PhilTowle

Companies on the couch

Financial Times

Headcount: Gillian Lock says the emotions that come out in sessions between colleagues can be ‘incredibly strong’

 

Simon*, a 42-year-old graphic designer, recently undertook some sessions of group and individual therapy. These were not his own idea but his company’s – which also paid for the sessions.

The therapy was triggered by a crisis in the relationship between the firm’s co-founders. They were originally friends rather than colleagues but their working partnership had come under strain as their business expanded. So they decided to undergo couples’ therapy to heal their relationship, then arranged for senior executives such as Simon to see the same therapist to repair any fallout from their own problems.

“In the short term there were more tensions and insecurities because things came out, people felt vulnerable and it was a bit confusing,” Simon says. “It felt like the foundation of our workplace was no longer stable.”

 

However, he says, the company therapy proved invaluable in the long term. “After the earthquake, we let the mud settle and things went much better – it was a positive experience. For me, it was a good chance to say things with the help of a mediator in front of my bosses.”

 

Gillian Lock, a north London integrative psychotherapist, has worked with businesses such as Simon’s in sectors ranging from construction to television. “My role is to hold a mirror up to people so they can see what kind of an impact they are having on others in an organization,” she says.

The softly spoken Princeton University graduate believes an earlier career as an architect enables her to bridge the worlds of therapy and business. “I have experience of running a company, I know what it’s like.”

Before training to be a therapist 15 years ago, a move fueled by her desire to find a career that fitted in with her young family, Ms Lock was a director at design company BDG McColl, part of media group WPP. Before that she worked for Mace, the construction company. “Psychotherapy, like architecture, is an art and a science. You have to not be precious about your ideas, you have to be prepared to rethink it and pull it apart,” she says.

A small but growing part of her work, which includes marriage guidance, therapy for individuals and business coaching, is couples counseling for business partners. “In the workplace there can be personality clashes – you don’t just bring your work persona to work but your whole background,” she says.

Bringing in a therapist can help illuminate some of the psychological problems behind problematic behavior at work. “Sometimes there is friction between partners and they don’t understand where it’s coming from.”

As with a marriage, the business couple’s arrival at the small, book-lined office behind her house is usually triggered by a crisis. And also as with a marriage, her role is not to compel the couple to stick together; a good result might be to help them split up. She is keen to point out that therapists are not there to give advice, but to help people set goals and discover the impact of their behaviour on others – “how it makes the other person feel”.

She cites the example of one partnership that had founded a public relations company. The pair said they wanted to stay together but couldn’t work out how. One of the biggest problems was that one of the partners believed the other was preventing him from taking on a more creative role. “As we started to unpick it, we tried to look at why [he had allowed himself] to get stuck in this role. Why [was he] not taking responsibility?”

The dominant partner’s fear of being blamed proved to be unfounded. The partnership continued and, as a result of the changed roles, both were energized and the business thrived.

There is little difference, Ms Lock says, between couples therapy and working with business partners. “I say you have to be as honest as you feel you can be. You need to try to represent the information in as kind a way as possible.” Nonetheless, she adds, she is trained “to hold difficult feelings”.

And the emotions that come out of such sessions can be incredibly strong. One of the most memorable scenes in Some Kind of Monster (below), the 2004 documentary about the US heavy metal band Metallica as it undergoes group therapy, is a confrontation between singer James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich.

 

Best friends for more than two decades, the two are forced to address their ongoing power struggle. At one point, Mr Ulrich finally admits he resents Mr Hetfield’s desire to control everything. “I just think you are so self-absorbed,” he says, pacing the studio kitchen. “You tell me I’m controlling, I think you’re controlling. You control . . . even when you’re not here.”

 

Before long, the mild-mannered stream of consciousness descends into a physical confrontation as Mr Ulrich’s quiet curses gather momentum, reaching a roar of swearing.Over two-and-a-half years of daily sessions the rock group – once labelled “Alcoholica” – became immersed in therapeutic language. Their leather outfits and sticky-up hair were in stark contrast to the pastel sweaters of Phil Towle, the counsellor brought in for a reported $40,000 a month by the group’s management. According to Mr Ulrich, it was worth it. “Because of Phil, we have the best relationship we’ve ever had,” he declared in a testimonial on Mr Towle’s website.

But does therapy always work? Simon believes it will not work in all companies (or even rock groups). His own experience was good because his workplace’s culture encouraged empathy. “There was already a certain amount of regard for people’s personal lives in the office,” he says. “It is a very human company.”

Nevertheless, he says, even in his business one colleague was extremely hostile to it: “She thought it was a complete waste of time.”

It is a point Ms Lock concedes, saying that many industries are macho and resistant to touchy-feely language. Consequently, she does not always call her work “therapy”. She is, however, optimistic about therapy’s future in the workplace, despite the downturn. In part this is because there is an increasing number of therapists chasing individual clients but it is also the result of corporate culture becoming more amenable to services that improve employee well-being and productivity. “We can help a company get its energy back, which is important in times of recession,” she says.

 

*Not his real name

 

emma.jacobs@ft.com

 

 

 

The Doctor Dishes

Psychology Today

from Psychology Today issue dated 2004-10-13

What's the music really about? Phil Towle, the performance enhancement coach who "saved" Metallica, probes the struggling youth in every hard-core rocker.

PT: James lost his only parent at 16 and felt abandoned. Lars came from a comfortable background, but he needed to control the future. Kirk was a mediator in a family of strife. They seem to have carried their childhood roles into their adult lives. Is this the essential story in all of our lives: that the roles we develop at age 12 or 16 don't work forever?

Phil Towle: Yes. That's why we can relate to "Some Kind of Monster" and to that human struggle.

The band is a family system, dysfunctional as others can be, but with great attachments. When the calibration was off, they were aware that something was wrong. They just didn't know what to do. Their last couple of albums were not as good as they wanted them to be.

They would each attack the other. The more intense the conflict gets in any relationship, the closer you are to wanting to resolve something. The degree of conflict simply signals that you desperately want to do something about it, but are still committed to the old unhealthy ways of dealing with it. You either fragment or find some way to come together. They were ready for somebody to come in.

PT: These are poster boys of rage, yet even they found they have to look inside the rage.

Phil: Rage is the highest degree of fear of not being able to connect with another human being. Lars and James formed this group out of nothing. They couldn't have done it without the love that they felt. Their songs all express pain about unrequited love. Adults get scared by this kind of music because they don't understand. The music is in your face forcing you to listen--"I understand you, goddamn it." Parents should be helping their kids listen to this kind of music.

PT: In the course of your work with Metallica, did you hear the music change in any way?

Phil: The music never lost its edge or passion; it just shifted from more of a fear base to a love base. And it is still shifting. The second and third albums will be better. These are individuals whose histories do not reflect ease of togetherness or trust and love. That's why they're so authentic in their ability to tap into the world of the disenfranchised.

PT: But who has had a childhood that makes it easy to trust and to love?

Phil: Nobody. That's why we can all relate.

Romo Tries to Start Over

Ryan Thorburn-Camera Sports Writer

Romo Tries to Start Over

Ryan Thorburn-Camera Sports Writer

May 20, 2005

Bill Romanowski entered the room ready to talk about life after football. A Hollywood ending.

The former Denver Broncos linebacker didn`t really want to pack all of the extra baggage he carried during a 16-year NFL career to the interview - there weren`t enough bell men on staff at the meeting spot in a LoDo hotel, anyway - so instead Romanowski brought his psychotherapist.

Check that, performance-enhancement coach.

Hello, I`m Phil Towle, the popular and expensive celebrity mental guru said. Do you mind if I sit in?

Why not? After all, Towle certainly made the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster unforgettable as the band paid him a reported $40,000 a month to save the legendary hard rock act from sinking to rock bottom. He also helped the always-emotional Dick Vermeil get over some mental hurdles in 2000 when the longtime head coach guided the St. Louis Rams to victory in the Super Bowl.

There are many who view Romanowski as some kind of monster. He certainly made other players, even some on his own team, fear him. And he gave fans, even in Denver, plenty of reasons to hate him.

Playing for the Raiders was a special time, Romanowski said with a smile. He was cut by Mike Shanahan after the 2001 season and signed with rival Oakland. It came at a time where I needed something to fuel me, a new challenge, something to get back at the Broncos for. It was perfect.

Perfect? Nothing is perfect, right Dr. Phil?

Not that I have any problems with the Broncos, Romanowski continued. Denver is home to me; that`s how I consider Denver. ... It seems like (Broncos fans) have forgiven me.

There is much to forgive. Romanowski`s controversial career included a laundry list of incidents that seemed to get more disturbing over the years, including:

Leveling the legendary Jerry Rice during a non-contact drill at a San Francisco 49ers training camp in the 1980s.

Breaking then-Carolina quarterback Kerry Collins` jaw during an exhibition game with the Broncos in 1997.

Spitting in the face of 49ers wide receiver J.J. Stokes during a Monday Night Football telecast in 1997.

Being tried and eventually acquitted by a jury in 2001 on charges of obtaining illegal prescriptions (written for his wife and two other people) for diet pills, which investigators said he used to enhance his play during the Broncos` 1998 Super Bowl season.

Fracturing the left eye socket of Raiders teammate Marcus Williams, who was awarded $340,000 in damages from a jury, during a training camp fight in Oakland before the 2003 season.

Testing positive for the steroid THG in 2003, which led to him testifying before a federal grand jury in 2004 during the investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

Sounds like Towle has his work cut out for him as Romanowski - who was released by the Raiders after failing a physical last spring - attempts to move on.

It was like I had a new life, Romanowski said of finally taking a deep breath with the realization that he had played his last down of professional football. For so long, in pushing myself the way I did ... the fatigue was so great that I found myself being more reserved to where I didn`t have a lot of energy to put toward relationships and talking to people. I`d get home at night and I didn`t have a lot left for my wife and kids. I find now that it`s something that I really enjoy is getting to know people, getting to know my family again on a much deeper level.

This new Romanowski, believe it or not, is a member of the Screen Actors Guild. His first role was a relatively big one, playing the character Guard Lambert in the remake of the 1974 classic The Longest Yard, which opens next Friday. He has already acted in a second film that has been shot, Bench Warmers, another Adam Sandler project.

Robert De Niro and Tom Cruise certainly don`t have anything to worry about, but Romanowski says he is approaching acting as seriously as he did football.

It came at a perfect time, because when I would have been getting ready to put cleats on and a helmet and shoulder pads, I was putting them on for a movie. And in some ways I was doing a lot of the same stuff that I did out on the football field, Romanowski said. Now I was just going against actors and arena football guys and comedians and different people. But I tried to take that same intensity, that same work ethic, that same desire to be the best, I tried to bring that to the set each and every day.

Former Dallas Cowboys star Michael Irvin is also in the film, as are professional wrestlers Bill Goldberg and Steve Austin. But the person Romo was naturally drawn to was Brian Bosworth, the flamboyant former All-American linebacker from Oklahoma whose NFL career was cut short due to injuries.

The Boz and Romo. Sounds like a violent buddy picture.

Every part of who he was was wrapped up in football. And that was his identity, Romanowski said of Bosworth, who has appeared in 10 movies since limping away from the NFL. He struggled for quite a long time. I think still today he struggles with having his career cut short. We connected on the movie set, just talking about his challenges and me talking about what I went through. I`m fortunate in that way that I got to live my dreams.

Romanowski admits that dream lasted too long and that some of the nightmarish decisions he made near the end were the result of a desperate man trying to hang on to a job in a young man`s game.

I played 243 straight games and I probably should have quit three years sooner, Romanowski, now 39, said. But my personality, driven by fear and insecurity, drove me to keep slaying more dragons. To play until I was 40 is really what I was pushing for. And I wanted to play in more games straight than anybody in the history of the game. That didn`t happen.

Taking a step back a month after I was finished playing, two months after, I realized the harder I pushed the more I crossed the line. And the more I realized I was getting further and further away from who I am as a person.

Towle had to be pleased with Romanowski`s response when his client was asked if there was any desire to join an NFL team for a minicamp workout this week.

None, he said. There is no part of me ... I enjoyed my time and I feel to be able to play in the NFL is a privilege and it was an honor. Lot of lessons learned, and I`m truly fine with not playing any more.

Mentally, Romanowski is obviously feeling pretty good and open to help. But physically, despite the fact that moviegoers will see him making tackles and denting a locker with his forehead, there are still some very serious obstacles for him to overcome.

Even something as innocent as going on vacation can quickly turn into a frightening experience.

I`m fine as long as I don`t hit anybody or anything. Put it that way, Romanowski said. I had a couple problems happen in the movie that kind of stirred up the problems that I had on the field with concussions. My family and I were at (Disneyland`s) Magic Mountain in L.A. about a month ago ... went on a couple roller coaster rides, and you would have thought I just got a massive concussion in the game. I was kind of lightheaded, kind of woozy, nauseous, just mentally not as sharp. I could feel all the symptoms come right back.

