As you probably already heard, Metallica has released a remastered version of Master of Puppets. The limited edition deluxe version contains loads of rare photos, unreleased demos, rough mixes and more. To gather all those rare items, they hired Bob Pfiefer. He goes around the world full-time and collects rare Metallica memorabilia, recordings, footage, etc. However, no matter how hard you search, some things are just lost forever. In an interview with Revolver, Ulrich explains:

We actually have a person who works for us, Bob Pfiefer, whose full-time job is to travel the world in solitude and try and unearth Metallica tapes and Metallica first-generation masters, and that type of stuff. That’s literally his only job! And you have to sort of be realistic about it. There’s some stuff that just doesn’t exist — no matter how many rocks you turn over, it’s just not going to show up. You can throw your little rock star shit fit, or whatever, but some of this stuff is just lost to time.

When you’re looking for stuff from the Eighties and before, it’s pretty limited — a lot of radio stations didn’t keep all their archived stuff, TV shows often erased [their tapes] and recorded over it. For me as, say, a Deep Purple fan, I’m pretty sure that every single recording that exists of Deep Purple playing live from, say, 1969 to 1973, I’ve already heard. Because it’s not like two weeks of shows from their 1972 U.S. tour are suddenly going to show up in perfect condition. You kind of have to come to the conclusion that what’s there is there, and you accept that and move on.

Make sure to pick up your remastered copy of Master of Puppets here.