Crown of Barbed Wire: Lars Ulrich Turns 60
Looking back on 35 years’ worth of interviews with the famed Metallica drummer
Ginger Baker is no longer with us, but nine years ago, I was talking to the ever-cantankerous stickman on the phone and, at some point, we got to the inevitable other drummers part of the interview.
His, uh, peers. There were a handful of old, dead jazz guys he liked. But current carbon-based life-form drummers? Not so much.
I was rattling off some of those who spoke glowingly of him in the scabrous/hilarious Beware of Mr. Baker documentary: The Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts, Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, the Police’s Stewart Copeland and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, among them.
He liked Watts, of course, but “some of them were musicians I’m not particularly fond of,” Baker said, with a gruff laugh. “The drummer of what’s that silly band, Red Hot Chili Peppers? [Chad Smith] He was surprised I’d never heard him play. Well, I hadn’t. I’d never heard of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers either.”
I’m telling you this because it serves as high praise from Baker for the guy I’m writing about today on occasion of his 60th birthday: He did not single out Ulrich as one of which he wasn’t fond.
Neither should you, though Ulrich certainly gets a lot of flak. Even from – or especially from – Metallica fans. It starts with the tag of “sloppy.”
Let’s go to Quora where all sorts of arguments flourish and thrive: Kislay Joshi says: “Drums play rhythmicly [sic], dynamically and musically. A drummer usually progresses in this order. First one would only concentrate on getting the rhythm right (which is the most important). Once that is in place, a drummer understands how controlling the force of impact of a drumstick on a drum head can create better grooves. Lastly, a drummer starts concentrating on the tonal aspect of drumming. Lars seems to be stuck on the first step. Now let’s see how Lars’ drumming measures against the points mentioned above: 1) No dynamics. Lars has absolutely zero control on dynamics. It is very evident by the way his hi hats strokes sound the same, all of them. The snare sounds the same too. (Joshi goes on and on and on…)
Sam Hagen counters: “He’s a fine drummer. Whenever I hear people talk trash about him, they usually sound overly proud of being able to rattle off other technically superb drummers, advanced rhythmic patters [sic], as though they want a gold star for it. Ulrich isn’t a savant, he’s a rock star and what’s indisputable is that metal wouldn’t be where it is today without him, or his style.”
Other major complaints are that he comes off as bossy in interviews and pompous in the Some Kind of Monster Metallica doc. And a big one: He shepherded the band’s foray into dreaded mainstream with the …And Justice for All album and slid further into the mainstream muck for the eponymous one, the so-called “black” album, with the horrible (just kidding, I mean powerful) “Enter Sandman.”
Some said …And Justice for All didn’t measure up to three earlier thrash efforts, Kill ‘em All, Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, and alleged the band had sold out. Or they claimed that ex-Metallica (now and forever Megadeth) guitarist Dave Mustaine wrote the band’s best material and then they booted him.
Ulrich maintained Mustaine’s influence was highly overrated, that he only wrote six songs that the group has recorded. We talked about it. “Dave was pretty ignorant about a lot of things, but he was a quick learner,” Ulrich said. “Dave is a very bitter person. He had a chip on his shoulder for a very long time.”
I have to put on the brakes. Sorry, haters, but the Justice album gave Metallica a new life and a bigger audience and I failed to see the embrace of more melody as a negative, saw no loss of “edge.” Or Ulrich’s drumming as any sort of hindrance.
Back in 1989, I was in Lakeland, Florida, doing story on them as they were on the first leg of that …And Justice for All tour. I decided to open with this: Metallica’s most common detractors are those who’d heard the noise — or heard about the noise — and decided Metallica must promote mindless destruction and wanton killing.
“And Satanism,” chipped in Ulrich, not wanting to miss out on casting the final stone himself.
Satan often reared his head in conversation among band members, but Satan’s name is spoken more in the vein how Dana Carvey’s Saturday Night Live Church Lady used it rather in the vein of any seriousness.
More seriously, guitarist Kirk Hammett said, “The world is a dark place. It isn’t a picnic, and a lot of people don’t like to see that in their music. They like to see it as a wonderful place. Come on, wake up and smell the coffee.”
Added bassist Jason Newsted: “We’re serious. That’s what’s really different about this kind of music.”
Now, Metallica has crossed a number of borders over its time together. Initially, it was an unknown band covering obscure, British heavy-metal songs that Ulrich unearthed in England and brought to the group. Ulrich, who had moved to California from Denmark, joined forces with singer-guitarist James Hetfield in October 1981. Ulrich particularly favored the punk/metal crunch of Motörhead and more intricate sound of the less-known Diamond Head – a band that kicked ass but was a little more epic in their songwriting — long songs with middle bits that flowed. Other early influences cited: Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Budgie.
When Metallica began putting its own songs together, it mashed melody lines out of a string of guitar riffs. It was still, basically, the way the band worked hammer away, cut, prune, expand, harmonize, refine. Ulrich and Hetfield are the main songwriters; things shift around but generally Ulrich’s contribution is mainly arranging. Hammett collaborates sometimes as does “new” bassist Robert Trujillo, who replaced Newsted in 2003, who replaced original bassist, the late Cliff Burton, in 1986.
Metallica made its climb, by and large, without the support of traditional album-oriented-rock radio stations, which were fearful the band’s harsh music would repel more listeners than it will attract.
“We’ve done two million copies without radio,” said Ulrich, “and I think if radio wants to jump on board, they’re absolutely welcome to come along for the ride. I don’t have a problem sleeping, because we know it was on our terms. We’re incapable of doing something we’re not into.”