Ironically, the last and most severe concussion of his playing career was sustained at Invesco Field on Sept. 22, 2003, while wearing the silver and black. The Broncos won the game and Romanowski was booed, but he doesn`t remember those details. The night it happened, it was scary, he said. I dealt with it my whole career, but really not on a level that it got out of control until about my last three years of playing. It got to where every time I would get a good hit on somebody, any kind of helmet to helmet contact, I was getting dinged and it was getting more and more frequent.

It started to get real scary. But the warrior, the guy that is always pushing, ready to slay the next dragon, just kept trying to block it out and block it out. I ran out of block outs. I ran out of carpets to brush it under. I couldn`t do it anymore.

And so it`s on to Hollywood. A new beginning for Romanowski.

I don`t know if there is even a 'D` list in acting, he said. But there`s different lists of people, and I want to be one of the best.

Rock around the Doc

Psychology Today

By: Hara Estroff Marano from Psychology Today

When filmmakers joe berlinger and bruce sinofsky began following the six-time Grammy winners in early 2001, they thought they’d capture the making of Metallica’s tenth album, St. Anger, and call it a day. Instead, they found a band on the verge of a breakdown. James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett were creatively deadlocked, emotionally depleted, in one case dangerously inebriated and about to lose their bass player, Jason Newsted. Metallica agreed to experiment with group therapy led by enhancement coach Phil Towle and to keep the cameras rolling. The surprising result, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, hits theaters in July. Editor at Large Hara Estroff Marano spoke with Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and Towle about rage, the rocker mystique and a quieter type of headbanging: therapy.

I'm impressed by the risk you took. You guys had a crisis, you dealt with it, you got to the underlying issues, you survived and you did it publicly. The film and the psychotherapy seem intertwined.

Lars Ulrich:In retrospect it seems like there was a crisis, but it unfolded in a very organic way. We were anticipating our friend Jason Newsted’s departure from the band, and our managers asked if we’d be interested in having a guy there who could calm things down in case furniture became airborne. Jason, our bass player, sat down and said, “OK, I’m out.” We spent the next 8 or 10 hours dealing with that. And as we started chipping away with Phil, we were introduced to different ways of looking at things. It felt new, really comfortable and challenging. When you spend 20 years avoiding intimacy with people you’re around 24/7, and the opportunity to connect finally arises, you jump at it. Then the cameras started showing up. The path that this band had taken many years earlier was to be as accessible to the fans as possible-allow them to partake in some of what we were doing. It’s a little ironic that we spent so much time trying to connect with our fans but could never actually connect with each other. In some ways, the cameras acted as a truth-instigator. They were insurance that we would not bullshit each other.

James Hetfield:I’m very proud of the film, too. There’s still a part of me that doesn’t want to give away our innermost fears-our big fear of intimacy. I still struggle with this every day. But I know this has the potential to help other bands and other people, to just blow away that mystique of the rock idol who leads the perfect life.

A lot of men think that if they open the door to their feelings, they’ll get sucked down a hole they’ll never escape from. Were you ever afraid that the band would lose the magic or its edge?

Lars:I never thought that, because it happened so naturally. Phil opened that door. It was amazing to sit there with people who you’d spent over half your life with and get to know them for the first time, get to love them for the first time.

James:I know that we created some type of spark with our negative energy, and I know we can do the same with our positive energy. We’ve used a lot of energy going nowhere. But as far as losing my edge, I feel I’m sharper than ever.

Some people see therapy as a sign of weakness, but you guys make it into a source of strength. Do you think people have it all wrong?

Kirk Hammett:Yeah. This is a train I should have caught a long time ago, and I instantly recognized that. Doing something for your mental health through therapy is just as good as going to the gym for your physical health. I’ve always been open-minded, so opening my mind up to therapy never really was a problem. It was getting my foot through the door.

James:Whether people look at us as a bunch of freaks or a bunch of pioneers doesn’t matter that much to me. The fact is that we’re doing it, and getting a lot better at just letting go of what other people perceive. All therapy is about communication, and you’re using the therapist as a backboard or mirror. If you can face your fears, you’re going to be a stronger person.

Lars:If anything, when we talked about how people would perceive what we were doing, we were proud. We were ready to shout it from the rooftops-to let people know that we were connecting, and feeling comfortable about the new language and the new set of tools Phil helped us with. Therapy is kind of like a think tank for your brain: how you connect with yourself, with the people around you.

Several months into group therapy, James walked out one day for what turned out to be nine months of rehab. What made you decide to go into rehab?

James:There were really two me’s. There was James of Metallica; everywhere I go I’m associated with that. Then at home I was trying to escape it. But a lot of what helped me escape out there, or feel more comfortable with being this guy in Metallica-my lack of boundaries, all the drinking, the screwing around, the wreckage I left on the road-eventually made its way home. My wife, strong person that she is, put a stop to it.

Lars says he always felt you were softer than you allowed yourself to be. Was alcohol a prop for the macho stuff?

James:I agree with Lars. And it was a lot more than just alcohol. What does “macho” mean? To me it meant: “Here I am, back off, keep your distance.” That worked really well for me, because keeping people at bay was a survival technique from childhood.

Control is a big theme in the film.

James:I didn’t perceive that I was controlling-a controlling person never does. Lars and I had a lot of issues because we were both controlling. We both saw in each other what we didn’t like about ourselves.

Lars:James and I had two years together before we met Kirk. We appointed ourselves coleaders of the band. The only thing we agreed on was suppressing the other guys in the band.

Kirk:That’s a control freak’s perspective. When you’re fighting over control, the only one in your sights is the one you can’t control. I clearly recognize that everything is not meant to be controlled. My personality has always been very laid-back. I’ve always been an observer. It takes me longer to process things. I think if I threw myself into that quagmire of trying to control everything, this band would self-destruct.

James makes clear that his control issue had to do with an underlying fear of abandonment. Was there, for you, some underlying fear speaking through control?

Lars:As an only child growing up in Denmark, in a very safe community, I ran around by myself from a very early age. My parents traveled a lot, and I would be home by myself. Locking the doors, locking the windows was how I controlled everything in my surroundings, because I was autonomous in them. I don’t trust the path in front of me if it’s steered by other people; I’m not sure I’m going to be safe. I’m working now on learning to accept that when things derail, my life doesn’t get turned upside down.

Lars, there’s a very intense scene after James comes back from rehab where you accuse him of controlling even when he’s not there. He leaves every day at 4 and asks you all not to even listen to the music in his absence. You say, “Fuck, this is a rock-and-roll band!” What does that mean to you? No rules?

Lars:You end up in a rock-and-roll band so you don’t have to play other people’s games. It becomes a lot about moods and about moments more than about living by a clock and checking in or checking out. When you leave a studio, you don’t necessarily stop thinking about what you’re working on. Rock and roll represents freedom from those boundaries. What if you have a great creative thought at 3 or at 9? Then what do you do with it?

Anger, frustration, rage-those are things that a lot of your teenage audience connects with. How do you think your fans react when they see you guys wrestling openly with your feelings?

James:For me, connecting with people has never been easy. Now I realize that the more I connect, the easier it is to be me. The more that people know about my troubles, the easier it’ll be to connect with people. I put myself out there, and if people choose to stomp on my heart or to embrace it, that is up to them.

Lars:I have no control. If you line 20 Metallica fans up against the wall, you’re going to get 20 completely different reactions. Some people really connect with what we’ve gone through, others couldn’t give two shits about it. I’ve just given up on trying to figure out who does what.

Kirk:If anything, they’re going to see that we’re just normal human beings, not these rock gods. The film really shows that we are mammals just like everyone else.

Metallica: Some Kind of Mammal?

Kirk:Exactly. Somewhere along the way I got seduced by the mythology of being a rock star. It happened when we started traveling all over the place and making money. After a while, I disconnected from the reason I did it in the first place, which was to express myself. I was a victim of that myth of being in a rock band for 15, 18, 20 years and having any sort of behavior instantly justifiable. You do whatever you want to do; everything you ask for is given to you. A hot tub backstage? Poof, it’s there. A private plane to take you to Las Vegas for a day off? Poof. It became really empty. It was hurting my relationship with my wife. I got into a vicious cycle of wanting to medicate with more booze and drugs. As soon as I stopped doing all that, a lot of the depression went away. The therapy helped me see clearly why these things were happening to me.

James says in the film that he was looking for excitement but wound up doing the same things over and over again.

Kirk:No matter where you launch yourself from, you’re going to land in the same spot-waking up feeling poisoned and depressed.

James:I had to reach extremes to balance life out for me. I wasn’t able to assert myself to express my feelings. James was the guy who could take the pain; he could endure anything. So I would build up all this anger, and it would pop out as rage or depression-and the way I’d deal with that was drinking, partying, screwing around on the road.

Acting like a rock star.

James:Our whole attitude in Metallica was based on the anticliche, anti-image, anti-rock star, and eventually our lack of communication turned us into those things. We started to believe what was going on; we started to not keep each other in check. The machine was just rolling, and we forgot that there were humans attached to it-and we have feelings. Now we’re a band almost obsessed with our health. We’re eating a lot better, working out and doing silly things like sightseeing in towns we’ve been to a hundred times but only stumbled around in from bar to bar. Instead of naming every strip club in every town, we can now name the museums. Family has become a huge rock, a foundation in my whole life. I’ve really been searching for family my whole life. I felt that mine was taken away at a young age. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, going home after being on tour, where everything is done for you-your toothbrush is sitting here, food is waiting, shoes are lined up for the show. I’ve got three kids who are needy and wanting things. I’m the kid out here, and when I go home, I’m the adult.

You guys gave up control to a completely different process. Why did you give it up, and what did you get back?

James:I gave up a lot of self-created insanity. We gained better friendships and new insight into each other’s creativity.

Kirk:We’re all participating in the songwriting and in every decision, when and how we’re going to tour, what the schedules are going to be like, right down to artwork. This is the new Social Democratic Republic of Metallica.

Does this new process make the music better, or is it just the making of the music that’s better?

James:That is an awesome question. We’re trusting our intuition a lot more and being able to rely on each other’s intuition. Before, intuition would always turn into control. “Well, I feel this,” just because you feel that. It used to be so dreadful I would fear it. Now we look forward to going in the studio and writing. Every idea that gets put out there gets tried. In concert we’re firing on all four cylinders. And when we’re not, that’s OK. We know that relationships don’t always peak at the same time.

Kirk:Everyone’s tuned to the same wavelength. We all reap the benefits and consequences together.

In the film Lars says that Metallica has proved that you can make aggressive music without negative energy. What made the difference?

Lars:The previous creative experiences were rooted in negative energy because we were always fighting and power-playing. Once we bottomed out in the summer of 2002 and the relationship started healing, the St. Anger album was created from a place of intimacy, communication, love-the whole nine yards.

Now that you’ve opened up the creative process and seen that you can get something back for giving up control, would you view the Napster (an online file-sharing system) challenge the same way?

Lars:It was never really about downloading for me, that was the big myth. It was about control. We’re definitely control freaks, and I’ll be glad to stand up and say this. I would probably treat that issue differently if it appeared on my radar for the first time in 2004. I don’t think I would feel as much need to counterattack.

Is therapy something you’d recommend to other bands?

James:There are a lot of newer bands that already embrace this style of communication. Maybe we’re a product of the ’80s, a little bit closed and selfish. But bands these days are taking care of themselves not only physically but also mentally. I feel that therapy is a safe place for people who don’t know how to communicate.

Kirk:Definitely. The Beatles would probably still be together if they’d taken the approach we’ve taken.

 

Psychotherapy with a little twist

ContraCosta Times

Psychotherapy with a little twist

Posted on Sat, Jul. 17, 2004

 

By Casey Mills

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

PHIL TOWLE may be the most unassuming man you've ever met. Throwing a ball to his dogs in the back yard of his San Anselmo home, comfortably clad in a faded sweatshirt and battered jeans, he seems like the caring, gentle uncle you always wished you'd had.

Upon meeting him, it's obvious he wants to know you -- he'll talk about himself later -- and minutes after hello he's already asking, with genuine concern, about your life, your dreams, your family. As you reveal yourself, he seems perfectly comfortable with your feelings and emotions, using the word "love" with the same ease as the word "driveway."

"How does that make you feel?" he asks with gentle, searching eyes. And when the conversation does eventually turn to him, he opens up instantly and easily, giving the psychological motivations for what he's done, even when not asked.

Strange, then, that a man so avuncular, so, well, touchy-feely, recently spent three years working with one of the most testosterone-ridden testaments to manhood, the heavy metal band Metallica, which built its career on lyrics like, "We are looking for you to start up a fight/There is an evil feeling in our brains."

Even stranger, the entire process was filmed and recently released as a feature-length documentary, "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster," directed by the critically acclaimed duo Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky.

The movie chronicles the band struggling to stay together despite their bassist leaving, the lead singer entering rehab and the entire group existing as a tangle of dysfunctional relationships. Through it all, Towle listens, offers advice and presides over some of the movie's tensest moments: therapy sessions in which band members scream, fight and cry their way through their demons.

The movie isn't always kind to Towle, depicting him as getting too close to the band and unwilling to leave, despite their eventual desire for him to go. At one point, Metallica frontman James Hetfield worries out loud about Towle thinking he's becoming a member of the band.

