RAMBLE ON: "Stone Cold Crazy" by Metallica

I don’t know how popular this opinion is but my favorite Metallica album is their first, Kill ‘Em All. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a lot of metal bands whose fans think their best album is their debut. Guns n’ Roses, sure. Van Halen, yeah, though some prefer 1984. But it feels wrong for a metal band to peak with their first try. Metal bands should be their best when they’re at their biggest, when they’ve reached their final form, so to speak, and certainly Metallica would grow and change dramatically after their first, and most people would agree that one of Master of Puppets, The Black Album or maybe even And Justice for All as their best – all arguably their peaks. But there’s something about Kill ‘Em All for me, they’re so young and scrappy, Hetfield (not yet old enough to buy a drink) almost unrecognizable with his voice ragged and still teenage-sounding. This is Metallica in their real garage days, almost a punk band, none of the grandiosity you’d associate with them later, and you can still hear the influence of recently-departed guitarist Dave Mustaine in the riffs. I might like Mustaine’s Megadeth more than I like Metallica. Mustaine is one of the biggest assholes in music but he’s a funnier asshole than the assholes in Metallica, who were often very dour. I think it’s telling that Metallica’s biggest song, “Enter Sandman,” is also the silliest tune in their catalog (look out for the Sandman!! He brings heavy thoughts tonight and they aren’t of Snow Whiiiiite!!), and there’s no way to imagine them doing something like Megadeth’s “Peace Sells” or “Sweating Bullets,” something with punch lines. Metallica were so rarely this fun.

Now Queen, there was a fun band, Freddie Mercury poncing around in his giant mustache and short shorts, the rest of the band camping it up alongside him. It’s remarkable that even during a virulently homophobic time period, Queen had such a great reputation with hardasses like Metallica and Guns n’ Roses. Axl Rose of course enjoyed his pomp and circumstance just as much as Freddie did, but Metallica? Metallica was the heaviest band to show up at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, alongside such artists as Annie Lennox, Seal, Lisa Stansfield and Liza Minnelli, but such was Queen’s range that they all made sense.

I don’t know when Metallica discovered Queen – I remember from doing the St. Anger episode that Cliff Burton introduced hardcore metalheads James and Lars to a lot of acts beyond what they were used to, bands like Yes, ZZ Top, Peter Gabriel – but also that Kirk Hammett mostly grew up playing that classic ‘70s rock. In any case, Metallica’s discovery of “Stone Cold Crazy” seems fairly inevitable – as has already been observed by so many so often, even the original sounds like it was destined to be a Metallica song. Freddie, with his big gay mustache and overbite, fucking invented Metallica while Metallica’s members were still in grade school.

Actually, I don’t know whether I consider “Stone Cold Crazy” to belong to Queen or to Metallica. It's not that Queen didn’t have their hard rock bonafides, but they had no fucking business releasing something as fucking metal as “Stone Cold Crazy.” Allegedly, its inspiration was Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown,” a track that seems like it’s going to spin out of control at any moment, but somehow Queen outdoes Led Fucking Zeppelin in terms of heaviness and breakneak speed. Reportedly it was one of the first tracks they ever wrote, though they didn’t record it until their third album. I straight up didn’t believe I was listening to Queen, the band who made “Killer Queen” and “You’re My Best Friend,” the first time I heard it, not until those familiar harmonies -- “Stone cold crazy, you know!” – hit during the chorus.

On the other hand, “Stone Cold Crazy” is a ridiculous song, far more so than Metallica were usually willing to go, none of the po-faced grimness they were known for. As far as I can tell, it’s about having a very silly dream about being in a gangster movie running from the police – the imagery it evokes is less Scarface and more Keystone Kops, and Freddie’s references to playing the trombone and shooting people with a water gun pushes into straight Roger Rabbit territory. This is something James Hetfield could never – NEVAH! NEVAH! –have written, and it feels weird to have him sing it. Luckily, Hetfield is more or less incomprehensible a lot of the time anyway, so he gets away with it, and instead the band leans on the more badass lines – they NEVER, NEVER, NEVER want it any more, CRAZAYYYY, STONE COLD CRAZY YA KNOW. Like the original, it’s a miracle of tightness, but they add some more muscle and metal flourishes – the bass drum on the second verse, the full stops on NEVAH! NEVAH! -- that make the original feel like it’s missing something. But what it doesn’t have is those harmonies, every second of Freddie’s camp replaced by Hetfield’s guttural growl. It loses something very obvious, but it gains it all back. “Stone Cold Crazy” doesn’t sound right without that dash of opera, but it also doesn’t sound right without James’s guttural adlibs. HUNGH! YAH!!!

But I wouldn’t give it up for the world. The definitive version is the one at the end of Metallica’s “Live Shit: Binge & Purge” album from 1992, their closer at the height of their power. “Stone Cold Crazy” had already been. Even Hetfield puts a little camp in his voice as he rolls his R’s introducing the song, “IT’S ENTITLED STONE COLD CRRRRRRRRRRAZEHH.” (He is almost certainly incredibly drunk by that point, and the banter is pretty great too, “I don’t think we have any more good songs!” Lars tells the crowd, “I think that’s a bunch of SHIT! Let’s steal someone else’s,” says James.)  I love the little coo-coo gesture Newsted does on the first “stone cold crazy yknow” too. By that point, “Stone Cold Crazy” had already won Metallica their second Grammy and it was deserved – something about Metallica covering Queen is more awesome than either Metallica or Queen on their own.