The Tapes Archive

Marc Allan: So, how are you, where are you?

Lars Ulrich: I’m in Chicago.

Marc Allan: So is it true that your wedding song was Pat Boone’s version of “Enter Sandman”? Thank you, thank you for laughing.

Lars Ulrich: Sure, of course it was, of course it is, yeah. You know what, honestly, I don’t remember. It was 4:00 in the morning, and I just remember when I saw the video back of the wedding that I was, my mom yelled at me for having my hands in my pocket when I got married. But other than that, it was, I’m glad we did it that way.

Marc Allan: Yeah well, congratulations.

Lars Ulrich: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Marc Allan: And how about this Pat Boone version of this? Have you heard this?

Lars Ulrich: You know what, I’ve got to tell you I’m going against, I can already tell from talking to a few radio stations, stuff like that, there seems to be some kind of a hostility building up towards this, but I mean, I don’t know what people are scared of, I mean, this guy’s so unthreatening. I mean, do you know what I mean? I think he’s great, I met him at the AMAs the other day. He was really nice, he was really funny. He was really friendly and I think he’s done one of the more interesting versions of one of our songs that I’ve ever heard, because most versions that end up of our songs end up being something that’s very unimaginative and very close to the bone. And at least this is very different. I think it’s really cool.

Marc Allan: Okay, I thought he totally missed the point, but to me it sounds like a cheerful song the way he does it.

Lars Ulrich: Yeah, but you know what? I think that you gotta give, I mean, anytime anybody takes any type of creative piece of work or whatever it is, and at least alters it and puts in their own flavor and their own interpretation of it, then whether, I mean whether you miss the point or not, I mean, that’s almost irrelevant to me because, I mean, who’s to say what the point is anyway out of any of this stuff, you know what I mean? But at least if you add your own flavor to anything, then I think that has value, and I think that he did that. And there’s very few of the people who have interpreted our music who have done that. I think that’s always what’s missing. I definitely respect that a lot.

Marc Allan: A couple of songs I wanted to ask you about from the new album. My two favorites are “Hero of the Day” and “Mama Said”. I think they have the tension and fear that I always like about Metallica music. Can you tell me anything in particular about those songs?

Lars Ulrich: It’s interesting you picked those two songs because they’re probably the ones that most of our fans, and who’s to even say what that word means anymore. But most of our fans probably would say that those are definitely the two oddballs. “Hero of the Day” is probably the first song that we’ve ever done in a major key that has some major musical passages through the verses. And a lot of people obviously saying that it has almost an REM tendencies to it or something like that. It was something that came from Kirk and was an idea that was one of his tapes, than the me and James interpreted it and turned it into a song. “Mama Said” was something that was on one of James’s tapes that initially on the first batch of tapes that he gave me, it wasn’t on there. And then he gave me a tape later on into the songwriting process and that was on there. And I said that I really liked the skeleton of the song, and he said that he was worried or whatever, because he didn’t really know if it was Metallica enough or not. And I said, “What are you worried about? “If it’s on a Metallica record it means “that me and you write it and the four of us play on it, “then I think it qualifies as a Metallica song.” It’s obviously also one of those things that are a fairly different, a lot of people have been saying this whole thing about the country influence and stuff like that, which was never apparent to me until the first journalist heard and started commenting on that, I thought it was just another song. Now I can obviously hear how people can interpret it that way, but you’re right. I mean, those songs are very moody and certainly have some nice tensions in them and stuff. And that’s pretty cool, I guess.

Marc Allan: Yeah, the line in “Mama Said” about the brightest flame burns the burns out quickest, I guess that’s not always true because look at Metallica, right?

Lars Ulrich: Yeah. Yeah, well, you know-

Marc Allan: Mama wasn’t always right, I guess.

Lars Ulrich: Well, Mama doesn’t get paid to always be right.

Marc Allan: That’s right.

Lars Ulrich: She’s got a pretty high batting average.

Marc Allan: Yeah, is that pretty typically how you write? They give you instrumental stuff and you put the words to it?

Lars Ulrich: No, we work a lot with tapes is what we do, and so me and James end up being the receiving end of all these tapes from everybody. And I’ll sit down and go through James’ tapes. and then me and James sit down and go through the other guys’ tapes and we pick out the best parts. We work very much with parts and then parts end up being turned into songs. And then songs ended up getting words to them. It’s a pretty unusual process, even just because the fact that obviously the quote-unquote drummer is pretty involved in it. We have a tendency to develop songs from ideas that just serve us as really, not anything that’s ever written as a song, that just stays as a song. It’s like there’s the part that gets married to another part that gets married to this guy’s part. And then we throw in this chord progression and then we go to a half-tempo thing here. Do you know what I mean? And then we sit down and put some words to it and James does most of that. And it’s kind of a pretty unusual process.

