METALLICA: THE BEST OF THE REST

LARS ULRICH

REVOLVER You guys all seem to be getting along really well these days.
LARS ULRICH Yeah, you know, the main question I get fed every day is this thing about, Is the band still in some kind of turmoil? And it’s like, That was fucking six years ago. That’s a fucking career and a half for most people. That’s a lifetime. Six years ago—it’s a long time and things aren’t like that anymore. ["Performance-enhancing coach"] Phil [Towle] always said that the work we were doing on the St Anger project, the real benefit to that was not gonna be on the St Anger record, it was gonna be on the next record. And he was right about that. It’s been a real chill experience for the last couple of years, you know. There’s been no psychiatrist, there’s been no film crew, there’s been no producer hanging around; it’s just been us. Kirk hasn’t even been there long because he’s been living out mostly in Hawaii, and Rob’s been there. But it’s been pretty chill and it’s been real nice. Just low key, everybody’s kind of getting along and having fun. But like, the St Anger stuff and the movie, and the whole thing, you know, that’s lifetimes ago. You know what I mean? I can understand people sitting and going, “Last thing we heard from Metallica was you yelling ‘Fuck!’ in James’ face,” but, you know, six years ago—in Metallica years, it’s many lifetimes ago.

How has Rob’s presence affected you guys’ creative process?
He’s great. In moving the process forward, he’s so effortless and so easy to, kind of, have around. He’s just a good vibe. So, when we’ve been working, he kind of moves with us really quick. He throws his two cents in once in a while. He’s very quick. When me and James are working on an idea, we’re kind of like, OK, try it this way and try it that way and try that. It just moves really quick and he can kind of move with that and also be a little bit of a balancing point between different ideas and different kinds of energies. It’s like a Zen thing. I dunno if Zen and heavy metal go together, but there’s something there, I’m telling ya. [Laughs] It’s like a vibe that just works. It’s hard to explain. And also, I don’t want to be disrespectful to Jason Newsted. Because Jason Newsted really put a lot of effort into this. Fifteen years. He dedicated his whole life. It’s difficult to talk about how great Rob is without dissing Jason Newsted, and that’s not fair either.

Have you had any contact with Jason?
Yeah, I saw him at a System of a Down show two years ago. Great to see him. Hung out. Bullshitted. He keeps a pretty low profile. I don’t see him a lot. It’s not 1983. It’s not like, I’ll see you over at the show. It’s not like that. But, you know, I saw him at System. It was cool to see him.

How are you feeling about the new record?
I don’t think the world needs another fucking band member telling the fucking rest of the world how awesome their new record is, how it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. How it’s the heaviest thing they’ve ever done. And how everybody’s just gonna fucking flip when they hear that album. I don’t need to read another fucking quote from me about that. I feel great about it. Ask me six months from now. I’m too close to it, man. Yeah, I know that there’s some people out there that are like, What’s taking so long? and this and that. You know, it takes its time. There are no issues. It’s been a really stress-free experience. An analogy is, say that, whatever number you put on it, it’s an arbitrary number, let’s say it takes a thousand hours to make a Metallica record. It still takes the same thousand hours. When we’ve worked, it’s moved along fast. But the thousand hours has been spread out over two or three years instead of over a year because we don’t work 18-hour days. We don’t work six days a week. We don’t want to tour every three months and we don’t want to play European festivals every summer. We go to Japan and we go to South Africa and we take care of our kids. So, the people I’ve played it for like it: I played it for Bob Rock. He liked it. I played it for my dad; he liked it. I played it for, you know, [Alice in Chains’] Jerry Cantrell and Mike [Inez], and John [Dolmayan] from System, and a few of the hood rats, and they all like it. They all say the same thing. They all say it sounds like Metallica. That’s the biggest compliment you can get, you know. [Laughs] When I sit and listen to it through other people’s ears when I play it for other people, it sounds really, really lively to me, like guys are sweating, playing together for a live gig. It’s not put together on a computer. It’s the first record that we’ve made since Kill ’Em All that wasn’t made to a click track. I hear that. It’s a little loosey-goosey in a lot of places, and I hear that and I like that.

