Things I made while offline: Metallica

Because this blog will be dominated by football-related content for the next five months, your author has decided to make an effort to regularly post pictures his lovely and talented sister took of some of his artwork. These posts will include a brief thought or two about when the piece was made. 

This week: Ink and permanent marker piece of the band Metallica

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT: I drew this in February 1996, which would be a few months before I graduated high school. But what doesn't come through in the photo very well and what I'm of course proudest of (I recall seeing this portrait done up by a number of other aspiring artists in high school, so there's little unique about it on its own) is that I got all four of the band members to sign it a year later when I saw Metallica in concert. I joined the band's fan club shortly after they released "Load" and announced they'd be going on tour. The catch with backstage passes was that they would be given out based upon seniority in the fan club and the demand for passes at the venue you chose (you were asked to rank your three top choices). I figured that most anybody in the Chicago area would be going to one of the shows the band put on at the then-Rosemont Horizon (now known as the Allstate Arena), and so my first choice thus became The Mark of the Quad Cities (later renamed the i wireless Center) in Moline, Illinois.

Since that location was basically in Iowa (it's only a three-hour drive!), I indeed did manage to get my backstage passes. We had all been warned that the catch to the passes was that we were not guaranteed we would meet all—possibly even any—of the band members. And those first 10 or so minutes were tense when we all stood in a line, wondering what the hell else the band could be doing in Moline-fucking-Illinois.

Sure enough, we were fortunate enough to have all four guys eventually drop in. The gentleman next to me in line agreed to snap pictures of the band signing my sketchbook/my shirt with my disposable camera if I did the same for him with his. While he barely managed to get the band members in each photo (and my eyes didn't make it into any of the four), here's what he did get:

James Hetfield pretended to stab me with a marker

We were warned that Jason Newsted hates camera flashes

This Kirk Hammett photo was blurry to begin with—the water damage over time doesn't help

Lars Ulrich left shortly after this because his new wife called (he did come back)

WHAT STILL KINDA BUGS ME ABOUT IT: Well first off, let me 'fess up that I did do a little toying with the contrast on that main photo featured above, but the original shot I received doesn't make it look as dark as the actual piece really is. But just to be fair here, this what that original shot I was sent looked like:

I changed my mind and now have the original photo up above the jump. But just so you can see what the cleaned-up version I toyed with looks like:

Now in both versions, you can only really see James' signature. I had brought a gold pen for the guys to use so the signatures would really stand out, but all four entered the room with black Sharpies already in hand. Only Jason took my gold pen, and you can hardly see it in these photos unless I crop out everybody else:

It really is more obvious when you've got the actual sketchbook in front of you.

And while Hetfield at least signed over a white area, Kirk signed over the black with black. I traced over that with the gold pen later, which is admittedly a lot like just faking a signature in the first place, but you can still tell where the real deal was:

And Lars? Well, Lars actually signed the opposite page of the sketchbook:

It isn't the only autograph I've got in the sketchbook, and I promise the next one I post here won't require the lengthy explanation.