METALLICA Drummer: 'Right Now The Main Thing Is To Not Have A Heart Attack On Stage'

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich was recently interviewed for the Sonisphere festival web site. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Q: METALLICA's come a long way since your underground thrash days in the Eighties. How have you managed the transition to megastars?

Lars: METALLICA's always stuck to its guns and played the kind of music that turned us on and in turning us on it seemed like we turned a lot of other people on too. Over the years, the numbers just got steadily bigger, we sold more and more records, we reached more and more people and now we're playing bigger places. But at heart it's just four guys having fun and playing music and sharing it with people who get off on it as much as we do. Whether it's 100 people or 100,000 it's more or less the same attitude. Once in a while we go back and play really small places. We played a festival in the States a couple of years ago called Bonnaroo and the night before the we played in a record store basement to about 150 people, so we do that type of stuff still.

Q: How have your fans changed over the years?

Lars: The crowds and the fans seem to just keep getting younger and younger. In some of the countries you look down into the front row and it's 10-year-old kids and 12-year-old kids who've never seen METALLICA before. It seems like there's a whole new generation. Maybe it's our generation that's bringing their kids, but there's this theory that a lot of the young kids are very inspired by the Eighties whereas a lot of things that happened in the nineties like grunge and rap-rock and so on, maybe hasn't resonated so well with this younger generation. It seems that a lot of the heavier bands from the eighties and even from the Seventies, like BLACK SABBATH, DEEP PURPLE, LED ZEPPELIN had a different impact with a lot of the young kids. Obviously it's awesome to be part of that and truly an honor to have that kind of impact on kids that are just getting their feet.

Q: You bass player Rob [Trujillo] is always experimenting with new techniques. What new techniques are you working on?

Lars: Is there any number less than zero? No, I think that right now the main thing is to not have a heart attack on stage. That's the new goal. I'm 46 and the main thing I do is try and stay healthy. I eat well, work out, run and try and stay as fit as possible. I don't wake up and start playing drums. I'm more interested in songs and songwriting and I love making records and the production side of it. I definitely do what I have to do to maintain some ability of playing drums, but mostly it's about being healthy, taking care of myself and then just waiting for James Hetfield to inspire me.

Q: You've appeared in "The Simpsons" and "South Park" before, but you've just made your first appearance in a non-animated movie, "Get Him to the Greek". How did that come about?

Lars: I got a call from manager saying that the people who made "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" were making a new movie with some of the same people and they asked if I would be interested in playing myself. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is actually one of my favorite movies from the last couple of years. I thought it was really well written, really well directed and the gang involved in it are all great people so I thought it would be interesting to be part of that. So I flew down to L.A. and did as I was told for two days. It's always fun to go into other areas and worlds that are unknown. The world of METALLICA and the world of music we know so well and we control all the elements of it. You walk onto a movie set, you have to do as you're told and do it with a smile and just play along. It's fun to forfeit control and just be part of a ride like that.

Q: The Internet has moved on a lot since your dispute with Napster 10 years ago. With hindsight would you have handled that differently?

Lars: I would have woken myself up from the nightmare quicker. I think if anything we were just caught off guard by how passionate people were about this whole Internet phenomenon at the time and it kind of blind-sided us, but we stood our ground and stuck with our principles and a lot of people now are patting us on the back and saying how right we were. Where were you 10 years ago? We were the only ones out there is what I say. But it's okay — you win some, you lose some. I don't regret any of it. Certainly, it was an awkward time as we'd always been the good guys and suddenly there were people who didn't think we were the good guys and it was an unusual situation for us to be in.

Read the entire interview at this location.

Photo below courtesy of MetOnTour.com