Heroes: Lars Ulrich

From Kill ‘Em All to St Anger, Lars Ulrich has been drumming in Metallica for 25 years. In that time he’s built up hoards of fans, Mike Portnoy included. Rhythm’s guest editor interviews the metal monster on the highs, the lows and the long-awaited new album...

The first question Mike Portnoy asks Lars Ulrich when he answers the phone has nothing to do with drumming at all, but is far more practical. “How do you get up this early, man?”, he cries. It seems Mike is not a morning person, while Lars has been up for three hours. “I’ve got to take care of the kids,” he explains, “6.45am the alarm clock goes off and then it’s showers and breakfasts, fruit plates and lunch boxes.”

Despite the appearance of domesticity, Lars has been busy with the metal monsters he helped spawn back in 1981. This year involved a tour of Europe to mark the 20th anniversary of Master Of Puppets, which saw them playing the whole album live in its entirety, a feat that Lars says was “definitely inspired” by Dream Theater’s performance of the album in 2002. And right now, Metallica are busy working on the follow-up to 2003’s St Anger, although for the first time since 1988’s ...And Justice For All, Bob Rock will not be at the control desk. Instead Rick Rubin, who has worked with everyone from Slayer to Run DMC, will take the helm. When they’ve finished comparing notes on whose band has more kids, Mike and Lars get down to the serious business of drumming...

Mike Portnoy: I’m not used to doing interviews from this side but I’m going to try my best, and let’s see how it rolls. How’s the new album coming along?

Lars Ulrich: “So far it’s been a fun year. There are no film crews, there’s no psychiatrist, no producers. It’s just the four of us. We sit around and write and play and sweat and have fun. Rick has been coming up once in a while, listening in and throwing ideas at us. We carried this Pro-Tools system on the road and we’d jam in the tuning room every day before the show so it’s all those ideas. We’re about 25 songs into it and Rick’s coming up the day after tomorrow. We basically told him that we’re done writing now, it’s time to pick some songs and get recording.”

MP: What’s it like working with a new producer for the first time in 15 years?

LU: “It’s a completely different energy, a whole new vibe, after five records and 15 awesome years with Bob. The guy is and always will be a member of the extended Metallica family, but we had to try something different. Rick is more of a bigger picture guy. He’s not so much about a double chorus there or adding four more bars of that. He’s more like, turn the Pro-Tools off, go play and arrange it on the floor. So far he’s forced us to work and sweat a little more and push ourselves.”

MP: So all this time it’s been the writing process, you haven’t actually recorded any drums yet?

LU: “We had probably 30 to 40 hours of source material, of riffs and ideas and jams, and we promised ourselves that we would go through all of that. We’re 25 songs into that now, so we’re going to trim it down, but you’ve got to remember we did the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame, then we were in South Africa for three weeks, then we did Europe for six weeks, then Rob (Trujillo, bass) had a kid so we had a few weeks off.”

MP: It’s old school. Led Zeppelin would record a little bit, then go out and tour, then come back.

LU: “This has not been like The Black Album, with 16-hour days, six days a week for three months. We’ve been touring and Kirk (Hammett, guitar) had a baby, and if it takes longer, we’re ok with that.”

MP: We’re in the same boat, because we have been locked in the studio for a couple of months and we’re booked until early next year. We’ve taken breaks – me and the guitar player just did the G3 tour, and we’re going to do another one in Australia next month, so we come and go and work around life.

LU: “Exactly. I don’t have the stamina for nine months in the studio then 18 months on the road – that kind of thing where everything gets pushed to the limit.”

MP: Ok, last question about the new stuff and then we’ll talk specifically about drums. I loved the direction on the last album with the longer songs, the heavier songs, the more unorthodox arrangements. It reminded me a lot of the older stuff. Is the new stuff a continuation of that direction or is it more straight-ahead?

LU: “When I look back on St Anger now, it was an experiment, a reaction to 20 years of doing things one way and it was like, ‘Ok let’s sit down the four of us and come up with some ideas in the moment and record them’. I think there was great energy there. The backside of that is that we ended up using Pro-Tools a lot. The new songs are definitely a little longer and more intricate. It’s more organic in that we’re playing together. Kirk is playing guitar solos again, it’s not so much record eight bars and then put it in the computer, The snare is back on the snare drum. I remembered this time! In the ‘90s we were getting freaked out that our stuff was getting so sterile and it was missing that live spark. We had to see if we could find that with St Anger so we recorded all these moments but then we ended up putting those moments together in the computer so it became artificial in a different way. This time we’re definitely going to record more like we used to, so we’ll see what happens.

MP: The reason that you and I are talking today is that you had a huge impact on shaping me as a drummer when Metallica first hit the scene more than 20 years ago. As the years have passed, people have forgotten the influence that you had on so many drummers and I really wanted to give you credit where credit is due. So going back to the beginning, which drummers formed the way you played when you started out?

LU: “Obviously Phil Taylor with Motörhead; ‘Overkill’, sitting there riding those 16th notes on the double bass drums.”

