A too-busy reality can run you and your loved ones ragged - and do real damage to your family's happiness in the process. Here's how to make time for the healthy priorities that really matter.    BY John De Graaf

of course, the paradox is that your fans never want you to grow up. They demand eternal adolescence. Luckily, the critical failure of St Anger - Metallica's fudged attempt to strip their sound back to its basics - gave them the impetus to re-examine their own history, which suits the fans fine. Rick Rubin, producer of the new album, saw his job as taking the band back to their '80s heyday. "Close your eyes," he said. "It's 1985-86, you're writing [landmark album] Master Of Puppets. What are your influences? What are your fears? Write the set you want to play for the record company you want to get signed to, for the manager you want to impress, for the audience you want to steal."

It was about rewinding their ambitions to the days of their early 20s when they first galvanised their core audience, without actually turning back into philandering, drunken cocaine monsters. The band found the process a revelation. "I realise now," says Ulrich. "We've spent close to 20 years running away from those first four albums."

The pre-show rituals start. At every gig there is a "meet and greet". A couple of dozen fans from the fanclub are invited to meet the band backstage. They wait in a room marked "Meet And Greet / Fluff And Fold". The hospitality area is part impromptu launderette.

Metal is a kind of communion. The essential illusion of the genre is that the band and the fans are all in this together, man and boy. When you're playing to tens of thousands and charging them around £30 for the privilege, this is a myth that's somewhat hard to sustain. But it's a powerful one, and one that Metallica work tirelessly to keep intact if only because it's something they believe in profoundly themselves.

At some point in the proceedings, each of the four members work the room, one by one, signing and listening to questions that in any other context would be feeble and geekish, but that are tonight valued tokens of mutual respect: "Bleeding Me? You like that song?" says Hetfield. "You want it on the setlist?" "Why don't I use a ride cymbal?" says Ulrich. "Because I think they're kind of lame."

The four hang out together for an hour before the show, pushed into one another's company by Q's photographer, who demands they pose together. it's the closest they've been to one another all day. They smile, lean up against one another, trail arms around shoulders. A band onstage is covering one of their songs. They laugh. they are easy in one another's company; it's just they don't share it as closely as they used to.