Marc Allan: So it’s possible that two, three, four songs from these tapes might end up as one song on an album, huh?

Lars Ulrich: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially if you go back to our early stuff, you can hear how a lot of that stuff is really pieces of songs that were forced together, which is, I think what we pretty much started getting away from after “And Justice for All.”

Marc Allan: Yeah, that makes sense now as a listener, ’cause that is what it sounds like, but I never, you just never would think that that happened that way, that things were put together, pieced together that way, so that’s amazing.

Lars Ulrich: It was very forced thing and now it’s a lot less forced. Now we try and keep the songs a lot more simplistic.

Marc Allan: Here our local alternative radio station this weekend is doing a mandatory Metallica weekend.

Lars Ulrich: Oh my God, hell.

Marc Allan: And I’m thinking you must, you guys must be laughing at this stuff, I mean-

Lars Ulrich: I’m pretty much always laughing, generally.

Marc Allan: Well yeah, that’s true. Yeah, you are one of the lighter spirits in rock and roll. I do appreciate that. But I mean, this has just gotta be so funny to you, to just see this embrace, this whole nonsense, this whole discussion of, “Is Metallica alternative?” What is this?

Lars Ulrich: Yeah, I think it just goes to prove, I mean, if anything that, that the things we’ve always talked about were so insignificant really, continue to be insignificant, which are the things about dividing music into groups and forcing tags and names and separations between different music forms. And I think it’s something that a lot of people feel that they need, but I think that as time has been going on in the last few years, a lot of people are realizing that it’s maybe not as necessary as it used to be, and that these divisions between not only the bands and the music, but also the people who enjoy the bands and the music, maybe are starting to erode somewhat compared to where it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And I think that’s a pretty good thing, a very healthy thing. Of course, it’s funny in some way. And of course, you could also sit down and say, of course, Metallica should be played on an alternative radio station, because in some way we were 10 years ago, we were one of the first alternative bands. So I mean, you can almost slice and dice it any way you want to, and then you can almost sit down and say that it’s funny because why wouldn’t we be played on an alternative station, but 10 years ago, do you know what I mean? It’s like almost no matter what point of view you come in with, it either holds up or it doesn’t, and it’s almost irrelevant at the end. It’s just how people interpret what you do, and I’m certainly never going to tell anybody how to interpret anything I do. And I’ve really just let people deal with that in however they want to.

Marc Allan: I agree with you on this point. It’s irrelevant because good music is good music and it should be played no matter what. I mean, no matter what you call it, everybody should hear it. And maybe that’s what, if Lollapalooza proved anything last summer, maybe that’s what it proved, right, that-

Lars Ulrich: I hope so, it sounds kind of corny and it sounds a little simple when you say, “There’s only two kinds of music really. “There’s good music and less good music.” That’s almost how I feel, is it’s a little bit of a cornball approach or reads corny, but it’s, I mean, I think musicians are the ones that are sometimes, most of the times fighting the categorization more so than anybody and between the critics and between the fans that they seem to try and divide everything else into categories and stuff like that, which is fine but it doesn’t mean that I have to endorse it.

Marc Allan: For critics, I guess it’s somewhat of a necessary evil, because you have to try to describe what you’ve heard.

Lars Ulrich: Of course.

Marc Allan: But the idea that, because it’s a certain kind of music somebody shouldn’t listen to it, that’s just not true.

Lars Ulrich: I think the beautiful thing about where we are right now is that as music gets more and more intertwined and more and more multicolored and multidimensional, that it become less and less easy to segregate from the next thing. And I think that’s a great thing because you have these people sit there, you listen to a band like Black Grape or whatever and you say, “What is that?” And you sit down and 10 minutes later, you still have no idea what the hell. Is it rap, is it funk, is it dance, is it rock? Do you know what I mean? And that’s just a great thing.

Marc Allan: Well, so one other question about this and that is where did this idea come from, that you guys were going alternative? I mean, who said that? ‘Cause it’s obviously not true. I mean, “Load” is a pretty typical Metallica album, I’d say.