The Metallica of 1989 had repositioned itself a bit. Members once dubbed the band “Alcoholica,” for the amount of alcohol they consumed on the road.
“We went for it in a big way,” said Ulrich. “Drink, chicks, drugs — everything absolutely like there’s no tomorrow. It was a lot of fun and we had four or five years of that. It’s easier to pull that off when you’re opening, when you play 40 minutes instead of two hours. Back then, we could just go out and play drunk endlessly.”
“We still rage and have a lot of fun,” he continued, “but, now, you just feel slightly more responsible towards the show. It’s slightly more controlled.”
And now, the 1989 Grammys, their first nomination in the newly created category of Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental, for the album …And Justice for All.
“I think it’s pretty bizarre, pretty left field,” said Ulrich. And it was: It was the first time the stodgy Grammys acknowledged this two-decade old upstart music.
“Amazing,” said Hammett.
“Never in a million years,” said Newsted.
“I’ve never been into that award kind of stuff,” said Hetfield. “I’ve seen it a couple of times on TV and thought it was a bunch of hooey and brown-nosing. They were pretty boring.”
Of course, Jethro Tull famously won it, and that award has been the subject of jokes for decades.
But Metallica won the night by performing the ferocious “One.” It started with a series of explosions, as the low-lit stage filled with flames and chemical smoke. It began as a slow mood piece and then speed-shifted into a blitzkrieg of molten metal — drums like machine guns, guitars like air-raid sirens. The song is based on Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, and sung from the same point of view — inside the mind of a deaf-dumb-and-blind, limbless war victim. Hetfield tore into the final stanza: “Landmine/ Has taken my sight/ Taken my speech/ Taken my hearing/ Taken my arms/ Taken my legs/ Taken my soul/ Left me with life in hell.”
VIDEO: Metallica “One
If its musical outlook seems grotesque and grim, Ulrich suggested it’s just what they do: “We’ve written about death and dying in a lot of different ways.” The Grammy rendition was smoking and I think the song is one of the best anti-war rock songs ever.
And now we jump to 1996, the last-ever touring Lollapalooza tour and the punks, the alt-rock kids, grunge nation, what-have-you was beside itself. On top of the bill: Fucking Metallica! They weren’t punk! Was this Metalpalooza?
Quipped Jim Mullen, Entertainment Weekly’s Hot Sheet tabulator/pundit of the decade: Metallica is “headlining the Lollapalooza tour because they’re an alternative band. The alternative to young and pretty.”
Ha ha.
Yes, the alt-police were out sniffing around for a breach in protocol.
“Alternative elitists,” snorted Ulrich, never one to back down from a fight. He termed the lineup – which included Soundgarden and Screaming Trees – “a curve, a sharp curve,” in that it bypasses the alt-rock hierarchy and subverts the very oh-so-hip notion of the increasingly nebulous field of alternative rock.
“This, once again, makes Lollapalooza a little more dangerous and a little less predictable,” he said, “instead of taking alternative bands from A-to-E of 1996 and sticking them on there: `Here’s Everclear and here’s Bush!’ No disrespect to them, but that’s kind of what would be expected.”
I should note here that Metallica opened their set with the second-wave British punk band Anti-Nowhere League’s “So What?,” just about the filthiest, most self-deprecating and punkiest song in the world.
Metallica — which broke like a racehorse from the cliched metal mold with its speed-crazed, literate thrash metal in the ’80s — was spawned in what many thought of as a pariah genre. Heavy metal was dumb, cliched. For suburban losers. Punk rock: maybe dumb, sometimes, but in a smart, knowing way. For urban sophisticates. Never, said some, should the twain meet. (Although Motorhead made mincemeat of that.)
Rubbish, said Ulrich. A key link to punk: “We have a definite problem with authority, about being told what to do, how to do it and when to do it.”
Really, what punk could disagree? Metallica clung to its outsider’s world view. And there are the guitars: loud, aggressive, like a load of jetliners on takeoff.
Ulrich said the Lollapalooza organizers approached them about headlining. “We basically laughed,” he said, “and then we sat down and looked at it — in terms of the rhyme and reasoning for what they wanted to do. Now, we’re right there in the thick of it, enjoying it.
“What does it mean — all this `alternative’ stuff? It’s so undefinable in terms of where the parameters are. To sit down and be holier-than- thou . . . I mean, `Who the fuck are you?’
“At the end of the day, it’s all music. I didn’t quite expect this kind of an outcry from [people who] consider themselves to be more open-minded than any other faction in rock ‘n’ roll.”
I figured I’d get a punk rocker to weigh in on all this. I got Joey Ramone on the phone. His band, which if memory serves had something to do with that first punk wave in the mid-70s, was also on that bill, on its final swing through America.
“To me, it’s just great rock ‘n’ roll,” said the Ramones singer, of Metallica. “All these bands [on the bill] are mutual fans of each other. I think it’ll be a nice get-together — like a summer barbecue.”
Burnin’, it was.
Postscript:
News came last week that Lars’s father, Torben Ulrich, perhaps best known by Metallica fans for his appearance in the Some Kind of Monster documentary, died at 95.
Lars paid tribute on Instagram Dec. 20 with a post reading: “95 years of adventures, unique experiences, curiosity, pushing boundaries, challenging the status quo, tennis, music, art, writing … and quite a bit of Danish contrarian attitude. Thank you endlessly! I love you dad.”
In a 2007 interview with SoundBox, Lars said his father appreciated Metallica “especially when we’re daring and a little unorthodox, when we play strange sideways tempos. When we play a little straighter and a little safer he raises an eyebrow.”
VIDEO: Metallica performing “Lux Æterna”
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