MP: Until you guys came along, ‘Overkill’ was the heaviest thing I’d ever heard, along with ‘Fast As A Shark’ by Accept. I thought that was the benchmark for heavy and fast right up until Kill ‘Em All came out.

LU: “Thanks, man. I would say that, no disrespect to Accept, but Motörhead had the speed, they had the attitude, they had the aggression and Phil was just so cool. The drums were pushed way upfront and because they were a three piece the drums were a big part of colouring the songs. Then there was this guy named Duncan Scott who was the drummer fur Diamond Head. He wasn’t a particularly technically proficient drummer, but the way that he worked with Brian Tatler’s rhythm guitar was a real inspiration to the way I started working with Hetfield (James, guitar/vocals).

“A lot of the stuff he played was pretty straightforward. He didn’t do a lot of really wacky fills but Duncan played a lot with rhythms and counter rhythms. Take early Motörhead and early Diamond Head and that’s the blueprint for Kill ‘Em All.

“There’s a difference between inspiration and influence. Ian Paice was a huge inspiration but I can’t say that he was necessarily a direct influence on what I was doing. John Coghlan, who played in a band called Status Quo, he was a huge inspiration and Mick Tucker from The Sweet; he was one of the first guys who did double bass. I went through some phases on the earlier records when it became about really pushing it and doing as many wacky drum fills and tempo changes and bringing the drums up front to play with the rhythm guitar. After those first four or five records I went and got into a major AC/DC thing and Phil Rudd became a huge influence. I felt like I had done as much with pushing the drums as far as I could, so then it became the opposite with The Black Album – taking the drums and laying them back and letting the guitars be up front. I went on this whole backbeat trip.

MP: I also spoke to Neil Peart, Bill Bruford and Nick Mason for this issue...

LU: “That’s some serious company to be in.”

MP: I know you have the metal influence, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and Motörhead, but I’m wondering about guys like Peart, Bruford and Mason – did you listen to any of them when you were younger?

LU: “I got into Rush pretty early actually. I’ve always had nothing but admiration for Neil. Our managers were very close with the Rush guys and he helped me tremendously in 1984-85. He gave me some advice about how to deal with things in the business. He’s been an amazing guy, but I can’t say he’s been a particularly huge inspiration on my playing. Signals, Grace Under Pressure, those were my favourite Rush albums because I thought his playing was probably peaking at that time. To me, with the greatest drummers it’s never been about their ability or their drum solos; it’s always been about what they’ve done within the context of a song.”

MP: I totally agree. I guess it takes 10 years into a career to get to that stage, because if you listen to early Metallica the drums are really in the forefront and really dictating so much of what’s going on, then later on it seemed to me that your playing was more responsible to the music.

LU: “I think that comes from confidence. You’ve got to remember that when Hetfield and I formed Metallica I’d been playing drums about five minutes. We were so young and so green. All of a sudden we woke up and we were three records into our career and we were touring all over the world and had hordes of fans, and we were sitting there going, ‘I can’t play my instrument!’. So the way you compensate for that is you try to overplay to show everybody. ‘Hey look, I can do all this fancy-ass stuff and these backwards, sideways fills and all these tempo changes!’.

“I think all of us, maybe not Cliff Burton (original Metallica bassist) so much, but at least me and Kirk and James were trying to overcompensate for our perceived lack of ability. Rob really helped us feel more confident and it goes back to letting the songs be the main thing, instead of trying to let everybody’s individual abilities drive the songs. It took a good 10 years to get to the point where we were confident enough to do that because we were all 17 or 18 years old when we started and had no clue.”

MP: I know what you mean, because a band like mine has been based on this shredding musicianship reputation, and I’m grateful and flattered that I’ve won all these awards for it, but it almost feels like there’s an expectation put on you as a musician.

You’re writing music and sometimes you want to just lay down that groove and that backbeat. There are so many times when we’re writing when I want to not play any fills, but there’s always that expectation...

LU: “I know, I’ve taken some heat over the years for this perception that ‘Lars is slacking off’, but I’ve always said this with pride: everything that we do is a reaction to something else we’ve done. Sometimes I know we react too far in the opposite direction, but it was after sitting there for five years trying to reinvent drum fills and reinvent tempo changes and coming up with stuff that the guys who were writing those Cherry Lane books couldn’t even interpret. There were guys calling me up asking me, ‘What are you playing right there?’. I’m like, ‘I have no idea’!

“By the time Load and Reload came around I can understand that people felt that I was getting a little lazy, and maybe in retrospect I was. Now I feel that there’s definitely a much better balance. I’m playing drum fills again, I’m having fun, I’m exploring different beats and I think, from what I can tell, people are picking up on that because we got some of the best reviews we’ve had for many years this summer with the playing being a little more spunky.”

MP: One of the things I really admire about you, and can totally relate to, is that your role in the band branches out way beyond the drums. You’re a composer, a co-producer, a businessman and you oversee every aspect of the way that the band functions. That said, where do the drums fit in for you on the food chain?