But for the 65-year-old performance coach, getting close to the band was the only way to help them, providing an avenue for the fist-pumping, adrenalized masculinity that is Metallica to enter the warm fuzzy world of therapy and begin to address their substantial issues.

"I don't think Metallica, being who they are as people, could have handled a straight-laced, conservative, traditional therapist," says Towle. "If I didn't talk about my problems and didn't display my problems, then I don't think I would have lasted a week with them. I had to be human with them."

His strategy worked: Despite its angst-ridden moments, "Some Kind of Monster" reflects a truly happy ending.

Warm and fuzzy

Towle's office is standard-issue -- plastic chairs, clunky computers, papers strewn across two massive desks -- yet there's a warmth that pervades the room, though it's hard to figure out why. After a couple of hours of conversation, it dawns on you: He's providing the comfortable atmosphere with his words and expressions.

His ability to excitedly tell you that he's having fun talking with you, like a friend on the school playground sharing a secret, then furrow his brow and delve into the deep psychological pain of Metallica, offers a glimpse of how he was able to enter the band's life and stay there for so long. He doesn't try to separate his personal self and his professional self, making interaction with him remarkably intimate.

It was with this talent that Towle managed to pull Metallica out of a severe crisis, one that threatened to end a 19-year run of one of the most influential bands in rock, a band that had sold 90 million albums through the 1980s.

Towle's first meeting with Metallica took place in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in downtown San Francisco in January 2001. The band had been heading into the studio to record a new album, and members weren't getting along. Their managers had begun searching for help, and hired Towle, who had just finished helping rock band Rage Against the Machine through lead singer Zack De La Rocha's departure. He had also previously worked with professional athletes, providing counseling to the St. Louis Rams from 1997 to 2000.

Five minutes into their first session, bassist Jason Newsted (who now lives in Walnut Creek), announced he was quitting the band. For most, this would have been a debilitating blow, but Towle used it as a tool to begin their therapy.

"I'm an advocate of accountability, so I tried to tone down the bitching about him leaving and focus the attention to where it belonged. I had them ask themselves, 'Why would someone want to leave our family?'"

Staying on course

The documentary begins soon after, chronicling Hetfield's entry into rehab, the band's struggle to record their album "St. Anger" and the slow, tension-filled process of strengthening their relationships in order to ultimately keep the band together.

The process was not easy. What began as bi-monthly sessions became daily, and Towle and his wife eventually moved to California from their home in Kansas City to be close to the band. Yet while many credit Towle for saving the band, he downplays his role in this rock 'n' roll drama.

"I could give you substantial reasons why each member of Metallica saved the band," says Towle. "It was the process they were willing to go through. Can you imagine what courage it took to be able to do that? They sat down, they opened up, they shared. ... That's what saved the band."

Towle gets serious when discussing his decision to become a "performance coach" after 30 years as a psychotherapist, even though some might dismiss this title as something a late-night infomercial guru might use. Call him a therapist, and he will quickly correct you -- "You mean performance coach?"

"One day, I got this insight," he says. "I was asking the heavens what the difference was between doing psychotherapy and performance coaching, and I heard a voice. It's only happened to me once, maybe twice in my life. The voice said, 'You used to work with people's nightmares. Now you work with their dreams.' And that's the most profound reason for doing what I've done."

Working with Metallica's dreams proved an intense experience for Towle; one that has been hard to give up. While his professional relationship with the band has formally ended, he still keeps in touch, and recently met with them during their European tour.

Having to let go

"I was talking at least two or three hours a day about meaningful things with them," says Towle. "It was an experience that was intoxicating for me. ... I never experienced that kind of connecting at that meaningful a level on such a regular basis outside my family. The separation from them has been awkward and uncomfortable, because I miss them. I not only miss them, but I miss what we had together."

Towle has since resumed a private performance coaching practice at his new home in Marin County. He also hopes to launch the Genius Conservation Network, devoted to helping great contemporary artists and thinkers with their psychological problems. The project came about in the hopes that today's geniuses, unlike many from the past -- from Hemingway to Hendrix -- will be able to produce work well into old age rather than burning out early.

He's not sure what the future will bring and is willing to work with most anyone as long as it's a group or individual who affects social change. Proud of the widespread influence he's had through Metallica, he wants to continue the trend.

"The band has transformed itself, and now, especially with the movie, they are in a position to offer help to their fans," says Towle. "They are already helping people consider therapy and consider transforming their sense of alienation."

For a man in search of a lasting legacy, it's not a bad start.

 

Metal Head-Shrink

Methead

Metal Head-Shrink

Posted: 04/15/04 @ 15:45 by Methead

 

'It's been hard, Lars," a choked-up Dave Mustaine, lead singer of Megadeth, tells Lars Ulrich, drummer for Metallica. "Everything you touch turns to gold and everything I do backfires," he says, going on to explain that he thinks people even shout "Metallica" at him on the street as a heckle.

 Ulrich sits back and takes this in. "Do I feel guilt?" he wonders aloud.

 "Have you thought about what I went through?" continues Mustaine. "Have you got any idea?"

 Mustaine, who was one of the original members of Metallica, was fired from the band by Ulrich in 1983, and this touchy-feely therapy session is one of the stranger scenes in the new documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

 Ulrich and Mustaine spend several hours discussing their pain, all of which is supervised by Phil Towle, Metallica's therapist/ performance enhancement coach.

 At the time of this meeting Towle had already been working with Metallica for a year, so it's not a surprise that Ulrich was well versed in therapy-speak. Of course, Mustaine was too: While it's not revealed in the documentary, Megadeth had also explored their group dysfunction in therapy for several years in the early Nineties.

 "Most people think we're going to anti-breakup therapy," Mustaine was quoted as saying in Billboard. "That's not what it's about at all. It's intellectually stimulating, and it's innovative and challenging, and we learn more about ourselves and how we can be more cohesive as a unit."

 And these aren't anomalies. Other bands, such as Aerosmith, Tesla, Motley Crue and Audioslave have reportedly spent time on the couch. Naturally, this causes one to ponder if the Beatles would still be together had they hired a shrink to mediate their Yoko Ono problem.

 "That's a historic scene," says Joe Berlinger, one of the directors of the documentary. "It just shows the degree to which Lars was willing to explore his past and it's an incredibly touching and moving scene. Lars has been accused of being incredibly egotistical in the past and yet here he is willing to hear the damage he caused somebody. And here's Dave Mustaine, who is not quite Metallica, but he's sold 15 million records and Megadeth is a world-renowned band and yet it's not good enough for him. The long shadow of Metallica is still cast upon him."

 In 2001, bassist Jason Newstead announced he wanted to quit the band and, as a last-ditch effort to repair relations, management suggested therapy. Towle was originally brought in as a short-term fix and to smooth things over with Newstead, but two and half years later the 65-year-old performance enhancement coach from Kansas was meeting with the group every day.

 Ultimately, Newstead left the band anyway and Towle says the first few months of therapy were spent dealing with that fallout. Then the remaining members -- singer James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, producer Bob Rock and Ulrich -- began to delve into the resentments that had been building among them for years.

 "And as we got healthier," says Towle, "it forced personal issues to the surface and one was James' personal unhappiness at a very deep level and the internal shifting in him forced him to make the decision to go into rehab." At one point in their history Metallica earned the nickname Alcoholica.

 Hetfield stayed away from the band for nearly a year, during which time Towle continued to meet with the others "to parallel the experience Hetfield was experiencing in rehab."

 Shortly after Hetfield's return, the band decided they should see Towle every single day -- first a therapy session, followed by studio work on their album -- and for this they paid him US$40,000 a month.

 This was a pittance, considering Metallica has sold more than 90 million albums worldwide (more than the Beatles, Madonna or Britney Spears) and priceless, as the band credits Towle with keeping them together, helping them finish their first studio album in five years and being functional enough to tour (he went with them for the first three weeks).

 "My view of what happened is Phil absolutely saved the band," says Berlinger. "If Phil was not there, Metallica would no longer exist. These guys needed some tools to communicate."

 Often when they started communicating, several hours would go by before they stopped. One edited, five-minute scene in which Ulrich paces and repeats the f-word was actually a two-hour monologue born of pent up frustration from his over 20-year friendship with Hetfield.

 "I just think you are so self-absorbed," Ulrich says, pacing around the studio kitchen. "You tell me I'm controlling, I think you're controlling. You control all this even when you're not here. I don't understand you at all." Later, Hetfield tells Ulrich he no longer enjoys being in a room playing music with him.

 "There were a lot of power and leadership issues between Lars and James," says Towle, who explains that Hammett was the most egoless of the group and thus needed help asserting himself.

 "I found it incredibly inspiring," says Berlinger, adding that Metallica's foray into therapy helped him repair his friendship and partnership with the film's co-director and producer, Bruce Sinofsky.

 "If it was the Dave Matthews Band or some touchy-feely group, it wouldn't have been as interesting, but the juxtaposition of these guys doing this was incredibly powerful. They are real human beings who needed to work on their shit. And it's about realizing you can't be an adolescent forever. These are guys who banged their heads and drank themselves silly and now they are fathers and yet they still want to make music and get out there."

 Every so often in the film, the band discusses canning Towle, but in the next season, he's back in one of his soothing pastel sweaters. At one point, Hetfield candidly says, "Phil has been an angel to me. He has been sent to help me."

 And Metallica did a lot for Towle as well. During his work with the band, not only did he and his wife relocate from Kansas to San Francisco, he says he now has a better appreciation for heavy metal.

 "I used to listen to all kinds of music like Iron Butterfly and Cream, but when it got to Nirvana and Metallica it was too gloomy and I was too old," he says. "But the irony is I love the guys and it goes to show, if you get inside another human being you're going to find spiritual truth and I was blessed to find that. My favourite song, of course, is Some Kind of Monster."

 

Your Life Need a Tune-Up?

Your life need a tune-up?

Phil Towle is the stars' personal enhancement coach. Get ready for your fabulous career to be dissected.

 Los Angeles Times/April 21, 2004

 By Gina Piccalo

San Anselmo, Calif. -- Phil Towle wants to know you. And not that remote, cordial version of yourself that you usually offer up to strangers. He wants the whole you, control issues and all. Intimacy is like oxygen to him. That's why he's on call 24/7, ready for your cataclysmic meltdown, your gut-wrenching sobs, your 3 a.m. epiphanies.

When you're at your worst, Towle's at his best. He's your spiritual paramedic, your exorcist, the sensitive dad you never had. There are no timed sessions, no emotional boundaries. He's inside your head and inside your life. He dissects your motivations and analyzes your ambivalence, your self-sabotaging language, your buried vulnerability, the reasons you resent him, until you shift uncomfortably on the plush leather couch in his living room and wonder how you lost the reins of this conversation.

"Suppose there's a fear of making mistakes," he says, his loafers propped up on a heavy coffee table, a postcard view of verdant hills over his shoulder. "Suppose, when you write, you live with a chronic unresolved issue about not wanting to make a mistake. So you might bring a tape recorder. You might back it up with writing everything down. You might follow through with what the editor wants you to do. You might be real careful that you don't do something wrong that would expose you to making a mistake."

And just like that, your black felt-tip pen, Gregg-ruled steno pad and tiny Radio Shack tape recorder are the insidious tools of your undoing.

Inside moves

Phil Towle is a psychotherapist turned performance enhancement coach who is paid handsomely to reinvigorate the high-stakes careers of rock stars, professional athletes and CEOs. Since 1997, his clients have included Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, Tennessee Titans defensive lineman Kevin Carter, legendary NFL coach Dick Vermeil and other luminaries too emotionally fragile to name here. But it was Metallica that cemented Towle's second career when it hired him in January 2001 as the band was falling apart. Longtime bassist Jason Newsted had just quit, threatening to end the band's 20-year run.

Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, best known for their critically lauded 1996 film "Brother's Keeper," documented much of the 2 1/2years the band spent with Towle, resulting in "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster," which premieres in July. In the film, Towle cracks open the metal band to reveal the sticky goo inside - hidden resentments, unresolved grief, power struggles and, yes, love and commitment.

It was costly work - Towle's fee was a whopping $40,000 a month - but it got results. "St. Anger," Metallica's first album in five years, went platinum and earned a Grammy, and the band received MTV's highest honor, the Icon Award. In the film, Towle weeps as the band discusses the end of their project. But in reality, that didn't mark the end of the relationship.

"He became a part of the family," says drummer Lars Ulrich. "It can be kind of awkward to end. In some sense it hasn't ended. And in another sense it will never end."

The Technique

It's noon, just 90 minutes into your weekend visit with Towle, and the streaming narrative that is Towle analyzing you analyzing Towle has filled your brain to capacity. He speaks deliberately, in the warm, deep tones of a radio announcer, until you feel yourself losing focus, losing time. He's articulate, but his language is so psycho-spiritual that you always feel just a few beats behind real comprehension.

Towle is talking about his technique. He says he helps people "unlock their self-imposed obstacles" by making contact during that critical "moment of potential insight," an awareness inspired by "seeds from the unconscious." That means he becomes so personally involved with his clients that he experiences every shade of their personalities, ultimately drawing a multidimensional picture of their problems. Then he injects himself into their lives, using their relationship as a test tube. His wife, Gail, often participates, and as a couple they vacation and celebrate holidays with clients. Toys for Metallica's children sit in one corner of their San Anselmo home.

