It seems a planned 3D film isn’t enough for the incredibly busy members of Metallica.

Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo recently told USA Today that he’s funding a biopic about the late bass legend Jaco Pastorius.

“Jaco was my hero growing up,” Trujillo said. “Hearing him was like hearing Eddie Van Halen doing ‘Eruption’ for the first time: You thought, ‘What instrument is that?’ I loved jazz fusion and branched out from there. But Jaco had an edge that far exceeded his jazz persona. He was funk, he was rock, he was soul. And his whole attitude was punk.

“The film for me is from the heart,” Trujillo continued. “I wanted to rescue him, but I learned that Jaco didn’t want to be rescued.”

Pastorius was bipolar and wrestled with substance abuse. He died in 1987 after a beating he suffered outside a Florida bar. Although he was only 35 when he died, he had revolutionized the world of electric bass with his multi-note fusillades and chord-based harmonics.

The documentary, which is tentatively titled Jaco, will be directed by Stephen Kijack.

Let’s also take this moment to recognize the photographers, credited below each photo, who risk life and lens to go in the pit and capture the mayhem as it happens. For those about to shoot, we salute you!

“We’ve been busy writing and recording. We’ve got a couple of new songs we have been working on the past couple of weeks. The writing process for the new Metallica album has begun. We’ve been in the studio with Rick Rubin, working on a couple of things, and we’re going to be recording during the most of next year.”

Metallica’s collaboration record with Lou Reed, Lulu, will be released on November 1, however the thrash icons have been quick to stress that the album does not represent the band’s follow-up to 2008′s Death Magnetic.

Trujillo continued by saying “For me, personally, Death Magnetic was the launch pad for the next record. This is the beginning of something very, very cool.”

You can read the full interview here.

The Big Four of thrash—Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax—are set to play New York City’s Yankee Stadium on September 14. It will be the second time ever that all four groups have shared a stage in the United States. To mark this occasion,

This installment is an excerpt from Revolver’s special issue devoted to the Big Four, which you can buy right here. This section recounts how it came to be that all of the bands perform “Am I Evil?” onstage together at Big Four concerts, beginning at their Sofia, Bulgaria, gig last year. It features interviews with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, Anthrax’s Scott Ian and Charlie Benante, Slayer’s Dave Lombardo, and Megadeth’s David Ellefson. So, without further ado, here is the inside story.

REVOLVER Famously, most of you got up onstage and jammed on Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?” last year in Sofia, Bulgaria. How did that come together?
LARS ULRICH I think that we felt we should try and see if we can get everyone together. Also, there was the whole worldwide satellite thing. It seemed like an obvious place to share, there was just such a good vibe going on. We wanted to let the fans get a chance all over the world to share in that good vibe.

SCOTT IAN I think I was sitting in a bar with Corey Taylor somewhere a night or two before we actually did it, and I got a text from Kirk saying, “Hey, in Bulgaria we’re thinking about doing ‘Am I Evil?’ with everybody, so let your guys know.” And I wrote him back, “Yeah, of course. We’re in.”

ULRICH The reason we picked “Am I Evil?” is because obviously playing a Metallica song would’ve seemed a little selfish. All of the musicians would certainly share that thread in Diamond Head in terms of influence. It’s probably difficult to find a band that’s more responsible for, or at least indirectly responsible, for thrash metal. And “Am I Evil?” is just a great, anthem-like song that also has the quality of not being super complicated. So it just seemed like the right kind of vibe to share with everybody for five minutes that wasn’t necessarily going to send people back to the rehearsal room for days on end. Mustaine and a bunch of these guys obviously knew the riff, too, and it just seemed like a logical choice.

CHARLIE BENANTE The first message I got about it was—I think Kirk sent it to me—“You’re gonna play guitar.” That was the first message I got. And it was like, Fucking killer. That would be great. And I think other people thought, How is the drummer gonna be playing guitar when the other drummers are doing nothing? So all of a sudden a snare drum got put in my lap. And I was like, OK, I’m OK with that, too.

