Here Today... Gone To Hell!

...Other than releasing his damn album.

Your life need a tune-up?
Phil Towle is the stars' personal enhancement coach. Get ready for your fabulous career to be dissected.
 
By Gina Piccalo, Times Staff Writer

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. ? Phil Towle wants to know you. And not that remote, cordial version of yourself that you usually offer up to strangers. He wants the whole you, control issues and all. Intimacy is like oxygen to him. That's why he's on call 24/7, ready for your cataclysmic meltdown, your gut-wrenching sobs, your 3 a.m. epiphanies.

When you're at your worst, Towle's at his best. He's your spiritual paramedic, your exorcist, the sensitive dad you never had. There are no timed sessions, no emotional boundaries. He's inside your head and inside your life. He dissects your motivations and analyzes your ambivalence, your self-sabotaging language, your buried vulnerability, the reasons you resent him, until you shift uncomfortably on the plush leather couch in his living room and wonder how you lost the reins of this conversation.

"Suppose there's a fear of making mistakes," he says, his loafers propped up on a heavy coffee table, a postcard view of verdant hills over his shoulder. "Suppose, when you write, you live with a chronic unresolved issue about not wanting to make a mistake. So you might bring a tape recorder. You might back it up with writing everything down. You might follow through with what the editor wants you to do. You might be real careful that you don't do something wrong that would expose you to making a mistake."

And just like that, your black felt-tip pen, Gregg-ruled steno pad and tiny Radio Shack tape recorder are the insidious tools of your undoing.

Phil Towle is a psychotherapist turned performance enhancement coach who is paid handsomely to reinvigorate the high-stakes careers of rock stars, professional athletes and CEOs. Since 1997, his clients have included Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, Tennessee Titans defensive lineman Kevin Carter, legendary NFL coach Dick Vermeil and other luminaries too emotionally fragile to name here. But it was Metallica that cemented Towle's second career when it hired him in January 2001 as the band was falling apart. Longtime bassist Jason Newsted had just quit, threatening to end the band's 20-year run.

Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, best known for their critically lauded 1996 film "Brother's Keeper," documented much of the 2 1/2years the band spent with Towle, resulting in "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster," which premieres in July. In the film, Towle cracks open the metal band to reveal the sticky goo inside ? hidden resentments, unresolved grief, power struggles and, yes, love and commitment.

It was costly work ? Towle's fee was a whopping $40,000 a month ? but it got results. "St. Anger," Metallica's first album in five years, went platinum and earned a Grammy, and the band received MTV's highest honor, the Icon Award. In the film, Towle weeps as the band discusses the end of their project. But in reality, that didn't mark the end of the relationship.

"He became a part of the family," says drummer Lars Ulrich. "It can be kind of awkward to end. In some sense it hasn't ended. And in another sense it will never end."

Morello credits Towle with making him the happiest he's ever been as a musician. "It's basically a lot of listening," says the guitarist, who hired Towle as his band Rage Against the Machine was breaking up. "It's such a foreign concept to rock 'n' rollers?. He was able to see through the defenses people had built up and the ongoing circular things that were making everybody unhappy, that were keeping everybody from success."

axl probably would'nt turn up to the sessions......

Yeah, and Hetfield did an interview talking about how Towle drove him nuts, and at one point thought he was in the band. Axl already has psychologists.

Yeah and hetfields a wanker. Axl probably has the best in the business, and the last thing we need is another psycologist telling axl shit that would delay the album even more ::)

he needs to hire a new guitar player not a new psycologist....

LOL--Good Point!  :beer:

I wonder if he's talked with Izzy...

I don?t think Izzy wants to talk to Axl at all.
Not even if iZZY had 3 dosis of cocaine, heroin, marihuana and had drank 3 or 10 bottles of vodka all at the same time, he wouldnt accept to work or even talk to Axl

i miss the days when metallica were a metal band, not a gay band.

How is Metallica a "gay" band?  Is it because they fulfull their tour obligations, release albums, or is it because they treat their fans right?  Just because you're mad about the current problems facing your favorite "band" doesn't mean that all else sucks.  St Anger rocks and Metallica still plays the shit out of their old stuff live.  What has your precious Axl done lately????  

They didn't fulfill their obligations when they cancelled their South American tour. The reason was that they were too tired, but of course they weren't tired to play a tour in Japan about one week later...

So yes, maybe in GN'R's forums every other band is perfect but that's not the reality.

I agree or if he did turn up he'd probably be drunk or high. Anyone see that picture of him sitting at what I think is a keyboard and in the picture next to him is a really big hunk of weed. Cute wonder how long it took him to smoke that