I have a heavy metal secret. Of course, everyone has secrets. Smart ones, stupid ones, little white ones. But how many heavy metal secrets are out there? Not many. So here's one for the books.It's a secret so seemingly obscure that it's origin eluded me for over a decade. And yet its effects have profoundly shaken the way I approach music since. It can no longer be ignored.
Shameful as it might be, the world deserves to know the truth about The Legend of Old Lobelto.
It was summer 1992. Metallica’s self-titled CD, commonly known as “The Black Album”, had been released a year earlier. The chart-topping opus’ first single, “Enter Sandman” became insanely popular on the radio as well as MTV. Other singles such as “The Unforgiven,” “Sad But True,” and “Nothing Else Matters” were cementing Metallica’s reputation as a heavy, but also soulful and well-rounded musical force. However, as a sixth grader, my exposure to the likes of Metallica were thwarted as much by my over-protective mother as my own obliviousness.
My friend Matt on the other hand, the third of four brothers, had nearly unlimited access to the rated R movies, junk food, nudie magazines, violent video games, MTV, and heavy metal music from which I had been so successfully sheltered at home. It was Matt’s oldest brother, Vince, who introduced Matt and I to Metallica.
But by summer 1992, I had my own copy of The Black Album on cassette tape and was a verified Metallica fan. MTV and Chicago’s 103.5 FM “The Blaze” played Metallica's Black Album hits exclusively, causing me to conclude that The Black Album was Metallica's debut.
With this in mind, you can imagine my utter disbelief the day Vince told Matt and I that he had a Metallica CD from before The Black Album.
Before? BEFORE!? Had there even been heavy metal before the Black Album? Not that I could imagine. This new, old Metallica album was a life-changing discovery. Finally the world could celebrate this rare heavy metal artifact. It was like Indiana Jones finding the ancient map leading to one of the world’s most significant historical treasures. Except with long hair and a minor, albeit chronic, case of whiplash.
The album in question was 1984’s “Ride The Lightning,” Metallica’s second album.
Showing Matt and I Ride The Lightning’s CD cover in which the Metallica logo conducts lightning toward an electric chair, Vince asked us if we wanted to listen to some of it. There was no question. The answer was obvious.So he popped open the vertically-tilting CD door on top of his Sony boombox and stuck in the disk. Vince identified track one as, "Fight Fire With Fire," a perfect name for a ripping heavy metal tune. It began oddly with a slow, melodic introduction that sounded more like entertainment for a medieval court than hundreds of drunken head bangers. But 42 seconds into the track, the speakers exploded into full-scale thrash metal. So far so good.
Inexplicably, track three played next, a listening not introduced with the song’s title. The track began ominously with the ringing of a bell that faded out with the onset of heavy rhythm guitar and high-pitch solo licks. The song wasn't especially fast, but very heavy and very kick ass. Another masterpiece.
While I could make out only a few intelligible phrases, the lyrics seemed to describe some sort of battle or other violence—sensible subject matter for a metal song. After my first listening, the only words of the song that really seemed to stick were those of the chorus: “Oooooold Lobelllltoooooo! Time Marches On!”
Now, had the title of the song, “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” been mentioned to me before this initial listening, I undoubtedly would have realized that the lyric “Oooooold Lobelllltoooooo!” was in fact “For Whoooooom the Bell Toooooolls!” and continued my metal career a bit wiser. However, in the absence of this information there was no check on this mistranslation and my mind ran wild with thoughts of what Old Lobelto could mean.
So my interpretation of Old Lobelto became this:
The ringing bell at the song's opening reminded me of a mission bell in a Spanish-style bell tower, the kind typically found in America's southwest. Couple that with the most intelligible lyric in the whole song, “Time marches on!” and the mental picture of a bell tower with a clock on it in the midst of a dusty wild west village like something out of Zorro starts to make perfect sense.
Next was the term “Old Lobelto” itself. Through some process of deliberation, I resolved that Old Lobelto was a person-- an important figure or otherwise infamous character whose name and very identity relied heavily on the adjective “old.” American culture maintains a precedent for this with legends like Old Yeller, Old Man Winter, and Old Susanna, to name a few.
Given that the name “Lobelto” ended with the letter “o,” as many Spanish words do (or as they are perceived to by an eleven year old destined to never study Spanish), and my existing association with the American southwest, Old Lobelto’s Mexican heritage presented itself quite naturally.
Finally the song lyrics, with their inferences to battle and violence, cemented Old Lobelto as a bona fide southwestern menace. The line “Make his fight on the hills in the early day” sounds like a description of an Old Lobelto ambush at dawn—a predictably dishonorable tactic. Then “Shouting gun, on they run” sounds like a quote from Old Lobelto himself laughing gleefully at his own pillage and massacre. And then the lyric of clarity “Time marches on!” seems to suggest that even time, the universal healer, has abandoned the attacked villagers. It marches with Old Lobelto and his posse on to the next unsuspecting village.
Naturally, with all this well-reasoned interpretation came a vision of Old Lobelto’s appearance. As a heartless and savage Mexican thief, the obvious visual association was Frito Bandito, the animated mascot for Fritos corn chips from the late 1960s. He was definitely Mexican and undoubtedly a thief. The heartless and savage qualities were trickier to prove.
But mix Frito Bandito’s Mexican ancestry with Yosemite Sam, an impulsive, trigger-happy loud mouth with a ridiculously large hat and an even larger ego. Now there's a villain that's larger than life. Large enough to terrorize the southwest, anyway.I must admit that I held this misguided vision of Old Lobelto for almost five years. When I was 16, the other guitarist in the band I had joined suggested we cover Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” at our next gig.
I responded quizzically, “Never heard of it.”
So he played the classic tune for me and I recognized it immediately. “What’s the name of this song again?” I asked.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls,” he reminded me.
“Hmmm. Funny name,” I observed, thinking it came from an obscure lyric I’d never noticed.
But as the first chorus blasted in, the age old lyric “Oooooold Lobelllltoooooo!” suddenly sounded different. And I realized, Metallica's vocalist James Hetfield hadn’t been saying “Old Lobelto” at all, but “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” When the bell sound effect returned at the end of the track, the fullness of my error sunk in.
Suddenly the holes in my Old Lobelto theory became glaringly evident. Why would Metallica write a song about a Mexican thief? Look at Metallica’s album art for the Black Album and Ride the Lightning. Then compare that to illustrations of Frito Bandito and Yosemite Sam. Which ones seem likely to be associated with a modern metal band and which would be associated with the childhood of a baby boomer?
The Metallica I had known and loved as a pre-teen turned out to be shamefully over my head. I used to think I was a true Metallica fan, but what was I now? Humiliated.
But embarrassed as I was, I never let on to my bandmates the pathetic lengths to which my mind had taken this minor misunderstanding. Although I was five years older, the certainty of ridicule remained the same if I admitted this to any of my high school friends. The truth was too ridiculous to face, so I kept mouth shut.
Years later, the burden of this secret has proven toxic, undermining my confidence in musical interpretation and ravaging my peace of mind. I can stand it no longer.
This composition represents my confession, and the true birth of The Legend of Old Lobelto. Listening to For Whom The Bell Tolls no longer evokes shame or remorse for me. Time has mostly healed the wound. The song and I are at peace with one another. However, hearing that ominous ringing bell still reminds me of Old Lobelto: ambushing, pillaging and, like time, forever marching on.
-- Nate Winter