"You feel, very quickly, closely connected to him, whether you want to or not," says longtime client Brenda Rhodes, chief executive of the Silicon Valley staffing firm Hall Kinion.

Ultimately, she says, she got to know Gail, whose buoyancy acts as a life preserver amid Phil's briny depths, and realized there was nothing untoward about his compassion. "You can be as close as you want without ever feeling you're treading across the barrier," Rhodes says.

Each client takes something different from Towle. Ulrich credits him with saving his band and his marriage and considers their conversations a "think tank" on human interaction. In the film, guitarist and lead singer James Hetfield calls Towle "an angel & sent to help me." After the St. Louis Rams won the 2000 Super Bowl, Vermeil rewarded Towle with a diamond-encrusted Super Bowl ring engraved with his name. He says he has kept every motivational memo that Towle ever faxed him and that they plan to write a book together.

Morello credits Towle with making him the happiest he's ever been as a musician. "It's basically a lot of listening," says the guitarist, who hired Towle as his band Rage Against the Machine was breaking up. "It's such a foreign concept to rock 'n' rollers&. He was able to see through the defenses people had built up and the ongoing circular things that were making everybody unhappy, that were keeping everybody from success."

Towle limits his client list to about 15 and chooses professionals who want to further their already profound success. That's because influential people affect the masses, allowing Towle's wisdom and guidance to indirectly reach a larger audience. It is here, he believes, that destiny is at work.

"I think we all have a contract with whoever we believe is our creator," he says. "The God source. The source of life or however you want to look at it... I'm the only Phil on this planet and have been given a certain physical, mental, spiritual composition, with certain inherent gifts, my primary responsibility is to give it all away. To leave every drop of myself."

Finding harmony

The personal investment Towle makes in his clients' lives inevitably triggers his own psychological issues, particularly when his clients decide they've outgrown him. He admits he's guilty of "over-coaching," a remedy for his own sense of "isolation and alienation."

With Metallica, "I wanted to be able to experience the kind of depth that a process like this could bring to everybody, including myself & to be able to have the freedom to become closer and to feel that sense of getting connected in terms of .......;"

He pauses, then starts again.

"It's like making love. Getting as close as you can to somebody. Getting inside of them and they inside of you. For me, that's the reason why I do what I do."

Dream weaver

There's a lot of talk about sharing and intimacy when you're with Towle, but he is guarded when you ask about his background. "I don't see how that's relevant," he says.

Eventually, details emerge. Towle is 65, the oldest of two sons born to an insurance salesman and a social worker. (His brother is a Unitarian minister.) He grew up in South Pasadena, earned a degree in sociology from Occidental College and attended graduate school at the University of Chicago.

He and Gail met in the early 1960s while working in the settlement houses of Chicago. They moved to Topeka, Kan., for Towle's fellowship in the psychiatric social work program of the Menninger Clinic, and had two children. As Towle built his private practice, Gail operated bed-and-breakfasts.

But after 32 years as a psychotherapist, Towle suddenly switched to coaching. The reason, repeated like a mantra by both Towle and his clients, is because he grew tired of working with "people's nightmares," longing instead to "work with their dreams."

A lifelong fan of the Los Angeles Rams, Towle decided to become the "performance coach" to the team, which had recently moved to St. Louis. He befriended the team's publicist and general manager, and spent months visualizing himself on the 50-yard line. When Vermeil arrived as the new coach, Towle cold-called him to offer some help. "He knew more about the Los Angeles Rams than I did," says Vermeil.

Within a few weeks, Towle was hired. The Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000, and along with his Super Bowl ring, Towle got an introduction to Vermeil's son-in-law, Steve Barnett, then a senior vice president at Epic Records. That led to his work with Morello, and then Metallica.

During the years Towle worked with Metallica, his life acquired some of the luster of a rock star's. He relocated from the Kansas City suburbs to the Bay Area, rocking out backstage at shows and staying up late in the recording studio. He and Gail moved around a lot - from the Four Seasons in San Francisco to a downtown apartment owned by Ulrich's wife to a house in Solano Beach to a $3.3-million hilltop home in San Anselmo.

Letting go

There's a scene toward the end of the documentary in which Hetfield confronts Towle about his plans to sell his house in Kansas City and move to San Francisco. The band, Hetfield makes clear, isn't sure it needs him long-term. Towle assures him that the move isn't definite. But he adds, "To me, the work isn't over." From there, the dialogue devolves into therapy jargon, with salvos of "trust issues" and "boundaries" lobbed from either side.

Perhaps it's Towle's own "chronic issue" that's at work here.

Ten years ago, one of Towle's psychotherapy clients filed a complaint with the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board, accusing him of urging her to continue therapy after she decided to end it. The board investigated and, among other alleged violations, cited Towle for "continuing treatment when it was not beneficial to the client" and "failing to terminate the social work relationship."

Ultimately, Towle admitted no liability or wrongdoing, but he agreed to dissolve his practice and surrender his license. Today, he declines to talk about the case but acknowledges he's experiencing "an ongoing process of healing and growth."

"It is still hard for me to let go of whatever's unresolved, because when you see it and you know something can be done about it, it's hard to look away."

 

Metallica hires psychologist for 'St. Anger' management

Psychology Today

from Psychology Today issue dated 2004-10-13

Metallica hires psychologist for 'St. Anger' management

Last update: July 24, 2003 at 11:43 AM

Jon Bream,  Star Tribune

July 25, 2003 MET25

When the you-know-what hit the fan, Metallica needed Dr. Phil.

The longtime heavy-metal kingpins didn't call that Dr. Phil. They brought in sports psychologist Phil Towle, who has worked with pro football's St. Louis Rams, an Olympic silver-medalist swimmer and other athletes.

Towle's first session with Metallica was coincidentally the day bassist Jason Newsted unexpectedly announced he was quitting after 14 years. The members of the quartet were confused about dynamics, direction and decision-making. They clearly needed group therapy.

"Phil gets guys on the same team to stop letting their differences and their idiosyncrasies get in the way of the progress of the team," said Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, whose 22-year-old band performs Sunday at the Metrodome. "He helped us try to understand who we were, where we were coming from, why things ended up the way they did with Jason."

After several sessions with Towle, lead singer and chief control freak James Hetfield decided to head to treatment for alcohol issues. Meanwhile, the shrink continued to meet with Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and producer Bob Rock.

The group therapy intensified after Hetfield's four-month stay ended. "We were getting to know each other again," said Ulrich, 39, "or maybe getting to know each other for the first time, like my wife said when I came home one day. That's pretty scary after 18 years.

"I know that sounds terribly black-and-white. It's about being comfortable about opening sides of yourself up. There were certainly sides of James and a whole new truth and honesty. The facade of 'Hi, I'm James Hetfield the lead singer of Metallica' -- that was left in rehab. What he came back with was more like, 'Hi, I'm James Hetfield, human being on planet Earth.' "

Hetfield, who turns 40 next month, is not radically different onstage, Ulrich said, except that his patter is more sincere than scripted.

Towle, who had never seen Metallica in concert until this summer, disagrees. "I think that James is enjoying himself more," he said last week. "People come up to me and say, 'The band is having more fun.' "

Offstage, Hetfield has a different demeanor, Ulrich said. He uses intimidation less to control people and makes an effort to listen to the opinions of others. And he stays sober.

In retrospect, Ulrich thinks Metallica's creative dilemma has been brewing for a long time. He thinks the reason the band made two albums of garage-rock ("Load" in '96 and "Reload" in '97) and a live album of Metallica classics with a symphony orchestra ("S&M" in '99) was because the group "couldn't make another original record until we'd spent some time going through all those issues unresolved in the past."

Towle, 64, who calls himself a performance coach, helped the band members learn how to avoid dysfunction and strive for excellence. He also became part of the process of making a new album. He was with the band every day for a year, as a result of which he and his wife decided to move from Kansas City to San Francisco, where Metallica is based.

Towle would meet at 11 a.m. for group discussions with the three band members and producer Rock. Sometimes the sessions would drag on, and they'd never get into the recording studio. When it came time to write songs and record them, Towle was there, too, to "keep the creative juices flowing in an appropriate way."

The new bassist

After recording "St. Anger" with Rock playing bass, Metallica auditioned bassists and involved Towle in the process. They hired Rob Trujillo, who had played with the punkish Suicidal Tendencies and with Ozzy Osbourne.

What does he bring to the band?

"Stability, enthusiasm, openness, spiritual energy," Ulrich said. "He's incredibly easy-going. Nothing fazes him. Seeing Metallica is probably tame to what he's seen with Ozzy. He's a little more of a traditional bass player than his predecessor. From where I sit, it's a bit more inspiring."

Newsted, who ironically took Trujillo's old gig with Osbourne, "never had a creative voice in Metallica," Ulrich said. "He was in permanent limbo. I'm amazed in that he lasted 14 years. If I was him, I would have left a lot earlier."

He had succeeded founding bassist Cliff Burton, who had died in a bus accident in 1986. Part of the problem for Newsted was that he joined so soon after Burton's death that the other band members hadn't taken time to grieve, said Towle, a former psychotherapist who has spent 2 1/4 years with Metallica, including three weeks on tour this summer. (He had been recommended to Metallica after doing some sessions with Rage Against the Machine when its lead singer left and the members went on to form Audioslave.)

The new album

"St. Anger" is raw, like early Metallica records, and scary. And very human.

Even though 98 percent of the record was written after Hetfield returned from treatment, "this is not a rehab record," Ulrich insisted. "It's a record about vulnerability and weaknesses and addressing your own insecurities."

Those topics were sparked by Hetfield's self-searching in rehab but also, Ulrich said, because, "through a little bit of maturity, wisdom and parenthood, you just start getting to a point where it doesn't have to be chest-beating all the time."

Despite its harrowing vibe and ominous title, "St. Anger" was made during a period of happiness. Ulrich said the cliché that you can make an aggressive heavy-metal record only when you're angry didn't apply this time.

"This record was not made on negative energy, it was made on positive energy," the drummer said. "Sometimes when you're really happy you just want to scream even louder."

Said Towle: "They weren't suffering in the studio and bitching at each other. They weren't fighting and feuding to gain the edge. The music didn't come out of tension, it came out of the depths of their creativity, which indeed were naturally influenced by whatever has gone on in their lives, which includes a certain element of pain."

Doomed domes?

Thus far on the Summer Sanitarium Tour, Metallica has been performing only a couple of numbers from "St. Anger."

"You'll hear the different palettes of what Metallica does," Ulrich said en route to a recent show in New York. "It seems like the head space at the moment seems to be a little more connected to some of the earlier stuff. There's a couple of things from the early days that we haven't played for a long time."

Ulrich said the stage for the tour is "probably the biggest stage we've ever played on. When Hetfield gets out to one end of the stage, he's actually in a different time zone than Kirk, who's over on the other side. In these enormo-domes, this stage gets you closer to the fans."

Metallica will become the first act to play the Metrodome for a third time. The domed stadium is not known for its acoustic excellence.

"Up where we are, we're a little less affected by that than the guys out in the audience," the drummer said. "We just played the Silverdome and Skydome; it's tougher in the indoor stadiums. Our soundman has been with us for 400 years; if anybody can pull it off, he can. The more bodies you put in there, the easier it becomes to control the sound."

Or maybe Metallica should dispatch its own Dr. Phil to the Metrodome for some sound therapy.

 

Coaching and Coaxing Metallica

Timothy Finn

By TIMOTHY FINN

The Kansas City Star

Rock stars and football players aren't known for being sensitive. Tell one to get in touch with his feminine side and he's more likely to punch you or grab your girlfriend than talk about his feelings.

Phil Towle makes a lot of money helping rock stars and athletes remain successful. He does that by coaching them. He gets them to sit down, and in a style that is part Tony Robbins and part Stuart Smalley (Al Franken's fictional therapist), he encourages them to open up and work through or around the obstacles & anger, resentment, fear, insecurity & that are messing up their professional and personal lives.

My philosophy he told The Star recently, is that no matter where you are in life, the object always ought to be to maximize your potential.

That may sound like textbook advice you can get from any run-of-the-mill marriage counselor, priest or financial analyst. But that's only Towle's starting point. His destination is a place where his client not only sees the glass as half full, but he also appreciates the glass itself.

Towle, a former psychotherapist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, calls himself a performance coach, the difference being an emphasis on strengths and positives, not someone's weaknesses.

Among his clients: Chiefs head coach Dick Vermeil, who hired Towle when Vermeil returned to coaching professional football in St. Louis 1997-2000. He also worked with Vermeil's staff and some of his Rams players. (During that time, Towle moved to Leawood; he moved to Northern California in 2003.)

Towle's most famous clients these days are the members of Metallica, who hired him in 2001 to get through several personal and professional crises. His work with the band is chronicled in the documentary Some Kind of Monster which opens today at the Tivoli in Westport.

From his home in San Anselmo, Calif., Towle, 65, talked to The Star recently about the film and the process of getting macho men to contact their feminine sides.