We did a story with King Diamond a few years ago where he was expressing his frustration with the fact that no matter what new record he makes, it’s always going to be compared to Abigail, and Abigail isn’t even a record anymore, it’s, like, a landmark in metal history. You know, even if he made a record better than Abigail, it wouldn’t be better than Abigail. Do you guys feel similarly conflicted about Master of Puppets and the, sort of, fetishization of that album?
That’s a great question. It’s a great point. I mean, yeah, as somebody who’s got their feet obviously where you have them, yeah, of course. It’s hard, but it’s been part of the Metallica experience. You can sort of trace it back to Ride the Lightning. You can sort of, trace it back to the famous intro of “Fade to Black” when all the hardcore Slayer fans were jumping off bridges and slitting their wrists or whatever. It was an acoustic guitar at the intro to “Fade to Black.” It seems like since then, part of the Metallica experience is 10 percent of dissent. It’s part of the ride. At different times the numbers maybe go up and down. At different times, it affects you more or whatever, but it’s always been there. There’s always been somebody who’s got a problem with something we do, and that’s just part of it. You know, these new records, or what we’re wearing, or what we’re saying. What the fuck? It’s part of Metallica. At different times and different period of my life you go through periods where it can hurt you, then you’re fucking fucked. Not giving a fuck, going all the way and not giving a fuck, man. But the computer’s brought in a whole new thing. Back in the day, it’s like somebody talks some shit, you know who it is, you know where to find them. Now, it’s like people sit there and kind of hide behind their anonymity and their computer. It’s a different thing. It’s OK. Listen, I get it more than most people. I’m a pretty perceptive guy. I hear what people say and I know where you live [Both laugh]. But, listen, I’ve said this before and you know, if—we’ve made what, nine records?—if Reload is considered the worst, I’ll put Reload up against anyone else’s worst record. Seriously, that’s the kind of kindergarten, sandbox shit in me. A lot of our fans really like it. I think there’s some great songs on it. We’ve been playing “Devil’s Dance” in the last few weeks; we’ve been playing “Memory Remains.” Fucking “Fuel.” OK, maybe not our best one, I mean, it’s not bad. I mean, shit, we could have edited a few of the songs off. But rather that and a track record of running around and searching for all these different things and trying all these different things than putting out the same fucking record in a different sleeve every two years. You know what I mean? I’m proud of what we’ve done. Sure, a few blunders along the way. Bad white leather jackets or something. But I think, all in all—shit, dude, 25 years, 26 years, 27 years, that’s not a bad track record. So, the fetishization of Master of Puppets…you know, I get it. Shit, at least we have a Master of Puppets. At least we have a Black Album. It’s pretty cool. It’s nothing bad. Shit, you know, a quarter of a century.

Yeah, it is pretty amazing. One of the things that I’ve been asking all the guys is, Are you kind of shocked that you’re still the biggest metal band in the world? That no one’s knocked you guys off the top?
[Laughs] What a strange question. Shocked? I don’t know. There’s not very much that shocks me. We’re just doing what we do. I don’t know. I have so much love and respect for so many other artists out there. There are so many bands that fucking get my dick hard every day while I watch them play or listen to them or whatever. Knocked us off? We’re fortunate. We’ve got Machine Head, who are, like, the coolest of the cool and whose records I love. And you sit there and you tour with them for two weeks in Europe like we just did. I get off the bus and have a drink of Gatorade and the four members of Machine Head are, like, staring at me. [Drops jaw in expression of awe.] It makes you step up and bring it up a notch. You know what I mean? I listen—Iron Maiden put out a song a couple of months ago. It was awesome. I dunno. You’re the journalist. You answer the fucking question. [Both laugh]. I think that we’re just fortunate that a bunch of our shit somehow resonates with a lot of people and a bunch of our shit has found a way to end up being kind of timeless. We’re lucky with that. You know, you go out and tour all the time. You play different songs. You play different set lists. You do all the things that—you do as much as we do, you want to keep the experience as new and exciting to keep doing what you’re doing to the best of your ability. But, dethroning—I dunno. I can’t answer that. [Laughs]

