I needed to move the chords underneath. That tapping bit. So we quickly worked that out and it was finally finished then. I felt at last it’s finally finished. And once we recorded it, it was done. We stopped messing with it. Adding to it. We could leave it alone so it could rest. And we could move onto the next song.”
BraveWords: How did it feel when the Big Four performed it in 2010 in Sofia, Bulgaria?
Tatler: “I didn’t expect that. I was completely surprised. I can’t remember how I found out, but somebody must’ve said they were gonna cover it. And I thought, from all the rock songs that you could cover why would you choose ‘Am I Evil?’. There are thousands that they could’ve done. Like ‘Livin’ After Midnight’. Or a Black Sabbath song. But it’s not difficult to play. It was a good choice. So I was flattered. It was a huge crowd in Bulgaria. They probably had a little rehearsal where they chose all their parts.”
BraveWords: But all these guys know this song like the back of their hand.
Tatler: “Yeah, but I played with Metallica a lot of times. Five or six times over the years. We went to the 30th anniversary in San Francisco in 2011, Sean and I, and we did all four Diamond Head songs: ‘Am I Evil’, ‘Helpless’, ‘The Prince’ and ‘It’s Electric’.
BraveWords: When I was a kid in high school buying Kill ‘Em All as a new release. I never thought that 40-plus years later they would be the biggest band on the planet.
Tatler: “No idea and that first album was done pretty cheaply. Music For Nations were not a big company. Same with Megaforce Records. So they wouldn’t have had a huge budget to spend on that record. And then it takes off. And then you got Ride The Lightning then Master Of Puppets. And I remember reading when Master Of Puppets had sold 1 million copies, and I started thinking they are much bigger than Diamond Head ever were. How has this happened. And they also got the Ozzy gig on that tour. It’s a fascinating story. To see a band go from nothing. Because they were nothing. They didn’t have any helping hands.”
BraveWords: They had the Zazulas, Brian Slagel and a few others.
Tatler: “That’s it, that’s all. I’ve ticked bands that I thought we’re going to be big and got it wrong. But I wouldn’t. I would not have predicted Metallica to be so big.”
BraveWords: Was there any band that you predicted right?
Tatler: “No, I’ve only predicted bands that didn’t make it (laughs). One of the things that Metallica has is that Lars is a very savvy businessman. Very much in charge. But he moves everything along. He has so much energy. And vision that he can push it forward.”
(Photo credits: Mark Gromen, James Garvin)
The post DIAMOND HEAD Guitarist Brian Tatler Says “Am I Evil?” Was “Very Extreme For 1980, But I Didn’t Think We Thought That We Had A Winner, Though” appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
Continue reading...