How did you go from the St. Louis Rams to rock bands?

Well, Dick Vermeil's son-in-law, Steve Barnett, is a vice president at Sony Records. One of Sony's subsidiaries had the band Rage Against the Machine on its roster. Tom Morello, the guitarist in the band, is a devoted Rams fan, so we got to know each other at Rams games. At some point, he came to me and said, I know what you do. Our group is breaking up, and I'd like some help getting through the process. So I was hired by their management, Q-Prime, which is also Metallica's management.

To most men, counseling or therapy is excruciating, like picking scabs off the brain. How do you coax athletes and rock stars into participating?

I think we've reached a point in our society where it's permissible for men to talk about their inner feelings without feeling threatened. With Metallica I discovered there was this hunger for the most part to have permission to talk about real stuff. Metallica transformed itself because it was willing to go to what Lars called Level 5 which meant going deep and getting deeper.

James (Hetfield) is the poster boy for that. He was amazing. I've never met anyone who has been as dedicated to his transformation as he is. He has transformed his leadership from suffocating control to an open, loving democracy at no expense to the product.

You were present when Jason Newsted told the band he was leaving, though that scene isn't in the film. How did that go down?

We'd been sitting around talking for about a half-hour when Jason says to me, I want to talk to the guys. Will you excuse me? So I went into the other room in the suite. I could hear all this pain resonating from the room they were in, and after about 10 minutes, I went back in. Jason says, I don't want you in here. I said, I was hired to be here, to work with you guys and your issues, and I can't in good faith stay in the other room. There was silence. Then Lars says, Let him stay.

They were all jarred so much that a family member for 14 years was leaving for various reasons. They said, We gotta do something about this. Here's what I offered: Rather than invest energy in being pissed at Jason, use this thing to explore the underlying issues of discomfort and conflict that led to his leaving.

In a very dysfunctional family, Jason had the courage to stand up. He was the one who set in motion this process of calling everyone out. I'd read an old interview with Metallica in Playboy in which the band members separately trashed each other. So now the conflict had come to a head.

The situation changed even more dramatically when Hetfield went away to rehab. Did that blindside you, too, or were you expecting that?

It was very much out of the blue. My sense of what happened is much more heroic than it's portrayed in the movie. The guys were so willing to push each other to Level 5, that it started to make a difference. … At some level, James realized that if he were going to continue this healing process, he could not exist the way he was.

But the band nearly didn't exist because he left so abruptly.

But it stimulated another level of growth. After a while, we used it as fuel for more change. We all made a pact: James is going to go through a major change. When he gets back, we have to be ready. We weren't in the trenches every day like he was, but we were working to keep up. The most obvious issue was the threat of dissolution. Is this the end of the band?

So he comes back, but things still are pretty volatile.

I was in complete awe of how he and his family dealt with the series of changes he made — incredibly deep, permanent changes while running and moving through life. He came back and let everyone else open up, let Lars to get his frustrations out in the open. There was so much stored-up anger. But anger is fear exploding. It's a clue. It tells us people are afraid of something. When he was gone, the other guys were afraid that there wasn't going to be a band, and angry that they were afraid and he was in control. Everyone was on hold. The most important time in the life of that band was the time James was away.

There's a scene toward the end where you and James and Lars get into it over your continued role with the band. What happened there?

The band was going through a moment of indecision about whether to continue with me and on what terms. I needed an answer. I said I gotta know because I'm thinking about moving out here. Off camera we had talks about continuing. So I really felt a little ambushed. I felt I'd had one understanding where I'd do it part time to resolve some issues.

But it was also difficult for me to think about leaving. I was with this one client every day for almost 2 1/2 years. We started with 2- and 3-hour sessions, and then when things heated up as they made the album, I was in the studio every day. I just didn't want to leave the process, the intimacy. And I thought we had a deal in place. But, you know, the thing to come out of that was Lars coming to James' support. That really cemented things between them.

Do you still work with the band?

I do. I saw them open the tour then in Denmark and Paris. Just for some touch-up work, some fine-tuning.

Some Kind of Monster:When Macho Men Look Inward

CBC.Com

Some Kind of Monster: When Macho Men Look Inward

CBC.Com July 29, 2004

Georgie Binks

There are few things more macho than a heavy-metal musician on stage, standing legs astride, desperately hitting the high notes while the driving beat of a guitar overtakes everything else. And there are few bands more macho than Metallica.

The sight of burly lead singer James Hetfield wielding his guitar like a weapon, albeit a small one in contrast to his size, is a huge attraction of the band, possibly even more strongly for men than women.

I will declare a conflict of interest here: As part of my own mid-life crisis I have embraced the rock music I missed out on in the '90s while raising my kids. And yes, purchasing Metallica CDs is cheaper than cosmetic surgery or a motorcycle, but likely not as acceptable.

So when I heard about the documentary about the band, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which documents the band's journey through analysis, just as they were entering the studio to record another album, I was wondering how it would affect their machismo.

After all, allowing a crew to film therapist Phil Towle as he worked with the band could have been professional suicide. Definitely, the band needed help, if it was to continue. Among the other things, they were struggling with lead singer James Hetfield's alcoholism, bass player Jason Newsted's departure, and the friction between the two founding members, lead singer and guitarist Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich. But letting filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky in to film it all was certainly a risk. What if these guys turned out to be human and more frighteningly, exhibited a non-macho side? Would it turn off their largely male audience, the same guys with the shaved heads and the many tattoos at last summer's Summer Sanitarium Tour? (Yes, I was there, but no tattoos).

Metallica is a band that has taken big chances in the past and come out a winner, losing some listeners in the process but gaining others. In fact, they have written a number of beautiful songs, ranging from Welcome Home (Sanitarium) based on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Until It Sleeps about Hetfield's mother's death from cancer; kind of different for the heaviest of metal bands, right? In the late '90s, they also recorded an album with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, complete with violinists, looking over their shoulders, both amused and puzzled, as Hetfield plays the guitar.

Letting a therapist in, though, was more than simply taking a professional chance; it was a personal one. Not only did it pay off big time, in keeping the band together, but it shows that being macho is often misunderstood.

The macho rock lifestyle has always included life on the road, drugs, alcohol and of course, women, lots of women. Metallica, whose nickname for a time was "Alcoholica" based on its band members' self-proclaimed alcohol abuse, used to roar into towns and party hard. After all the energy generated by concerts, the sheer high of it all, alcohol and women were a great way to keep it going. But Hetfield admits in the movie that the life was predictable, saying he knew that every night he would get drunk, and every morning wake up hung over in a different bed. After entering rehab during the filming of the movie, and leaving the band in limbo for about nine months, he talks now about how his life with his wife and three children is never predictable.

Being sober with kids can actually be a lot more frightening than the predictability of his previous life. Hetfield lets the camera see him sitting at the back of a ballet studio as his tiny daughter, dressed in a pink tutu, dances and then runs to hug him. With his big tattooed arms he returns the hug.

Three of the four band members are married and two have children, a big anchor. One of the reasons bass player Jason Newsted left was that he formed another band to take up the time when he wasn't performing with Metallica. In the documentary, he explains that, unlike the band members with families, he needs to fill the empty spaces with music, something that Hetfield thought conflicted with the band.

The documentary also shows drummer Lars Ulrich making fun of himself in the wake of Metallica's stand against Napster, a hugely unpopular position. He nods to an interviewer, in a self deprecating way, that yes, he just figured that year he would like to be the most hated man in rock, by taking on Napster and fans downloading the band's music.

Much of the movie is filled with therapy jargon, drummer Ulrich picking up phrases like, " what I hear you saying is" and it does almost become comic. But the therapy process also forces the band to deal with issues close to those found in a typical marriage. Not only do the band members spend months on the road with each other, they are constantly involved on both a personal and professional level. How many marriages could stand that intensity?

The band also deals with long-ago issues, like the firing 20 years ago of guitarist Dave Mustaine, who now has his own band, Megadeth. Mustaine still has huge feelings of loss, despite selling 15 million albums worldwide. He complains of how difficult it was to hear everyone talk about Kirk Hammett, the guitarist who replaced him.

Eventually Metallica works through its issues and the therapist is off, presumably to fix another rock band, although Hetfield has said in interviews that he became attached to Towle, simply because he lacked a father growing up as a child of divorce. Hetfield's statements, along with the band's opening up, don't diminish them though; this simply adds another dimension.

When the band emerges from therapy, they are able to return to the studio and record, although I will say that their latest album St. Anger, is not my favourite. As the title suggests, therapy hasn't diminished their anger or rage, but the beauty and the pain that can be found in many of their songs seems to be missing. Maybe they dealt too successfully with those issues in therapy.

Yes, it takes a bunch of pretty tough guys to expose themselves to the world like this, but it does nothing to diminish the band. They are still the same group that penned the song Seek and Destroy and always will be.

Having the guts to explore inside has made them a lot tougher on the outside; tough enough to continue after more than twenty years making music together.

Now that's macho.

Playing in the Family Band

Jared Neumark

Playing in the Family Band

Brothers and sisters gonna work it out in the Queen City

By Jared Neumark

Published 12.21.2005

On a warm, lulling Sunday afternoon in late October, the Barnettes' black sedan halts sharply in front of a blue bungalow home in east Charlotte and out pop the girls in long pants. They seem to be the only people in Charlotte too busy to notice the day's midsummer feel. The Barnettes have skipped out on church early. Daddy Barnette, a minister, pardoned them. Their family band takes priority in an already-packed Sunday schedule. Church. Brunch. Practice all afternoon. Band meeting. Then Kristen and brother Rufus are off again to colleges in Winston Salem and Greensboro, respectively. It's a normal weekend.

Today the Barnettes have to cram in an interview and then start prepping for their big break. The siblings are taking their act to the next level: an early December audition with Mallet Records, a jazz and R&B label in Atlanta. At the Midatlantic Music Conference in Charlotte a month earlier, Mallet owner Jason Taylor had fawned over the Barnettes, and now he wants to hear them try a Latin/Caribbean sound, a completely foreign genre to the quartet.

It's only been two years since Elesha strolled into a guitar store and made her first $299 band investment: a black Ibanez electric guitar. She had never played guitar before but had grown up, along with her siblings, performing classical music -- she on cello, Adrienne on violin, Kristen on viola and Rufus, "the little drummer boy." The siblings admit that playing classical instruments wasn't always their first idea of fun. Each child had a practice log, which their parents made them sign to ensure they rehearsed long enough. The four children toured the area on weekends playing classical music at small, formal gatherings such as bank receptions -- not exactly the typical breeding ground for inspired rock & roll.

"You couldn't really jazz up those instruments," says Adrienne.

"And you can't sing and play the violin," adds Elesha.

What put Elesha in the guitar store in 2003 was her need to reclaim some creativity in her postgraduate life. Her day job at Proctor and Gambol, selling wholesalers on the hydration quality of shampoos, was not exactly the stimulating outlet she was used to at UNC Charlotte. The year before, Elesha had directed her own full-length film. Her friends and family encouraged Elesha to continue in media arts, but after meeting musicians when she was compiling the sound track for her film, she had another idea. She wanted a band.

It didn't take much convincing for her siblings to jump on board. The second edition of the Barnettes formed. In less than half a year, Elesha, Adrienne and Kristen taught themselves new instruments and managed to practice enough on weekends (along with Rufus on drums) while attending separate schools during the week. Giving up weekends for the band means giving up the time most kids spend socializing. But the Barnettes are used to spending time with each other.

The Barnettes are not the only set of siblings who have stuck together for love of music. From alternative teen rockers Justincase to R&B megastars Jodeci, prominent family acts seem to be a Charlotte-area specialty. And there's more: Popular Concord-based indie-grass group the Avett Brothers and Charlotte Latin rockers La Rúa both feature a pair of brothers, as does the experimental twang-rock band the Houston Brothers. Is it Charlotte's family-friendly vibe or just the Southern tradition of placing family above all?

Psychotherapist and performance coach Phil Towle says bands are in many ways already like families, and if a culture of love and respect is developed, a healthy group dynamic will exist. A functional family band consists of members who feel valued equally: "If Johnny is a better lead guitar player than I am, I can pick up the bass because I feel like I'm a part of something."

To Elesha Barnette, sharing a bloodline with her band mates is a positive. "It's an opportunity to get to know each other as adults," she says. "Most siblings are growing apart from each other at this age." Before the band, for example, Elesha would never have figured her brother Rufus possesses the poetic capabilities he's shown in the lyrics to his songs, such as "These Walls."

"It's about a girl who's done me wrong," Rufus says.

What's more, the siblings' familiarity helps in the collaborative process. For the song "Half Way," Elesha had written the lyrics, "I want to meet you half way." Adrienne tweaked it a bit to "Will you let me meet you half way?" It may seem an insignificant change, but to Elesha, "it turned the song into something everyone could relate to." Someone who didn't know her as well as Adrienne couldn't have sensed what Elesha was going for.

