Not going to talk about my book today. Instead I will tell you about the time I met Metallica, which I'm pretty sure wasn't in the book. It was 1989, I was 18 years old, and Metallica was my favorite band in the world at that time. Metallica was touring for the newly released 'and Justice for All' and they were touring with Queensryche. At the end of the show, I cautiously bought a backstage pass from some shady character, but luckily it turned out to be legit. Prior to this, I had no plan of doing anything after the show, so I had been moshing and stayed up near the stage where every sweaty dude in the venue rubbed up on me at one point or another. In other words, I wasn't very presentable after the show. Everyone that had a pass was then brought backstage after the venue cleared out and we waited a good hour or so, before Kirk Hammett came out. I had actually met him briefly the summer before when he came wandering near the crowd at the Monsters of Rock concert. Metallica was still relatively unknown then and not many people recognized him...I did! Anyway, I asked but he didn't remember me. The Jason Newsted came out, but in all honesty, I was still team Cliff so I wasn't that interested. Regardless, I still got him to sign my T-shirt that I bought at the show, which was the same one Lars wore in the 'One' video. Not long after that, James Hetfield came out and as he was signing my shirt, he asked me if I was in the front row and I said that I was. he then told me that it smelled like it. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. Finally after about 2 hours, Lars Ulrich came out and he was jokingly bitching about how cold it was, but luckily he got his fingers nimble enough to sign my shirt.
At this point, I had met Metallica and they had all signed my shirt and I was freaking ecstatic. I would have loved to stay longer, but I had already been in there for well over two hours and I had seven friends that rode with me to the show standing outside in forty degree weather and seeing that we didn't have cell phones, only one of them even knew where I was. Luckily he got the word out to everyone else. After the show, we piled back into my car and headed to the hotel room we had for the night. All eight of us in one room. As I was getting ready for what little sleep I was going to get that night, I tucked my new prized possession (my T-shirt) in my overnight bag and then got some sleep.  Of everybody I was there with, I knew fours of them quite well and the rest were friends of them that I didn't know that well. The next day, I took everybody home, but when I got home and opened my bag, my shirt was gone and I was absolutely devastated. It sucked for sure, but I still had the memory and it was also a very valuable life lesson.