Lars Ulrich: I think that you have to look to the internet for some of this stuff, I think that for as much good as comes out of the fact that people can tap into this type of information and chat to each other in this way that you can in the ’90s, there’s also certainly some kind of negative connotations to it, which is that basically any idiot with a computer can post something on the internet and within 15 minutes later, it’s a half-truth that’s circulated around the world. It’s a pretty frightening instrument actually. I mean, people already judging our record. I was sitting, while we were finishing the record in the studio reading almost reviews of the record on a daily base before it was even done, while I was still finishing the record, you know what I mean? And it’s just, it’s a very strange beast to deal with. And I think that this whole thing about where did it come from? Some idiot somewhere associated the fact that James Hetfield cut his hair with something about fitting into the ’90s or something like that. And then the next guy picked it up as being alternative and off there goes the brush fire, do you know what I mean? I don’t know where else it comes from.

Marc Allan: So that’s about as close as you can trace it, huh? Is just the internet, man.

Lars Ulrich: I mean, I think you have to generally look to the internet as that it’s almost like, I think that the less hard information they have to work with, the more silly the rumors get, do you know what I mean? The more information there is, the less it gets bent out of shape, but on some of these things that when you’re tight-lipped about it, then the more ridiculous they end up becoming. And it’s kind of an interesting pattern that goes there.

Marc Allan: So is it possible for, I mean, the people who are commenting on the record while you’re still making it, do they actually know anything about the record or are they just making stuff up?

Lars Ulrich: They’re making stuff up.

Marc Allan: Okay, okay. The other place that I heard a lot of this record was “Ferrall on the Bench”, the sports show. And are you guys friends with him and stuff?

Lars Ulrich: I think it would depend how you interpret the word friends. Certainly know him fairly well and had some fun times with him, and I certainly do speak with him and definitely think he’s a pretty funny guy. And when he was up in the Bay Area, we used to go to a lot of hockey games and then we’d call him and give reports to Ferrell on the hockey games on the way back from the game and stuff like that, there definitely is a history there.

Marc Allan: Yeah, it’s just pretty classic to hear this stuff underneath the sports report though, I like that a lot.

Lars Ulrich: I think that’s pretty cool. I mean, he was a guy, he goes back to Atlanta about four or five years ago, and when he started in Atlanta, he was definitely doing something that was very extreme and very cool. And I think he hasn’t lost too much of it.

Marc Allan: And kind of an open-ended question here. What motivates you? I mean, you guys do tons of press. You do a lot of things that you don’t have to do and why? I mean, I’m glad you do, but.

Lars Ulrich: Probably because we don’t know any different, it’s how we’ve always operated. We basically came up the classic European way, I think, which is the fact that you go out and you don’t get any airplay. You don’t depend on the medium of radio to get what you do across, that you go out and basically force what you do down people’s throats. You go out and play as many gigs as you can. You do as many interviews as you can, with print media, and try and jump on any opportunity to force what you do down people’s throats. That’s what we did in the ’80s, and when radio finally embraced us in the ’90s, for some reason we didn’t stop forcing ourselves down people’s throats ’cause it’s just how we’re used to dealing with things. And I guess it just stuck. I think we’re certainly less manic about it than we used to be, but I mean, when you asked me that point-blank, it’s probably because it really is the way we know and it’s the way we’ve always done things.

Marc Allan: From what I understand, I was talking to Corrosion of Conformity‘s publicist and they said that all your good habits are rubbing off on them because they’re seeing how you should do it.

Lars Ulrich: Their bad habits are rubbing off on us.

Marc Allan: No, but I mean they’re seeing what you should do, I mean how you should handle people, how you should deal with the press, that kind of thing. And there’s so many people who just think that they’re too good to talk to anybody that when a band like Metallica comes along, I mean, it’s one of the few bands that you can actually count on to do the right thing.

Lars Ulrich: We’ve always enjoyed, I mean I wouldn’t say enjoyed, but it’s something that always has been a part of what we’ve done.

Marc Allan: The show that you’re doing just sounds pretty just unbelievable every night. Are you having like, I mean, do you have one stage that you’re carrying or are you leapfrogging city to city?

Lars Ulrich: No, we don’t, it goes up and down every night, thanks to about a good hundred people that work for us and it’s pretty amazing. It’s something I try not to think about because it’s that potential for something going wrong in terms of, somebody has a flat tire or the occasional snowstorm or something could really fuck the whole thing up pretty good. But I mean, without sucking anybody off, we’ve really had some of the best people working on those sides of it. And the show goes up and down five times a week and it’s pretty amazing in itself that that even happens.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that is pretty stunning. Just a couple of other things If I can. The cover of the new album is a Serrano piece. And did you pick Serrano deliberately or did you just happen to like those?