As a performance coach, Towle has worked with bands like the Barnettes as well as with businesses and sports teams. He has a Super Bowl ring from his work with the St. Louis Rams and he also helped the former members of Rage Against the Machine deal with the desertion of their charismatic lead singer Zack de la Rocha. Most famously, Towle appeared in the Metallica documentary, Some Kind of Monster. In the film, he is seen urging the rockers to open the line of communication and consider each other's feelings.

Towle says old family dynamics are at the root of any group setting. "Our earliest stages of life are inside a family system; whether it's functional or dysfunctional, we tend to always replicate our family dynamic. The family system, if you think about it, becomes prototypical."

People who have been isolated or disconnected from their families tend to play the role of the survivor, says Towle. They are more self-absorbed and less willing to subjugate their needs for the sake of the group.

In a biological-family band, normal relationships are magnified. "There is a division of roles in family. There are different kinds of family -- people who are more autocratic, more democratic; people who seek more control. In relationships, the same dynamics appear, they just might be a little more pronounced in a work setting. In general, the more time we spend with each other, the more difficult it becomes to separate out personal from professional."

Christopher Strong, who toured the South with his Strong Family String Band in the 1980s, wrote in Bluegrass Unlimited about the challenges of maintaining a healthy relationship. "At the heart of the family bands lies a decision that each family must make: To what extent will we treat this as a business? Because the band is not our principle means of support, we can enjoy the luxury of treating it as a profitable hobby, and, more importantly, as an educational opportunity for our three teenagers."

The prevalence of family bands in Charlotte may be more than just coincidence. In the South, a special relationship exists between family and music. During the antebellum period, string music thrived in the Piedmont. Music was the central means of entertainment, and rural families incorporated it into their lives on farms. Frolics were organized around tobacco curings and corn shuckings, where music was a tool to alleviate boredom. Medicine shows predated concerts in the South. The best musicians in the area would play at those festivals, and most of the townspeople and farm families would attend them.

From those jams arose the early country music advanced by pioneers such as the Carter Family, the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers and other pickin' families. By the late 1960s, just after the first wave of rock & roll, Southern rock blossomed across the region. The Allman Brothers, pioneers of the new sound, brought with them a renewed emphasis on kinship. The Allmans viewed their entire act, from the musicians down to the managers and groupies, as part of a collective family.

Groups like the Marshall Tucker Band, the Charlie Daniels Band, Wet Willie and Lynyrd Skynyrd followed, and although lacking actual blood relation, they picked up on the familial vibe. Following in the footsteps of Charlie Pool and the North Carolina ramblers, the Allmans challenged racial attitudes of their time, playing mixed-race music and traveling across the segregated South as a mixed-race family of musicians.

Scott Avett of rock-influenced string band the Avett Brothers thinks race was a factor in creating Southern rock's solidarity. "All those guys getting in a big car and touring around like we do now, in a little bit more of a primitive way, I imagine a lot more trouble went down," says Avett. "There were probably more boundaries that needed to be crossed. That made them closer. It comes across in the music."

There is a special warmth, Avett says, among Southerners. "The South probably does produce some of that vibe, whether they're an actual family or not," he says. "Maybe it's because there's more empty country, more space, I'm not really sure why."

To the Avetts' third member, nonbrother Bob Crawford, playing at the big, family-like bluegrass and Americana event Merlefest, held each year in the Carolina mountain town of Wilkesboro, was a life-changing, inspirational event. "Everyone was real friendly," Crawford says. "The whole vibe of the day was just awesome."

The Reverend don Degrate knows about awesome, life-changing, inspirational phenomena. He's made more than 80 albums of music in his career, although none have hit the pop charts. Degrate is a gospel artist who is recognized on the streets of Charlotte almost every day. And yet, to the mainstream music world, he's most famous for his offspring, Devante and Dalvin Degrate -- one-half of the early-1990s R&B outfit Jodeci.

One of the biggest acts ever to come out of the Queen City, Jodeci exploded onto the music scene with their 1991 debut, Forever My Lady. The album shot to No. 1 on Billboard's R&B/hip-hop chart and No. 18 on the regular pop chart, and it produced three No. 1 singles, including the sexy romantic ballad "Come and Talk to Me." The Degrate brothers, along with brothers Cedric "K-Ci" and Joel "JoJo" Hailey, were instantly at the forefront of pop music. Today the group is cemented in the public zeitgeist as a raunchier version of Boyz II Men.

Considering the religious upbringing of the two pairs of brothers, Jodeci's leap of lasciviousness was shocking. When the band was still based in Charlotte, the Rev. Degrate remembers girls waiting outside his sons' house for hours if they weren't home. They would make lewd comments, even though some of the girls knew Degrate was a minister.

"When I was young, a girl made you beg for it, no matter what," the reverend says. "These girls would do it anyway you wanted. Up. Down. Front. Back. In. Out."

"People called them the black Beatles," says brother Derek Degrate, who never strayed from Christian music and is in the process of making a contemporary Christian album entitled The Other Brother. The other brother has been asked a million times if he would have joined Jodeci had he been offered the chance. He says no. "God put me here to be a light for them," says Derek. Whenever his brothers have a spiritual question, they go to him for the answer. And his presence at parties tempers their wild behavior, he says.

Derek is not always around, and his brothers' wild behavior is not always tempered. The reverend stiffens up on that subject. Jodeci's had more than a few run-ins with trouble, including an alleged sexual assault. The group has been saying they plan to reunite; Jodeci's last album was 1995's The Show, The After Party, The Hotel. K-Ci & JoJo went on to enjoy success as a duo, but Devante's behavior is rumored to be the big factor preventing a full reunion.

"A great many pressures come with being famous," says therapist and performance coach Towle. "Stars are constantly getting intoxicated with the adoration of external validation. Anyone who is revered has a bigger sense of themselves than they ought to because the reverence is coming not from who they are but from what they do. Fame can't make your boogie men go away."

Out of this distorted sense of self-worth, normal personalities cease to grow, says Towle. Celebrities often turn to sources of immediate gratification to fill the void: alcohol, drugs, sex. Their behavior is not only permitted by society, but it is almost expected. "You don't see businessmen at conventions throwing chairs out the window or trashing their hotel rooms," Towle points out.

The content of the music, Towle believes, attracts specific kinds of people.

"Different genres have different voices that speak to different issues," says Towle. "Heavy metal speaks to the pain and the angst of life. There are certain things if you look at the different genres of music, you can figure out what kind of personality would be drawn into that kind of music." Critics of some contemporary R&B and hip-hop often point to the vapid lyrics and gratification-seeking content.

Fame doesn't corrupt every celebrity. Towle has worked with some stars who successfully maintain a healthy perspective and use their fame to improve society. Former Rage Against the Machine and current Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, for example, constantly undertakes projects such as fighting against poverty and advocating for social justice.

The Barnettes have not quite reached Morello's level of fame, but the family band's December schedule looks as if they are more interested in winning Humanitarians of the Year than a Grammy. On the 19th, The Barnettes played at Children's Hospital and on the 20th they played two shows at the Barium Springs home for Children. The siblings were bummed out when a women's shelter didn't return their calls about playing a free show there, too.

The day before the Barnettes were to head to Atlanta for the audition, they got a call from Mallet Records. The company cancelled the audition, citing an unspecified emergency, and did not reschedule. Kristen and Rufus had already skipped school in preparation for the mid-week audition. But the band wasn't terribly disappointed. Elesha admits the label handled the siblings unprofessionally.

"We got a new song with a whole new sound that we really like," she says. They also discovered a new method of songwriting. In every other song the Barnettes have written to date, Elesha and Adrienne compose and record the music and then give Kristen and Rufus a CD to take back to school, where they add the keyboard and drum parts. Since Caribbean music is a more beat-driven sound, they reversed the chain of events for the new song: Rufus and Kristen collaborated to give the song its drums-and-bass core.

Mallet Records had expressed interest in changing the band's name from the Barnettes, implying that the company didn't want to promote the blood ties. The Barnettes believe their cross-generational family appeal is their most marketable asset. At the September music conference, they wowed a crowd of mostly hip-hop artists. Earlier that same day, at ImagineOn, they got kids and parents dancing and singing along to their music. In January, the band will perform to a college crowd at UNC Charlotte. But the family image is risky: In the current R&B world, a clean, family appeal is unheard of.

On a recent trip to the supermarket with her mother, Elesha was dressed down in scrubs. Across the checkout line, a shopper stared at Elesha and she sensed the stranger recognized her.

"My mom wants me to get dressed up now whenever I go out," says Elesha. But Rufus disagrees. "That's not right. You should be able to dress however you want."

A family will always be a family, rock stars or not.

 

Romanowski: A candid look at a wild player

Michael David Smith / FootballOutsiders.com

Romanowski: A candid look at a wild player

Michael David Smith / FootballOutsiders.com

Bill Romanowski made a career out of hitting opponents and made controversy by hitting teammates. But his new book, "Romo, My Life on the Edge: Living Dreams and Slaying Dragons" reveals a more cerebral man than most fans might expect.

Romanowski's workout habits are legendary. But few fans know that what first inspired him to become a workout warrior was a Sports Illustrated article about Herschel Walker. After reading about Walker's workout routine of pushups, situps, and sprints, Romanowski copied it. And throughout his career Romanowski continued to study every piece of literature he could find on health, fitness and nutrition in a constant attempt to gain new insight that could help him achieve peak performance on the field and recuperate quickly off it.

Some say Romanowski stepped over the line in his pursuit of peak fitness. He acknowledges that he took THG, supplied to him by BALCO founder Victor Conte, who has been the subject of a lengthy government steroid investigation and who will serve four months in jail after making a plea deal with prosecutors. Romanowski was acquitted in 2001 of charges that he illegally used friends and his wife to obtain the prescription drug Phentermine. And after the acquittal, prosecutors dropped charges against his wife.

The book details many of Romanowski's most controversial moments: On the practice field, Romanowski once punched teammate Marcus Williams so hard that he broke Williams' orbital bone. Williams never played again, sued Romanowski, and eventually received a $415,000 settlement from him. In an exhibition game with the Carolina Panthers, Romanowski nailed Kerry Collins with the crown of his helmet, breaking Collins' jaw. The NFL fined Romanowski $20,000. At the bottom of a pileup, Romanowski once grabbed running back Dave Meggett's finger, pulled back, and broke it. And Monday Night Football cameras caught Romanowski spitting in the face of 49ers wide receiver J.J. Stokes.

"Romo" (co-written with the NFL Network's Adam Schefter and Romanowski's performance coach, Phil Towle) deals with his playing career from high school to retirement, but it also explores his relationship with his wife and children.

I spoke with Romanowski recently for an Q&A that covered his public image, his private self and all the ins and outs of his 16 years in the NFL. From steroids and supplements, to fights and broken bones, to his influences and the seemingly fanatical drive that has gotten him into trouble at times, nothing was out of bounds.

In 20 years, if NFL Films does a Bill Romanowski special, what do you think people will say about you?

It's a guy who every Sunday left it out on the field. It's a guy who played with a very high intensity level. It's a guy who played 243 straight games, not counting playoff games, and never missed a game. This is a guy that wherever he went, winning followed him.

Do you think you deserve to be elected to the Hall of Fame?

I think I do. I've done something that no one in the history of the game has done, as far as a linebacker, to play that kind of position and never miss a game. I never thought about it that much while I was doing it, I was just caught up in slaying the next dragon getting ready for the next game, the next season, the next workout, the next training camp. I really never sat down and thought, "This is pretty unbelievable, what I've accomplished."

And do you think you will be elected to the Hall of Fame?

That one's completely out of my control. I just went out there and gave it everything I had for 16 years. If the writers think I belong, they'll put me there.

You wrote that you've grown through therapy and self-reflection. What exactly was that like?

Whenever you start taking a look at yourself, it's not easy. For me, the self-reflection of looking back and kind of analyzing each and every thing you've done, that part wasn't easy. It was therapeutic in so many ways. To write this book, a lot of people say, when I hear sportswriters talk about "Why did you write this book?" people say, "You just did that to make a bunch of money." No. That isn't why I wrote the book.

This whole process has really been a good process for me and my growth, moving forward as a person. The NFL was really, really hard. To play in the National Football League for 16 years and I didn't realize all the things I was doing to myself while I was doing it. I think the therapy, the self-reflection, even now, I've hired a performance coach. When you're in the NFL my approach was always take care of your weakest links. When you address your weakest links it just makes you that much stronger. And that's what therapy and performance coaching and self-reflection has done for me. It's about reflecting on what I've done and what I think about what I've done and having someone analyze it for me, and for me it's just about being my best.

When you talk about how hard the NFL was, are you thinking about the concussions, the physical toll, or was there more to it?

There was the physical toll, there was the mental; it was a heck of a ride. For me, I never took a deep breath. I never sat back and said, "What is this all about? What do I like about what I'm doing, what don't I like?" I was just so caught up in what I had to do next. There was never a time for me to sit back and relax and maybe analyze what was going on. Looking back, I think if I would've done that it would've been good for me.

I'd like to ask about some of your former teammates. What was Doug Flutie like as a college teammate?

Doug Flutie was an unbelievable leader. He was a guy who when he was on the field, you thought you were going to win. And over and over again that's what he proved, that he was a winner. I just remember the games he was in, all the great plays that he made. It was more than the plays, it was just that when he was out on the field, there was a certain confidence that the team had that you were going to win the football game.