LU: “There were a few years, late ‘90s, when I got too into the business side of it. I was like, ‘Let’s get a record label!’, and I did all that for about five years. I lost a little bit in my prioritising, but it was something I had to explore. During those years the drums took more of a back seat than they should have. We were working too much, touring too much. In some ways I’ll always appreciate Jason (Newsted, former Metallica bassist) because he was the one who sat down and said, ‘This is getting too big, it’s not even that much fun anymore. It’s too much like a business’. He put the brakes on that and had the balls to leave. Even though at the time I thought he was running away, now five years later I can see that he was right. I feel like I have a better balance in my life and to answer your question the drums are higher up on the food chain. Simplify – that’s my mantra every day, just try to simplify as much as possible because I’m 42 years old and I can’t deal with all of it anymore.”

MP: I spread myself thin too. When I’m making a record with Dream Theater, the drums are just one of a million aspects for me. There’s the writing of the music, I write the lyrics, and I produce the albums, there’s the artwork and the T-shirts and it’s all just a big picture and I know drums for me is just a little one. For many years, the drums got diluted and I ended up doing a few projects, like I did the G3 tours and some session work on other people’s solo albums, where I’m just the drummer. I show up and play the drums, and it totally inspired me to just be a drummer. Do you ever have that longing, to just be the drummer?

LU: “What I love is the writing and playing behind James’ guitar and sometimes I wish all that other stuff would go away so I could just sit down and come up with some sick-ass beats. When I did Camp Freddy a few weeks ago it was really fun because I just had to show up and play drums. I didn’t have to write a set list, I didn’t have to do anything. It was like, ‘Ok, show up at 10.40pm and play this song’. ‘Sir, yes sir!’.”

MP: I can totally relate. It’s cool to just play drums sometimes but I wouldn’t trade in the other stuff for the world, because it’s all that other stuff that makes you an artist more than just a drummer. That’s what separates the men from the boys...

LU: “We’ve been doing this for about 200 years now and I wouldn’t change one thing we’ve done. Ok, maybe the white leather jacket, but everything we’ve done has always been the best it can be at that moment. I don’t have any regrets about it because the one thing that we always did was we kept it real and honest. I’ll always be proud of that.”

MP: I know your relationship in writing and performing, and I can relate to this as well because I’m very much in a similar situation where it’s based on drums and guitar, it’s not the typical rhythm section like drums and bass. But, that said, what were your relationships like with Cliff, Jason and Rob? What are some of the differences between the three of them as bass players in terms of a musical communication with you?

LU: “Cliff was unique. Me and James and Kirk always felt that Cliff was so far ahead of the rest of us. He had been to music school, he studied classical music, he was just so much more gifted than the rest of us, and it was an incredible relationship to be part of.”

MP: I guess when somebody dies that early, you always wonder what could have been – what would Jimi Hendrix be doing today if he were still around? What would Randy Rhoads be doing? And Cliff is like that, there’s that mystery of what he could have been.

LU: “Exactly. He was just so in his own world. Jason was awesome in that he was incredibly motivated, incredibly focused, sometimes we felt that he was almost too focused. He was always the one who was like, come on, step up. He was more untraditional, he was more with the guitars than the drums. There are moments in ‘Enter Sandman’ and some of the more groove-oriented songs on Load and Reload like ‘Ronnie’, where the drums and the bass really are in the pocket, but that was something that Bob had to push us towards.

“Rob is so grounded. He tends to look to the drums first rather than to James’ guitar, and I think that what he and I are coming up with now is really exciting and when people hear this, they’ll trip on it. He’s always there with the bass drum, locking in to that. Live, he just holds it together. Rob is the perfect fit. I don’t think Metallica have ever been happier or gotten along better, and that is in no way a diss on what Jason or Cliff brought to us, but there’s a serenity in the band, without sounding too corny. Everybody’s getting along and having a good time. It feels balanced.”

MP: Actually that’s what I saw in Some Kind Of Monster. A lot of people talking about that movie focused on the negative, but I saw that movie and I saw the positive. To me, that was Let It Be if The Beatles hadn’t broken up. Let It Be was The Beatles disintegrating; I thought ...Monster was more like you guys rebuilding. It was a rebirth rather than a disintegration.

LU: “I’m glad you say that because I agree with that. I’d say the key thing is that all the work that we were doing at the time, the true result of that was not going to be on the St Anger album, it’s going to be on the next record. Everything is just awesome in this band right now and Rob is a really big part of the meshing of those personalities. He’s the exact right dynamic between me and Hetfield and Hammett. It’s a godsend.”

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Mike Portnoy’s recommended listening [for examples of Lars Ulrich’s drumming]

‘Orion’ – Master of Puppets (Metallica)

‘Disposable Heroes’ – Master of Puppets (Metallica)

‘Dyers Eve’ – ...And Justice For All (Metallica)

‘The Four Horsemen’ – Kill ‘Em All (Metallica)

‘Fight Fire With Fire’ – Ride The Lightning (Metallica)