Lars Ulrich: No, we liked the image a lot. There was no hidden attempt to start a revolution or to turn everything upside down. I think we were going for something that was, we’ve always had everything, the album title, the song titles, the covers, everything tie in together. And I think we were feeling that we wanted to go more neutral, to have each thing be more their own entities. And so we wanted an album title that didn’t really mean much and a visual that really didn’t have much to do with song seven on the record or something. So we started getting individual as entities and really liked the image of Serrano. So that vision on some of the stuff that he’s done and what he’s said.

Marc Allan: Yeah, you’re fading on me a little bit.

Lars Ulrich: Yeah, there’s a lot of concrete here.

Marc Allan: Yeah, I’m still there. So there’s no image of, if I look real closely, there’s no image of Jesus in urine in this picture.

Lars Ulrich: I mean, if you had nothing but time on your hands I would just certainly keep looking. Give me an update when I see you next week, but I wouldn’t waste my time if you have other things to do.

Marc Allan: Yeah, okay.

Lars Ulrich: I think, call and ask what’s his fuck? What is his name, maybe he can help you.

Marc Allan: Yeah okay, a couple of real quick things. “The God that Failed”, my favorite Metallica song, are you playing, “The God that Failed”? Are you playing that song this time?

Lars Ulrich: Not this time, no. We played it the time before.

Marc Allan: Yeah, yeah, I saw you play it once, but you know, you always hope that you’ll play it again, so. And for another story I’ve been working on, I’m asking everybody I interview what’s the strangest, funniest, weirdest encounter you’ve ever had with one of your fans? I’m losing you here.

Lars Ulrich: You are?

Marc Allan: Yeah, I haven’t heard anything you said yet.

Lars Ulrich: Okay no, I didn’t say anything.

Marc Allan: Okay.

Lars Ulrich: Well we have the, no it’s called.

Marc Allan: Wait a second, I’m losing you again. Are you still there?

Lars Ulrich: A magazine called “So What” that we run out of our fan club, and one of the contests I had to judge was write anything that’s Metallica-related on a piece of paper, like any kind of short, anything you want on any topic. And some guy wrote a story about how he spent 10 years of his life, basically wishing he was me and dreaming about being me every night and basically making himself look like me and acting like me and talking like me and every night going to bed, wishing he could someday meet me. And I picked him to be the winner of the contest and the contest prize was a visit to San Francisco to hang out with us. So he came out and hung out there, I was face to face with the other me from Duluth, Minnesota. And that was pretty surreal.

Marc Allan: That’s frightening. And how did he react when he, I mean did he-

Lars Ulrich: He was actually, he was pretty cool. We’ve actually almost become friends, at least the same way that me and Ferrell had. So, it’s pretty cool.

Marc Allan: Yeah. And finally, I just want to ask you, you always seem really happy, like you’re really enjoying yourself and am I right about that and how come other people can’t be like that?

Lars Ulrich: I don’t take it too seriously because I do, obviously there are certain things about this that I do take fairly seriously. I just think that you’ve gotta have the ability to mock yourself and laugh at yourself about this. And half of the laughing that I do is always at myself or at people I’m with, and I think that’s the one thing that separates us and gives us longer legs than most other people is that we always take the piss out of ourselves. It’s an ability that a lot of people lack.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that’ll work. Anything else you want me to tell people?

Lars Ulrich:  Well, look forward to coming back and having some of that horseradish down at the old St. Elmo’s joint there.

Marc Allan: You know it well, that’s great. Listen, I really appreciate your doing this ’cause obviously you don’t have to. I mean, you guys are sold out, and-

Lars Ulrich: Sure yeah, no, and then we’ll look forward to coming back and when we played out at the old whatchamacallit there.

Marc Allan: Oh, Deer Creek.

Lars Ulrich: Yeah, Deer Creek. It was probably one of, I’d say two or three best Lollapaloozas last summer. And so we got that to look forward to and trying to top when we come back next week.

Marc Allan: Good, okay, well I’m looking forward to it. Thanks a lot Lars, take care.

Lars Ulrich: Okay man, all right Marc, I’ll see you soon okay?

Marc Allan: Okay, bye-bye.

Lars Ulrich: Take care.