Are you amazed he's still in the league?

Absolutely. It's awesome.

He was three years ahead of you?

He was a senior when I was a freshman.

You write about how much you admired Herschel Walker growing up. Did you continue to admire him when you played with him in Philadelphia?

Absolutely. He was an awesome teammate. For me he was a guy that had an enormous impact on my life. Reading that article about him and what he did each and every night, that's what I did. That's how I got to where I am now, is by, as a high school kid dreaming about making it to the NFL, making it to college, getting a scholarship, that was truly how it all began.

You emulated Herschel's workout routine, but Herschel was always known as a quiet, reserved person. Were the two of you very different in terms of personality?

I don't really know Herschel Walker that well as a person to comment on that. He was a great teammate.

Your fight in practice with Marcus Williams wasn't an isolated incident:you got into practice fights with Fred McCrary, Bubba Paris, even Jerry Rice. Why would you get in a fight with a teammate in practice?

Why would I get into a fight? You make it sound like I tried to get into a fight in some way.

And that's not the case?

Well, I played football for 16 years. It's a very violent sport. You get into training camp where there's fights that happen every day on the practice field. This was a day when two days earlier we got our butts kicked by the Minnesota Vikings, and the coaches were really amped up, really pushing us. I had had a concussion, I was pretty irritable, and I got pushed in the back after this one play and I retaliated.

Have you seen the television interviews Marcus Williams has done?

Very few.

He seems like he's still angry with you. Do you think he's justified?

Is he justified for being angry? You know what, I can't really comment on him or his anger and what his issues are. I know we got in a fight in training camp. We went through a long court case. You know, he pushed me in the back, we got in a fight, we grabbed each other's facemasks, he swung at me, I swung at him, and right before I connected his helmet came off and it was a split second. Looking back on it I wish it didn't happen. I wish after he pushed me in the back I would've just walked back to the huddle and said, "I'll get you on the next play."

You wrote in the book that you screamed at Kordell Stewart, "You dumb s---. You're one of the dumbest guys I've ever played against." Why would you talk to an opponent, Kordell Stewart or anyone else, like that?

To try to get them out of their game. There's stuff that happens each and every play out on a football field. Guys trying to say things like that to me every play to try to get me out of my game. There's a lot of verbal warfare out on a football field. I tried to do whatever I could do to get somebody out of their game.

What about Kerry Collins? Are you proud of the hit that broke his jaw?

It was a good hit.

So you shouldn't have gotten fined?

I'm not saying I shouldn't have gotten fined, I'm just saying the way it worked out, right before contact he turned into me, it's just one of those..you hate to see a guy get hurt out on the football field. I would never, ever want to see a guy get hurt. But as far as just the actual football hit, the way it happened, it was a good hit. It was one of those kind of hits that gets everybody fired up out on the football field. But the fact that he got hurt is very unfortunate. You hate to see that happen.

You mention breaking Dave Meggett's finger intentionally. Do you have remorse for that? Have you ever apologized to him?

Absolutely. At the bottom of the pile, I'm reaching down and I'm trying to rip the ball out of his hand. In that process I got hold of a finger and just yanked. It's one of those things that shouldn't happen out on a football field. It just doesn't belong.

Have you ever talked to Dave Meggett since then?

I haven't.

Would you apologize to him?

Absolutely.

You felt that the NFL was hypocritical because they promote violence and then at the same time you were fined.

They do promote violence. You see the hits. What you see on TV, the big-hit videos, Crunch Course, you've seen those over the years, they've made a lot of money on those. If there weren't big hits out there and it wasn't as violent a game as it is, I don't think there would be the people filling the stands every week. People enjoy seeing that.

Were you able to confine your anger to the field or do you also have times in your personal life where you're kind of an angry person?

No, I'm a pretty easy-going guy.

So you can turn it on and off?

For me, the game of football is a violent sport. Playing at a very high level of intensity, that line between rage and intensity and violence those are all thin lines that as I've said many times, when passion was driving me, great things happened to me out on the football field. When fear was driving me I went over that line.

Why was fear different from passion?

Fear is something that I was scared of losing my job every day in the NFL. For 16 years I don't think I ever lost that. And I had coaches teaching me, training me to hit people as hard as I possibly could. I think there's a very thin line between a great football hit and one that is a dirty hit. I think that's a very thin line.

Ex-players who become TV analysts usually aren't really critical of their fellow players. But Dan Marino of CBS called you "sad," Mike Ditka said most of your greatest hits were "from behind, out of bounds or after the whistle." And Shannon Sharpe said you didn't play because you were talented, you played because you cheated the system. How do you respond to guys like that?

It's their opinion. Mike Ditka, I didn't play for Mike Ditka. Mike Ditka had a lot of success in the NFL and I think if all my good hits were just hits out of bounds I don't think I would've lasted 16 years and started as many games as I started and played for as many great teams as I did. And as far as Shannon Sharpe, he said he'll go to his grave saying that I tried to hurt him.

And you didn't?

No, I didn't try to hurt him.

Let's turn now to steroids. What percentage of NFL players do you think use steroids?

I think it's zero.

Really?

Yeah.

What makes you think it's zero?

I have no idea what guys do. So as far as I'm concerned it's zero.

You got THG from BALCO beginning in 2001?

Yeah.

Is THG the only steroid you ever used?

THG is still to this day they don't know if it's an anabolic steroid. I wrote about what I wrote about in the book. This book isn't a tell-all book, it's a tell-why book. It's why I did what I did.

Has our society become overly obsessed with steroids?

I think it's a great thing. I think it's something that was supposed to happen and it did. It's forced many families to talk about these issues with their sons and daughters. It's forced organizations to bring much stricter policies like the policy that the NFL has had in place. So I think for a lot of reasons it's been very positive as far as bringing the awareness out in the open.

What is the distinction between steroids and supplements? What's the line between what's OK to take and what's not OK to take?

That's a tough one. When I decided to take this substance (THG) I didn't know exactly what it was. I knew I was pushing the line but I didn't know exactly what I was taking. I just knew it was not on the NFL banned list and I knew I would not test positive. What I should've asked myself is, "Is this right or wrong?" I didn't ask that. I was trying to get a couple more years out of my body. I was trying to do things to handle the pain and to handle the trauma that I was going through every Sunday.

Do any of the substances you have taken, be it THG, any supplement, anything, do you feel like they have a psychological effect?

Absolutely. I think at the end of the day it was more psychological than anything. What was the most effective thing for me was my work ethic. I was willing to work harder than anybody else, no questions asked and at the end of the day I could rely on that. And still to this day I don't know if I got much out of (THG).

And that's part of that self-reflection. That's part of the therapy, that's part of looking back on things, is, "Was it worth it?" Another thing is, just in general, supplementation is great. Athletes do not get what we need out of our food. So for anybody to say, "Just eat three good meals a day you'll be fine," well, no you won't be fine. I know this. For I don't know how many years I was given as much Vioxx as I wanted to take, which are an anti-inflammatory which are now pulled and not given out anymore because of heart and liver conditions. But it was fine to take those medications.

And was that team doctors giving you Vioxx?

Yes.

The incident with J.J. Stokes everyone knows about, but a lot of people don't know that a couple plays before that, you were called for unnecessary roughness for hitting Steve Young, and right before you spat in Stokes' face you wrote in the book that you grabbed his testicles in a pileup. What was going on with you on that particular day?

I was playing my old team. Playing a team that got rid of me. Playing a team that didn't think I was good enough. And I think whenever I played against my old team, we were playing in Candlestick which is where I played for six years and had many great memories, it was just that extra motivation to go out there and kick ass.

Another former teammate I wanted to ask you about who you mentioned briefly is Martin Harrison. He claims that you used the "N" word when referring to black teammates. You say it didn't happen.

Right. I have an African-American nephew. That is absolutely not who I am...It's hard for me to comment on because it's made up.

With the Stokes incident, you wrote, "that hurt more than anything, that someone would think my actions were racially motivated."

There was stuff going on in the locker room in Denver, and finally during a team meeting John Elway got up in front of the team and said, "This guy has done about everything but get down on his hands and knees. Let's put this behind us and play football."

You seem like you admire John Elway a lot.

I have a lot of admiration for John. John's one of the best football players I've ever played with.

People have said he might he might run for Congress some day. Do you think that's a possibility?

I don't know if that's a possibility. I don't know if that's something, if John's into politics or if he wants to go in that direction. If he does it I'm sure he'll do it very well.

Are you interested in politics?

No.

Are you a Democrat or Republican?

Republican.

What did you think of the fact that President Bush mentioned steroids in his State of the Union and that Congress has had hearings? Is that a good thing?

I think the awareness has been a very good thing for our society.

Do you think you might be called to testify?

If I am called and they want to talk with me, they'll definitely talk with someone that has a lot of knowledge about the subject and someone that is not going to get up there and plead the Fifth and do some of the other things that have been done in front of Congress.

With the substances you talk about, supplements, THG, it sounds like your biggest regret is that you got your wife and friends involved with Phentermine prescriptions. Do you have other regrets along those lines?

Absolutely. I have regrets on taking THG. I wish I would have asked the question of right and wrong vs. pushing the edge vs. legal or illegal, something that is or is not on the banned list. If you look at it that way, everything I did was above; there were no problems with what I was doing. But morally and ethically, right and wrong, I should've known that I was pushing the envelope and I shouldn't have taken it.

With supplements you tried everything from vitamins, minerals, enzymes and amino acids.

I still to this day am a huge advocate of supplementation. Supplementation is phenomenal. I'm still very much involved in the industry. I've come out with my own line. When I had all my concussions I went around to the different specialists in the country and you know what they told me? "There's nothing you can do." That doesn't work for me. So I hired a sports scientist and together we came up with a bunch of ingredients that would really help the brain handle trauma and help it function better.

I started taking it, and I got such good results that I decided to name it and start a supplement company around it. So I started a supplement company called Pure Romo Nutrition and the product that I came out with for the brain is called Neuropath. And I've had an enormous amount of people that have really enjoyed the product and are getting great results from it. It's one of those things where I took a negative and turned it into a positive.

I think of all the things you mentioned the one that is seemingly the most bizarre is that you actually considered drinking urine until your wife talked you out of it.

Well, she didn't talk me out of it, we just talked about it, and bottom line, it was just something that...everything I ever thought about doing I researched. I consulted with specialists, consulted with doctors, nutritionists, you name it. And that was one that a lot of cultures for thousands of years have been doing this. I decided at the end of the day that I don't think this one's going to work for me.

This isn't in your book at all, but it's making news in the sports world right now. Sheryl Swoopes of the WNBA recently revealed that she's gay. How would you have reacted if a teammate had told you he was gay?

I think if someone in the locker room would come out and say that, they would probably catch a lot of..I don't even know what you would call it, but I think it would be hard in a locker room environment.

Me personally, how I feel about that, is these are human beings. They're loving, caring human beings that have a certain sexual preference that ..who am I to judge? With what I've gone through in my life and the mistakes that I've made and things that happened to me, I truly try not to judge anybody by how they feel and what their sexual preference is. I actually had a trainer in San Francisco that was gay. There was a big article that came out about it...and he was a very good man. A great trainer, a good man, and very good at what he did. I can honestly say every injury he ever diagnosed of mine, or helped me get over, he was right on.

Back to your teammates, you mentioned that you seemed to admire Matt Millen a lot. Are you surprised that he hasn't been able to turn the Detroit Lions around?

Sometimes it takes a little longer. I think Matt's a very talented guy. It would be one thing if that was something Matt had done from the time he got finished with football, but to just leave from broadcasting and go into being a general manager I think the job was probably a little more difficult than he thought.

How much football do you watch on TV?

I watch a good bit. I'm a fan.

Are you rooting for your old teams or your old teammates?

I like to watch the Raiders and the Broncos. I still have guys that I played with on those teams that I like to see do well.

What do you think of Tedy Bruschi's decision to play so soon after suffering a stroke?

I think it's awesome. And he's an inspiration. It was very clear, I watched some of his press conference after the game and you know what? He's a football player, and he consulted with his doctors, and he decided, "I'm going to do what I want to do. And this is my livelihood and this is what I love and I've always loved to do and I'm going to continue to do it."

I think it was pretty inspirational. I think there's a lot of people who think he's crazy, but I've played the game, I know what kind of high you get running out on that field and being able to do what you love to do. I know what that feels like. It's one of those situations where we'll never know if he's doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but for him, this is what's right for him.

Are concussions a more serious problem than the league wants to admit?

Absolutely.

What should the league do about concussions?

What can you do? I think when guys get concussed, and there are so many more concussions that go undiagnosed, bottom line, when you strike someone, even with a helmet on, your brain is getting concussed. It's not good, this is just my belief, that it's not good for your brain. Would I do it all over again? Yes. Would I have played football again? Yes. But the trauma is hard on your brain.

