Watch: Metallica x BeachGrit x Billabong x Randy Irons!

And win AI Forever/Metallica merch!

It is a warmish fall day in San Francisco. A pea soup fog has eaten up the Pacific Ocean teepees at Ocean Beach and, on the streets of the Mission District where BeachGrit is accumulating camera equipment at the creative agency Avocados and Coconuts, the hordes of homeless people, who outnumber the homed five-to-one, are enjoying the sun from their sidewalk perches.

BeachGrit is in the famous port city to interview and film Metallica, the American musical act whom you may’ve heard of, for a collaboration with surf co Billabong.

Might we, which includes the director Jack Boston, 16mm filmer Michael Clifford and audio man Michael Perez, be able to sprinkle our fairy dust on the collaboration and create seven different short films to coincide with each capsule, five tied to their first five albums, Kill Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, And Justice For All and the self-titled, Metallica, aka the Black Album?

Well, yes.

After a forty-five minute drive from the Mission, across the Golden Gate Bridge, a short meander through the green hills of Marin County and past the Museum of International Propaganda, BeachGrit stops at a single-store warehouse, painted in white, just off the 101 and abutting a Middle School.

A barbecue is busy outside the sliding door, a Mexican chef busy on the griddle.

Inside, the walls are decorated with the detritus of three decades of touring and recording.

One wall features six captured mice (one withered animal with “XXX 30 Years Strong” written above its corpse) and a large cockroach (“Here Lies Papa Roach”). Vintage Black Sabbath posters, framed album covers (Queen: Sheer Heart Attack, Thin Lizzy: Live and Dangerous), a map of the world (“Places we’ve gigged”) and busted guitars and flags and so on create a homely sorta feel, made even more so by staffers that don’t appear to just like their jobs, but to live ’em.

In the carpark, James Hetfield’s assistant sees me peering into the front of his boss’s 1940, I think, pale blue Chevrolet convertible, asks for my phone, and takes a well-framed photo of me and the pretty car.

Before the interview, there is a photo shoot for the band’s whiskey label Blackened. I mention to the guitarist Kirk that a bottle would be appreciated. Later, he gifts three, a net gain of $129 dollars.

(At eight am the following morning, driving with sweaty hands and an irregular heartbeat, alone and with dark thoughts, through hairpin bends from Big Sur back to Los Angeles, I regret, very much, asking for the booze.)

In a back room, waiting for the rest of the band to be free, I ask James, a considerable man who is six-feet and two inches in socks but with a cowboy and hat and boots is elevated well above his interlocutor, if he has a private jet.

“No! Do you?” he says.

The interview features all four members of the band, James, Lars and the two surfers in the group, Kirk Hammett and Roberto Trujillo.

Back in 2007, in a similar deal, Billabong launched a Metallica collaboration and the band were filmed and photographed with Andy Irons, a surfboard illuminated by flames.

All four have very fond memories of Randy, James enjoyed his rebelliousness and Roberto and Kirk were a little starstruck, I think, to be in his orbit.

There are two short films for the AI-Forever collection, one with Seth Moniz, the other with classic footage of Randy.

The AI Forever-Metallica collaboration is available from today and, if you want to leave a very kind note, below, the writer of the sweetest will receive a package that includes a short-sleeved t-shirt with the twin skull artwork by skateboard artist Pushead – known for 1980s skateboard deck graphics and Thrasher Magazine designs – next to the insignia AI Forever, a pair of camo surf trunks with the Metallica logo, a long-sleeve tee which is a throwback to the 2008 album Death Magnetic that inspired the initial collaboration with Irons and a cotton corduroy jacket has a Ride the Lightning style Metallica logo.