DAVE LOMBARDO I love jamming. I do it all the time at home in Hollywood. So I had a blast doing it, I wasn’t going to turn down this opportunity when all my other friends were up there. It was like, All right, let’s go.

What do you remember about rehearsing the song?
DAVID ELLEFSON It was great. As soon as I walked into the rehearsal room, Robert Trujillo was like, “Hey, Junior, glad you’re here.” And he hands me the bass. He was like, “Here, you jam.” And I was like, OK, I guess I’m the bass player in this little endeavor right now. So I played, and that was fun for me to sit there and be that guy. Lars was the drummer of course, and so we were kinda hanging by each other, because he and I have gotten along really well over the years. And I look and I see Broderick, Hetfield, Mustaine, Scott Ian, Joey Belladonna, and everybody standing there. And it was one of those classic moments. I remember as I kid, I would flip through a guitar magazine and see a classic photo of Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, and, like, Keith Richards all being in the same room together. To me, that was our moment. It was just these guys who have never all stood in a room together before. And especially with their guitars on, creatively working on something together.

And I gotta say, James Hetfield was a really gracious host. He made it relaxed and fun and it was cool because we were essentially being invited into the Metallica secret chambers. They made it very relaxing and very easy and very fun.

ULRICH I might have been the tardy one. Everyone was kind of standing around, looking at each other. And I was like, “OK, let’s play something.” So we started playing “Breaking the Law.” We just loosened up and started having fun.

ELLEFSON The funny thing was, everyone had been practicing all day. It’s just one simple riff, and we’ve got everybody backstage at rehearsal set up in our dressing room as well. So Scott and Charlie and Frank and everybody is coming into our tent, and we’re back there jamming and rehearsing and working on stuff as well. It was one of those things where everybody wanted it to be just note perfect. Everybody out of passion was just like, I want this to be the greatest thing ever.

Photos by Andrew Stuart

Revolver Presents: The Big Four

REVOLVER Lars, how much attention did you pay Megadeth early on?
LARS ULRICH I don’t remember getting that into the first record, but when Peace Sells came out in ’86, it just blew me away. That was right up my alley. That literally became my favorite record for a long time. Dave would come up and play San Francisco a lot. And I would always go find him, and we would drink and do lots of drugs and sit around. For those years, ’84, ’85…me and him got over our issues really quickly at that time.

I remember at the …And Justice for All tour, we played down in Irvine Meadows , and Dave came down and hung out at the last couple shows at the Justice tour. This may have been ’89, and we just hang out. I remember actually when we finished the …And Justice for All album in L.A., in the summer of ’88, I went to some apartment and played it for him at 5 in the morning. We were sitting there, playing “Blackened” and a bunch of other stuff while we were busy keeping ourselves awake. Me and Dave had kind of a friendship and a cool thing going at that time, up through most of the ’80s.

It wasn’t until both bands started getting bigger that this whole kind of thing started happening in the press, which was really kind of different than what we had going between us. There was almost like two relationships there. The press loved the whole Megadeth-Metallica [futureusgalleryrivalry]. And I sort of think it got a life of its own. And in some way, you could argue that the thing that the press was doing about setting our bands up, eventually started kind of transcending itself into our personal relationship and probably became a big part of the fact that over the ’90s it got a little frosty at times. You know what I mean?

Lars solo photo by Anton Corbijn. Lars and Dave by Ross Halfin.

The issue features all-new, exclusive interviews with members from each group talking about how they’ve crossed paths in the past, the idea behind the Big Four tour, and what lies in the future. Also included are an in-depth history of U.S. thrash metal, a look back at the 1990 Clash of the Titans tour—when the Big Three of thrash, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax, first joined forces—and stories on the making of each band’s masterpiece: Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Megadeth’s Peace Sells…but Who’s Buying?, and Anthrax’s Among the Living.

Revolver Presents: The Big Four features original “Four Horsemen” cover art by Baroness frontman John Dyer Baizley. The magazine is also jam-packed with rare and never-before-seen photos from the bands’ archives.

Get your copy now before the issue sells out!!! At your local newsstand or online here.