You wrote that while you were under contract with the Eagles, Mike Shanahan told you he wanted you on the Broncos, and when you were under contract with the Broncos, Jon Gruden told your agent he wanted you on the Raiders. Are those things allowed, is tampering…

I think it's a little different than that. Mike Shanahan was someone that I was close with. I used to have conversations in the weight room when he coached in San Francisco. We used to be down in the weight room working out together and he'd be someone I would talk to, so after the game he said, "Romo, you're playing great. Let's talk after the season." You can look into that and say, "What did that mean? Did it mean let's just talk, did it mean I want to sign you?" That could mean whatever you want it to mean.

Joe Vitt, your position coach in Philly, once told you he loved you.

He's a great man.

You must be rooting for him in St. Louis.

Absolutely. He's a great man.

Another coach was Ray Rhodes, your defensive coordinator in San Francisco and Denver and your head coach in Philadelphia, and you were gone from all three places pretty quickly after he arrived. Was there something about your relationship that he didn't want you around?

I don't think Ray was ever in the position to make those kinds of decisions. Whether he had influence or not, I don't know. A couple of weeks ago I actually talked to Ray.

Are you two friends?

I would say so. I root for him, I hope he does well. I actually sent him some of my product to help him get over his stroke.

You mention Barret Robbins but you don't really say what you thought of that whole incident (when Robbins left the Oakland Raiders on the eve of the Super Bowl). What is your opinion of Barret Robbins?

Barret was a good teammate. He was a good football player that got into trouble.

Were you angry with him?

 

 

No. I wasn't angry with him. Once again, who am I to judge?

I thought this was kind of funny: Bubby Brister once offered to help Randall Cunningham work on his reads, and Cunningham replied, "The Lord will help me with my reads." What kind of influence was religion in locker rooms generally, and did you have a lot of guys who made comments like that or was Randall one of a kind?

I don't think a lot of guys made comments like that. For me it's no disrespect to God, the Lord. It's a great thing. But I felt that was just something that I would write about. Bubby's a great man. He's one of the best teammates you could ever have. I remember him telling me that and Bubby was always a guy that wanted to help and he wanted to help Randall.

Would you want your son to play in the NFL?

Absolutely.

 

 

Metallica vs. The Monster

Edward Douglas / Comingsoon.net

Metallica vs. The Monster

Edward Douglas

Comingsoon.net

July 9, 2004

For the last twenty-three years, Metallica has become known as one of the hardest rocking metal bands in the world, influencing many other bands over their amazing career. On July 9, they make the transition to film stars of sorts, when they appear in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the latest documentary from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky that looks at three turbulent years in the band's career where they dealt with the emotional and creative conflicts that cropped up while making their latest album, "St. Anger".

ComingSoon.net talked to the band-singer James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett-about their lengthy career, their decision to make the movie and the effects the movie on their personal lives, including Hetfield's stint in rehab.

CS!: Can you talk a bit about the genesis of the film and how it came to be made?

Lars: Our relationship with Joe and Bruce goes back to Paradise Lost, where we gave them access to our catalog for their film. We've always talked about maybe working together one day, and in one of those roundabout kind of ways, this whole thing started happening. We had a 30-second handshake deal that went " Film whatever you want. When someone tells you to turn the cameras off, you turn them off. And when it's all said and done, we'll figure out what the f*ck to do with all this footage." That was literally the extent of it.

Kirk: The movie started out as a promotional film. As we were shooting, we had no idea that it would ever become a full-length documentary. It kind of just ended up that way. We had no idea it was heading in that direction, so we were just totally casual with it. I also think that's why it's so intimate and there's so much honesty.

CS!: At what point did you realize that what you had was something far more than a promotional film?

Kirk: After the sequence of events that happened, we realized that we had more than just a promotional film, and we made the decision to keep the cameras rolling no matter what happened. We trusted Joe and Bruce as filmmakers to give them full reign.

Lars: Over the course of the next couple years, Joe and Bruce realized that they had what they considered to be a very unique film with a very strong dramatic thread going through it. The record company was sitting there, saying that they could turn this into 30-minute segments on VH1 for their version of the Osbournes. When I started hearing stuff like that, I got scared sh*tless. I talked to the rest of the band and it was decided that we had to buy this back, so we can give it to Joe and Bruce and let them fulfill their vision.

Kirk: The actual point up to James leaving to rehab was there, and that's stuff that goes a little bit deeper than your average TV reality show. At that point, we just had to trust Joe and Bruce and see where it all went. We didn't really want it to become trivialized.

CS!: Have you seen the movie a few times, and is it hard to watch some of the stuff that went down now and is there anything you'd want to take out?

Kirk: More than a few. I'm in the double digits now. There are certain things that I can definitely do without, but then I realize that the movie would not be as truthful and the storyline would probably have been affected on a certain level. I had to come to terms with that and come to peace with the fact that we have to leave those parts in even though they're difficult for me, because it would affect the overall message. I really believe in the message of this film, which is all about communication.

James: One of the things I learned in rehab was that if you're in a situation that you think you need to control, just step out of it and look at it as if you were another person. This is excellent for that. Being able to see yourself run out and slam a door, and see the things you don't like about yourself and want to edit out of the film. You know you need them in there. Things you want to take out need to stay in.

CS!: Did you have any regrets about the cameras being there?

James: I'm a control freak, remember? I wanted to change my perception of how I am. I don't want to be the whiny teenager, and the best way for me to do that is to see it and keep seeing it, and do it different. Everyone went through that phase. I remember Kirk saying "I want to take that part out. I look very indecisive. I'm not very indecisive, am I?" It was very revealing.

CS!: When James entered rehab and didn't return for ten months, were you feeling that this was the end of the band?

Lars: When James went away and I didn't hear anything for months and months, I didn't view it as his decision alone to whether the band was going to continue or not. When he came back, I was very scared that it would be conditional. I'm not a great guy with rules and I'm not great when it becomes conditional, because I think it loses some purity. I was going to stick it out and just see where it was going to go. For a while there, it looked pretty grim from where I was. When James came back, we spent three or four months just talking before we even played a note of music and in that time, we seemed to get enough on the same page to at least give it another go around. As you see in the movie, it has a happening ending. I love movies with happy endings!

Kirk: When James went off to rehab, we decided to keep the cameras rolling, because we really didn't have anything else to film except maybe the demise of the band.

CS!: The movie doesn't cover your time in rehab, James, but what was going through your hell at that time?

James: : Well, why didn't the cameras follow me? Maybe because I couldn't recover with that around. I had to unplug from the band and from my family. It was just like going into a little cocoon, and it was difficult for me. I used the excuse of my celebrity to not get the help I needed, but something needed to happen. I probably did it for my wife and my kids, but eventually ended up doing it for myself.

CS!: It must have been difficult for the other guys to not know what was happening with you and what you were going through.

Lars: Where I come from, with my upbringing and the values in Denmark, it's about being respectful to other people. It was fine that James was away doing his thing, but just let us know what the f*ck you're thinking. I didn't have a conversation with him for four months. That's kind of difficult for a guy like me. Literally, he just showed up at the studio one day, walked in the room, sat us down for five minutes, and said "I'm going away to rehab. I'll be back in five weeks." And then he walked back out the door, and then he came back ten months later. It was just a bit odd.

James: I see how difficult it was for the guys not knowing what was going on in there. It might have seemed selfish, but for it to happen, that's what had to happen. I couldn't care take them and their path on it. I really had to do this for me. It was a college for my soul, and it felt like I got some instructions on how to do life. I tried myself and was not doing too good.

CS!: The film's most telling scenes are the therapy sequences with the band working through their problems with their therapist, Phil Towle. What was your attitude on his involvement in the project?

James: There's a part of me that when I see an older man that I respect or can teach me things, it's automatically like a father figure to me. A lot of the things that I didn't learn from my dad, I'm still seeking, and then Phil showed up.

Kirk: I think he had a big impact on us as people. Phil was important and instrumental in us staying together, and he gave us a lot of tools to be able to communicate with each other. For instance, after James got out of rehab, we didn't feel very connected with him because he was a completely different person. It was not the James Hetfield we were used to dealing with, so Phil helped us reconnect with the new James Hetfield. If it wasn't for Phil Towle, I probably wouldn't be here now talking to you guys. I think he really saved the band.

Lars: If Phil did not save the band, then he helped saved the band, but it was also our willingness to go there. In order to go through this, you have to be open to it. We were just the right combination of people and personalities at a time in both our career and lives where we were ready to explore some of this stuff. Not just for the survival of the band, but also, for our own sanities.

James: My perception changed after I started to see how invasive it was. Phil started handing me lyrics, and I thought that I'd better take this and use it. Later on, [producer Bob Rock] asked "Why is he contributing?" I went from being completely shut off from everyone to being completely open and I belong somewhere in the middle. There's a pretty revealing scene in the movie where we're trying to tell Phil that we're ready to fly and crash on our own, and then his issues start to show up, but even after that, I respected him even more, because he's human. Phil struggles with how he's perceived in the movie.

CS!: Are any of you worried that your own images might be softened too much by how you're portrayed in the movie?

James: People know us as the crazy rock idols, and I think this film shows us in another extreme, as the struggling humans. And somewhere in the middle, is us.

Kirk: If anything, there's a lot of power in the truth. I don't think you can dispute that this movie is a very truthful depiction of who we are.

CS!: Are you worried about a fan backlash about how you're portrayed in the film?

 

Kirk: I don't know and at this point, I just don't care. We are who we are, and that is us! It doesn't get any more honest or truthful. If anyone has a problem with that, then they're just chasing some mythology or fantasy of who they want us to be. If we're not, then that is their problem, not ours. If you don't like it, read a book or something.

CS!: How have things been on the road since the film wrapped?

James: Things are going pretty well, and we are treating situations differently. We're not sitting around the table every morning asking how we're feeling--that would drive anyone insane!--but it's good to check in with each other, and we'd never do that before. Touring has been fun in a different way. Not BS fun, where we all go out and get drunk and end up in a gutter, but it's been fun like "we're on stage together and this moment is awesome! We're all in the moment together!"

Lars: There's so much less tension, and we're enjoying what we're doing more. If someone f*cks up, we don't come off stage and point fingers. We just sit there and go "That was an interesting variation on the norm" and then we laugh. It's very relaxed, and it's a lot more human than it's been. It took us a while to get there, but we're kind of enjoying being humans and having fun with it.

CS!: Considering some of the problems, what has kept the band together all these years and kept you on such a high level?

Lars: It's not definable in a single sound bite. It's a bunch of things. It's the chemistry between the people, but it's also some level of X-Factor that you just can't put any definition on. I think it's almost a perverse fear of repeating oneself creatively and always trying to go different places. We always try to hover in our own space, do our own thing, and keep all other entities really far away from us. I really feel that we've always been loners. Metallica is its own thing and we're not really part of a scene or part of the music business.

James: Yeah, I know that magic happens when we get together. When we're playing on stage and when we're all firing on all cylinders, it's amazing. After connecting, it's never felt better. As a band, we've gone through so much stuff behind the scenes. The movie is really framed to be able to just say, "Here. Check it out. Here is the other part of us that makes this work."

Lars: I think that's a big part of the fact that we've been able to survive while so many of the other bands that were our peers have not. In times of need, when you really need to step it up, we sidestepped our own individual needs and prioritized Metallica as a collective. We all hold Metallica in such high regard that we're willing to sacrifice some individual things to make Metallica the best that it could be. I think a lot of the other bands coming out of the 80s, they didn't do that. It was more about the individual than the collective and for us, it's been the opposite.

CS!:Kirk, as someone who joined Metallica years after it was formed by Lars and James, how did you handle the tension between them?

Kirk: It's something that I've been dealing with ever since I joined the band. It's just that with the film, now is the first time that anyone has seen me in that position, which I was thrown into, because people were either too intimidated or too sycophantic to just step up and separate those guys.

CS!:Considering your career and the influence you have had on so many other bands, where do you see yourself in the scheme of things? Do you see yourselves on the level as a Led Zeppelin or an Aerosmith or Jimi Hendrix?

 

Lars: Obviously, we're aware of that, but it's not something we walk around and embrace on a daily basis. I guess I'm scared of thinking that way, because I'm scared that it will affect what we do.

James: I recognize the contribution we've made. We've made this our life's work, and this is our passion. And those bands you've mentioned, some of them are still around and some aren't. I'm glad that we can continue and hear those things. I don't think Led Zeppelin was ever asked that, because their careers have been so short.

Lars: When I sit down and think of who our peers are, I don't think of Aerosmith, AC/DC and Van Halen. I think our peers are Korn and System of a Down and Audioslave. We always maybe look to the guys that are a little younger rather than the guys that are a little older, just to keep it fresh to us.

Kirk: Those guitarists are such big influences on my own playing that it's hard for me to see myself on that level. If other people want to see me in that light, I guess it's flattering, but to me, I just want to become a better musician.

Lars: This year, after going through what we went through for those three years, we've been a little more receptive to that kind of praise. It's nice when the MTVs of the world call you up, and they want to put you on four thrones and have all these bands that you consider to be your peers pay tribute to you. That kind of stuff is awesome.

James: Our career has been very long and we're just grateful to still be doing it after 22 years. We're not done.

Lars: This has probably been the greatest year of Metallica's career, and then to be able to cap it off with this f*cking thing is pretty cool.