Metallica is no longer the biggest band in the world. Chris Brown is.

1a) To me, it seemed like most of the band members were pretty selfish and self centered. They felt like their creativity reigned superior over that of the other band members. This was probably why they faced so many obstacles in creating their new album. Because they all eventually had to compromise to come to some idea that every band member agreed with. And because of this their full range of creativity was not applied to the album, but instead a sort of community creativeness, which is typically what most members of a collective creative group have to eventually deal with. The best way to get the most of this is to be open minded to other people's opinions, and to adapt that into the creative environment you are immersed in.

2a) This depends on a lot of factors. One of the main factors that I have found to limit my creativity, is my lack of resources. Since making music is my main creative outlet, I have found that a lot of the time I have to work with what I have, and that alone is a limitation in itself. But also new things can come out of this limitation that would have never been applied had I had all the resources before hand. So there is a pro and con to every situation that affects my creativity. Another factor is if it is a group effort or an individual effort to create a work of art. Like I said in the question above, working with people as opposed to yourself has a huge effect on the outcome of a final product.

2b) Important work to me is just a piece of artwork that simply has a positive effect on the artist and the audience. Of course not all work may be positive at first, but an important piece of work would have redeeming qualities that affect the audience and the artist in a positive manner. It doesn't take much for a piece of work to be important to me.