Garage Days Re-Revisited: why is there a price in Metallica's title?
Four young men grinning into the lens, bass and guitars pushed at the camera, the title scrawled underneath. It looks thrown together. That was exactly the idea.
No skulls, no electric chairs, no crosses in a red sky. Just four young men in black squeezed into the frame against a tiled wall, grinning, pulling faces, pushing a bass and guitars at the lens. The blue Metallica logo sits on top and the title is scribbled underneath like someone wrote it with a marker five minutes before the deadline.
After Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, it looks almost like a holiday snap. In a way it was.
After the worst year
In September 1986 bassist Cliff Burton was killed in a bus crash on tour in Sweden. Jason Newsted joined that autumn, and he was not welcomed with flowers. By 1987 the band needed something to do that was not grief and not pressure. Then James Hetfield broke his arm skateboarding, and a planned TV appearance was cancelled. So they went back to the garage.
Lars Ulrich's garage in El Cerrito, California, to be exact. Newsted used his experience as a construction worker to soundproof it, and there the band rehearsed songs by the bands they grew up on, Diamond Head, Holocaust, Killing Joke, Budgie and the Misfits. Then they went to Los Angeles and recorded the lot in about six days.
The jokes in the title
"Re-Revisited" is a nod to 1984, when two Metallica covers on the B-side of the Creeping Death single were labelled Garage Days Revisited. And the price is there on purpose: the band put $5.98 in the title so that shops could not overcharge fans. The CD edition, which cost more, became the $9.98 version.
The rest of the sleeve plays along. It was made to look makeshift, the production credits make fun of how little production there was, and Newsted is credited under the nickname Newkid. The new guy got his first Metallica release, and his first Metallica in-joke, at the same time.
A collector's item
The $5.98 E.P. - Garage Days Re-Revisited came out in August 1987 and reached number 28 on the Billboard 200. It then went out of print in 1989 and stayed that way for almost three decades. The songs returned on Garage Inc. in 1998, and the EP itself was finally reissued in 2018.
About the poster
This is the Garage Days Re-Revisited sleeve printed as a 50 × 70 cm (20 × 28 in) portrait poster, from 2025. It is an original magazine insert, never hung, with no staple holes, folded three times as issued. The sheet is double-sided, with Black Sabbath on the back.
Browse all original Metallica posters.
Quick answers
Why is there a price in the title of Metallica's Garage Days EP?
The band put $5.98 in the title so that shops could not overcharge fans. The more expensive CD edition was retitled with $9.98.
What does Re-Revisited mean?
It refers to two covers on the B-side of the 1984 Creeping Death single, which were labelled Garage Days Revisited.
Who plays bass on Garage Days Re-Revisited?
Jason Newsted. It was his first release with Metallica, after he replaced Cliff Burton.
How big is the poster?
50 × 70 cm (about 20 × 28 inches), portrait. It is a separate insert, so it has no staple holes, and it is folded three times as issued.
What is on the other side?
A Black Sabbath poster. The sheet is double-sided, so you choose which side goes on the wall.