When S&M came out, I was in my 20s, I worked in a pub and I still had a reasonably full head of hair. I wondered why they chose the title at the time. Was it because James Hetfield liked to dress up in leather and smack a heavily restrained and ball gag-wearing Lars Ulrich across the buttocks with a plank of wood with a nail sticking out of it while yelling “FIRE WO-MAN!” at the top of his voice? Or was it just short for Symphony and Metallica? Probably the second. Or at least, something close to that.
