Michael Kamen died on November 18, 2003. The composer and arranger had worked with Pink Floyd on The Wall before conducting the San Francisco Symphony with Metallica on S&M. The official video for “No Leaf Clover” captured that 1999 collaboration onstage.
Kamen’s experience of playing in a rock band went back to his student years. Born in New York City, he studied oboe at Juilliard and helped form the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, combining classical training with rock performance. He played oboe and piano, and his later work regularly involved several stages of making music: composing, arranging, conducting and overseeing recordings. Performing and writing were connected parts of the job.
That background took him into the sessions for Pink Floyd’s The Wall. In 1979, he worked as conductor and arranger with the New York Philharmonic at CBS Studios in New York. His involvement continued into the 1982 film adaptation, for which he orchestrated and conducted music performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra.
With Metallica, his orchestral writing was already part of the band’s recordings before they shared a concert stage. Kamen arranged the orchestration for “Nothing Else Matters” on their 1991 self-titled album. In a tribute published by Blabbermouth, the band later recalled a breakfast meeting in 1997 when he proposed performing with an orchestra. They credited him with the idea for S&M and remembered their collaboration extending through the performances and the final mixes for the album and DVD.
The recording took place at Berkeley Community Theatre in Berkeley, California, on April 21 and 22, 1999. Kamen’s credits covered arranging, orchestration, conducting and co-production. The program brought the orchestra into songs including “Master of Puppets,” “One” and “Nothing Else Matters,” as well as “No Leaf Clover.” That meant developing orchestral parts across a full set, with the band and symphony performing together.
“I live in both worlds – now so does Metallica,” Kamen wrote in a 1999 account of the collaboration. His preparation began with listening: he imagined himself as an orchestra accompanying the recordings, then wrote the musical responses he heard in his head. He described composing additional melodies around songs that were already complete. There was a practical difference to manage, too. The band members developed their own instrumental parts, while the orchestral musicians needed written instructions specifying what to play and when.
His recollection of the concerts focused on the musicians’ interaction as much as the arrangements. He described the band moving among the orchestral sections and players rising from their seats as the performances unfolded. In his account, the orchestra became an active participant in the group. That was the ambition behind the additional writing: musicians responding to one another across the stage.
Kamen’s film career produced another lasting collaboration. Alongside scores for Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, he composed the music for Mr. Holland’s Opus, whose story of a dedicated music teacher prompted him to establish the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation in 1996. The organization donated instruments to underfunded school music programs. By March 2020, the Recording Academy reported that it had supplied more than 30,000 instruments to schools.
