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I can't remember who it was that lent me the "Master Of Puppets" tablature book but I owe that person a beer and a huge heap of gratitude. Once I had it in my hands, I sat in my bedroom one sweltering summer day and clumsily picked away at a few tunes. I could hear bits of the songs coming through, but not enough to get me excited.

I gave up for an hour (and after trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with the main riff from the title track) and went off to do ... I don't know, something other than frustrate myself. Eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I went back at it.

This time I flipped the pages to "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" and gave that song a try.

This time it worked.

All of a sudden I was playing a Metallica song. Sure, it was rough and strained but it was working. I picked my way through the intro and verse with a huge grin on my face. I can honestly say that this was the true beginning. Up until that moment, I was only dreaming that I could play. When that girl in my art class said I wasn't talented, at the exact moment she said that, it was true. I couldn't play anything on the guitar to save my life.

Now here I was stringing together a pattern and it sounded like the song I knew and loved. The hunger intensified yet again.

Around this time Geoff started hanging out more and more with Doug and I. As my playing improved, he began to take interest in the idea of getting a band together. The three of us discussed the idea that maybe we'd use Unholy Revelations as the name even if the members were not the same as they were. The only thing that was holding us back was Dave. He had pretty much dropped off the radar and drummers are hard to come by when you're fifteen.

We talked a lot but nothing came to fruition. I spent my evenings and weekends either hatching plans with them or practicing my playing. I was starting to pick up some of the more complicated riffs in the book and played until I had blisters.

One weekend Geoff and I tore apart my cheap ass, Sears guitar and spray painted the motherfucker black. When it was back together it looked like a cheap ass, Sears guitar that someone had spray painted black.

Awesome.

Besides the custom body job, we also started farting around with song writing. This went nowhere fast. Geoff was a good bass player and I was still struggling with most of the basics. Still, we were making noise and having fun so we really didn't care all that much. What was strange about the whole thing was that Doug had now disappeared. It had been weeks since he'd called or shown up so we plodded on without him.

One day Geoff and I were jamming out some ramshackle piece of crap when Doug called out of nowhere. He wanted us to head over to his place. This in itself was a rarety; Doug's folks were a little "off" and he usually didn't invite us over. This day, however, he was adamant about us coming over.

We soon found out why.

"I gave up guitar and want to play drums," he told us as we were standing in his basement staring at a five piece kit. It was red and had seen better days. Most of all it was small; not kid sized but not a full sized drum set either. Geoff and I looked at Doug; was he joking?

It was no joke.

What was a joke however was how we started practicing with the new lineup. You see, Doug's folks didn't actually allow him to play the set at his place. I wasn't allowed to play loud at my place. We could play loud at Geoff's place, but his mother, who wasn't overly bothered by the noise we made with our guitars was unsure about the idea of having a drum kit in her house. So we ended up improvising.

Geoff played bass through his amp. I played guitar through mine. Both were turned down so I could "sing" over top and Doug set up a "kit" that consisted of:

- a hard cover book on his lap (snare)
- an over sized pair of shoes (bass drum)
- a metal bed frame we found in the corner of Geoffs basement (ride and, depending on when he hit it, high-hat and crash)

You have no idea how fucking silly this seems now. Back then we were deadly serious... well, maybe not deadly. We did poke fun at each other over this setup. Constantly. But, in the end, we realized that it was a start.

As it turns out, Doug was actually pretty good at keeping a beat and adding in simple fills without derailing the whole fucking train. We began trying to write our own stuff but, for some reason, we were failing miserably. So we decided to try a cover of "For Whom The Bell Tolls"... minus all the fancy bass lines and guitar leads.

Somewhere, out there, probably in a cardboard box in a basement, or at the bottom of a landfill is a cassette with our mangey Metallica cover on it. It was horrible - the bed frame cymbals were a loud "ting ting ting" that buried everything else in the background. My guitar was shaky, my singing even worse. You could hardly hear Geoff's bass and the book Doug was using for a snare was a dull "whap whap".

Shitty as it was, we all agreed it was a start.

After a few days of this, Doug started complaining that his fake setup was just that: fake. He had a drum set for fuck sakes! What the hell was he doing banging away on a book and a bed frame? We had to find a place to practice with all of our instruments. We were at a loss having nowhere to do this... so Doug disappeared again for awhile.

This didn't get Geoff and I down though. Quite the opposite in fact. We had recently discovered punk and hardcore: D.R.I. and the like. Thirty second, noisy songs. As basic as you could get. This music actually gave us hope. Sure as shit we could write this stuff too!

And write we did. For the couple of months Doug went off to to whatever it was he did, Geoff and I slapped together a handful of hardcore metal songs and re-christened The Unholy Revelations as U.H.R. I honestly don't remember all of the tunes we wrote, but one has stuck with me through the years.

I titled it "Across The Waters To Destruction" and I remember it because it just came to me. I was standing in Geoff's basement strumming this and that and a whole lot of nothing. Geoff was sitting back in his chair talking about something and all of a sudden I stopped farting around and started playing a real simple, real heavy riff. This was repeated a few times, then I paused; holding the last chord for a few beats... and then I proceeded to blast into a two chord, hardcore riff and the lyrics poured out of me:

Why must we help fight their wars
Don't even know what they're fighting for
Chemical plants and nuclear waste
Death and destruction is all I can taste
All that they think of is weapons production
Then send us across the waters to destruction *

End song.

Geoff had stopped talking and was staring at me. I think his response was "Holy fuck!". He scrambled out of his chair, grabbed his bass while I wrote down the lyrics, and  I quickly showed him the riffs. The song was done in under ten minutes.

Past that, our time was spent on two things: working on my playing and anticipating the release of Metallica's new album "... And Justice For All".

For the first, Geoff had picked up the bass tab book for Master Of Puppets and we began learning bits and pieces of the songs. In the not too distant future one of our favorite past times would be to go into a music store, pick and instrument each and start playing "Orion". This was interesting because music stores at this time displayed signs like "Anyone caught playing Stairway To Heaven or Smoke On The Water will be dealt with severely!". Two teenage dudes busting out an eight minute instrumental usually turned some heads.

The new Metallica album was, of course, on everyone's must buy list; it was to be the first, full studio album with Jason Newstead (who had replaced the late, great Cliff Burton). Needless to say when it finally came out in the fall of '88 Geoff and I ran out and grabbed it.

"... And Justice For All" surpassed everything we thought it would be. Personally, it is now my least favorite Metallica album, but back then, it was the shit. It gave us new tunes from our favorite band. It gave us the prospect of a tour. It gave us new ideas on how to write songs (even though we were still churning out one minute hardcore tunes). Most of all, it brought Doug out of hiding.

Then the shit really hit the fan: Doug was loving the fact Geoff and I had a pile of tunes to work with but he wanted to up the ante and write longer tunes. This was difficult, however, as we still needed a place to jam.

No problem. Doug talked me into sneaking all our band shit into my parents basement...

... which we did. As you can imagine, this is when the shit really hit the fan.

... to be continued.

* I don't know why those lyrics have stuck with me to this day. I'm thinking it due to the fact that it was the first verse of words that didn't sound like it had been written by a five year old. Hell it was (and still is) better than a good percentage of Metal lyrics out there (Manowar anyone? Although, those guys did manage to rhyme asunder with thunder).