Well, let me put it this way, what I was sort of getting at is that in some ways, you would want, for the scene or for the genre or whatever, to inspire bands of that sort of caliber and, you know…
Well, that’s a different thing. I think between Mastodon, Bullet, Machine Head, Trivium, the Sword, there are a lot of great bands. It’s about…I have a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old; when I was 9 years old, the first thing I did in the morning was put a record on. I sat there and read the fucking sleeve notes. I studied the lyrics. Now with Game Boys and fucking this and that, I don’t know if kids are as into music as we were when we were growing up. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like it. You’ve got all these great bands but nobody breaks out. You’ve got MTV, you’ve got radio, everything’s different. The landscape is different. It’s a different generation. People don’t sell 20 million. Back in the day, like, fuck, Megadeth went double platinum for three or four records in a row. Dave Mustaine was, like, on MTV. Slayer. It was something that was going on. Now it’s a different thing, different numbers, different perceptions. Certainly in Europe, you go up to Finland or Sweden or some of those places, you know, things are nutty. People are showing up. But it’s difficult to answer your question because it becomes about theories, it becomes about analogies, it becomes about the numbers and, fuck, I don’t know. When I listen to the Sword record in my car every day, it gets my dick hard. I don’t sit there so much and think about whether they’re dethroning or have potential to dethrone Metallica or anybody else. I don’t put myself on that pedestal. I just sit there and go, What a great fucking record. I’m really happy that I have that in my car.

You just mentioned, like, the change in the market and videogames and the Internet and all that. It seems like you guys are trying to tap into that a little bit with Guitar Hero and with that Mission Metallica sort of thing. Is it a whole new game?
I think increasingly so. I mean, the Guitar Hero stuff, it’s fucking heaven-sent. I mean, it’s priceless. I mean, to sit there and to play these games with my twins. It’s awesome. My kids love Deep Purple. They love Black Sabbath. My 6-year-old, his favorite song over the last couple of weeks is “Mississippi Queen.” It’s awesome that they have access to get inspired like that. It’s great that over the last few years that something great and positive has come out of videogames. I mean, my kids are way more into music just on the back of the Guitar Hero stuff than they were a year ago. You know what I mean? It’s awesome. It’s also a great thing to share. I mean, Internet, duh, of course. That’s a no-brainer. We completely champion the Internet. I mean, five or six years ago, one of the biggest perceptions about that [Napster situation] was, Metallica hates the Internet. That’s the biggest load of bullshit. We use the Internet to communicate with our fans. I don’t pat myself on the back often, but I will pat ourselves on the back and say I do believe our website, you know, is one of the best of any band’s out there in terms of communication with our fans. That’s the link to the fans. We do everything we can. We have great people running these websites and communicating with the fans. Internet, of course. Mission Metallica, Guitar Hero and things, all this stuff. Of course.

So, 27 years later, how does this shit stay exciting for you?
You know, it goes through cycles. There are times where I look back on things where—I mean, the best thing that came out of that whole meltdown in ’01/’02 was the fact that somehow we all walked away at different times but we came to the conclusions ourselves, we came to the facts ourselves, which is that we walked away with our eyes much more open to the moment and much more open to what was going on. Shit was just so fucking out of control in the ’90s. I mean, we put four records out in four years. Think about that. Four years in a row we put a record out ’96, ’97, ’98, ’99, and everything that comes in the wake of it. We just never paused long enough to fucking appreciate it. It’s really that simple. Now, you sit there and go, This is all so fucking cool. It’s a rare thing. Three, four months ago I was down in L.A. and James had just started singing, and I was down with my lady and he was working down there and he sent me a text and he was like, “I heard you’re in L.A.” I’m just kind of chilling with [girlfriend, actress] Connie [Nielsen]. And he’s like, “Come up.” So I went up and just sat around and we had lunch together and I sat around while he was singing. It was like, This is really cool. And then the next day he was like, “You gonna come up again today?” and I was like, “Yeah.” People start seeing us and going “You guys hang out together? That’s great, because people don’t do that.” It’s awesome. We fucking appreciate it. It’s just fun. And the thing is, you know, I’ve, like, no aspirations outside of Metallica. If somebody said to me, “I hereby sentence you to not be in Metallica,” or said, you know, “You can’t make music with James Hetfield anymore,” I think I’d just walk away. I think I’d throw myself into making movies or painting or something else. But it’s also, I think that in some way, there was a point probably about halfway through that experience where I sort of resigned myself to the fact that there was a really good chance that it was not gonna work itself out. I prepared myself for the fact that it’s been a great ride, but I’m not sure I can continue if it becomes conditional. I don’t work real well with rules. Rock and roll is supposed to get away from that shit. Rules and conditions, I was like, “Oh, I dunno, boys.” I kind of had to resign myself to look back and maybe it’s not gonna go on anymore, and maybe because of that, that’s why these days seem so awesome.