Interview with Lars Ulrich

February 1997 Metal Edge in the studio interview with Lars Ulrich

Interview by Gerri Miller

Gerri: Are all your drum parts done at this point?

Lars: Yeah. Basically everything was recorded in '95. I've been hero every day. Other than to just baby-sit and coproduce with James...my drum parts were recorded but not edited. We would record drum tracks and we did all that in 1995. Then we'd go back and listen to the drum performances and we take the best performances and make a drum master out of that. All the songs that did not end up on Load were all recorded in 1995 but they were not edited together until the summer. I spent July doing that and just basically developing the record along with James since then. But all the basics were all recorded throughout 1995. We went in the studio in May of 1995 and we finished doing basic tracks in November, and between that we also did gigs in Donington and Tuktoyaktuk. Up till January of '96 we were still developing a double album with 27 songs, but then we decided to do Lollapalooza and I divided the songs into two records. Here's the second 13.

G: How did you decide on calling it Re-Load?

L: Re-Load was always the best one. Once you sit down and look at all these options, Offload and Unload... We thought that Re-Load was always the strongest because when you start getting into Overload and Qifload and all this they start having potential negative connotations. The packaging will be different but completely tie in. The themes are running through, with some different graphics.

G: Can you pick a favorite song so far?

L: I can't. I can tell you in a year what my favorite songs are. If there were ones I preferred more than the other ones I would take the ones I didn't prefer off the record. I think they're all pretty cool. Obviously, the songs are from the same time period as Load, but the main thing is these two records will balance out when people hear 'em. "Fuel" is fast...well, it's luck of the draw. There is no reasoning. When we made the decision to not make Load a double album I had to sit down and try to balance two records and my main goal was to try and make two equal records, not an A record and a lesser B record, but a Part I and a Part Ii, and I think once this record is complete and people can hear it for what it is I think they will find that the two Load records, will balance pretty equally. The only preconceived notion was the new "Unforgiven." That was actually one of the earliest songs that was done.

G: Why wasn't it on Load then?

L: We wanted to have one record between the two.

G: I know a lot of the lyrics aren't finished yet.

L: Yeah, but we work with the vocals and the vocal melodies from day one. The vocal melodies that develop are an integral part of developing and writing the song. But the lyrics are pretty irrelevant to the development and the writing of the song. James literally wrote a batch of lyrics this week and that kind of fits in line with how the lyrics have always been written. Sometimes he'll write the last set of lyrics the day before the record's done and go in and sing it. What used to happen in the early days a lot was we were very into developing almost concept records and we sat down and put these themes together, ...And Justice For All and manipulation on Master of Puppets, and Ride the Lightning about fear. Now most of the lyrics are much more personal and much more James opening himself up and it's not so grabbing a subject or theme and writing in the third person about that. I think it started on the Black album. "Devil Dance" and "Fuel" were lyrics written two years ago, but some of the songs have lyrics that have been altered. You go back and look at something and change it.

G: How else can you compare this writing process to previous ones?

L: As with any record, me and James sit down and develop these songs based out of James' ideas, my ideas, and Kirk's ideas. Jason's is this "Martini" thing, everything else is sort of fairly evenly Kirk, James and me.

G: Did any songs in particular give you trouble?

L: Yeah, "The Memory Remains." It's very different now than it was when we wrote it. It started out like really more of a rock ballad or kind of a "Nothing Else Matters." We were never really 100% thrilled with it and we just sat and tried some different things. Then James came and said he had been listening to a lot of kind of traditional Irish folk music, especially a band called the Chieftains, and he suggested trying to take the track in that direction in terms of instruments, and that's what we did. The same kind of thing happened with "Mama Said" two years ago. That started out more of a rock ballad. We felt that we had done that, so it was just like it became more fun to try and take the more mellower songs in different directions. We just put them on separate records.

G: What about the studio process?

L: It's been really fun to work on it because it's been really different. We're right now sitting here with minus nine days before ground zero before we deliver the record. Every other time we have made a record and are where we are now, close to finishing, we have been in the studio for a year and we spent the previous six months writing. The cool thing about this is that we did 75% of the work on this record in 1995, so we really started this record in July. Compared to the Black album it was a lot faster, a lot more effortless, the whole vibe with Bob and James and everything is just a lot better and it gets better and better as we go along. The best thing about going through crunch time right now is that we've only been working on this for 10, 12 weeks. We're not burnt, we're nat stressing, we're not fighting...this is by far the least arguments and differences of opinions that there's ever been on an album. In terms of me and James, compared to previous years, the Black album was a f.cking war zone for nine months. Every day you got out of bed and you went over to the closet and you put on your f.cking best armor, you rode the horse to the studio with a big lance, and you went in and you fought. Load, we were getting more tolerant of everybody, but this time around, at least between James and me, we're 95% of where the tension comes from and it's been really smooth.

G: Other than the time factor, to what do you attribute that?

L: You can sit and analyze that to death, but I think it certainly also has something to do with the fact that we are older and more tolerant. You have an idea about what you want and the other guy has an idea about what he wants and instead of fighting to the death about it, I try and look at it from his point of view and if I at least can see his side of it, even though it's different from mine, then a lot of times I just let things go. You pick and choose. It becomes a balance thing and that's where I think that we have gained the most ground.

G: Do you think mamage has mellowed both of you a bit?

L: I think it's part of it, sure. I think that every day I grow older affects me every day in some way. So of course marriage affects it a little bit. Everything affects it somehow, I just think the biggest part of it is the fact that you age everyday. There are two ways you can deal with it. You can either accept it and harness it and milk it for the most you can or you can try and deny it and keep running from it and trying to pretend it doesn't exist. And I try and embrace it and leam every day. I think I'm more open and more tolerant and less of an asshole and less breathing down people's backs and trying to be just more open to different ways of thinking and different perspectives and I think it makes me a better person. That's a philosophy that I live my life by and it's something that I think I bring to this band. James is going through it at his own pace, everybody's going through it, and the older we get, the more different from each other we get, and the less in common we have. The only thing we all four really have in common now is Metallica, and I think the bond of the four of us around Metallica is stronger now than it's ever been before because it's the only real thing that binds us together.

G: There has been a lot of argument back and forth about Load, controversy over the Image, selling out, going too far. With hindsight, was it too much too soon for fans to absorb?

L: Probably, yeah. Yeah, of course. To most people it was a shock. I think it was too much for them. But that doesn't mean I regret any of it. I mean, I realize now that I definitely wanted to push it and that is we did. I mean, obviously I think that there was a lot of people that of course couldn't deal with it. I think if you sit down and look at the facts, the fact is, that any time, there's a five year gap between anything creative, it just gets blown up to proportions, it's a great thing that we never, for the rest of our career, have to follow the Black album again. Now we've done that.

G: The pressure of It?

L: I don't think it's so much the pressure for us, it's more the expectations from people and that's the difference. It's no secret that we always develop and grow and do whatever we want, but when it's five years, dude, it's five f.ckin' years. That is like a lifetime for some people, okay? I was 26 years old when the Black album came out. We were actually out of the public eye for almost two years.

G: But to come back with an album that to many was experimental for Metallica and coupled with the "Until it Sleeps" video and the make-up and short hair was too much for some.

L: Let's not kid ourselves, I mean, there certainly was an element of wanting to push that a little bit because I really think that it was important for our fans to be challenged. Hello?! But when it comes down to it, these things are, as far as I'm concerened, irrelevant. There's only one thing, okay, the music. Album covers, looks, length of hair, videos, all that stuff is secondary. My point that I was trying to make with all that a year ago was that it's like you should not take things for granted and you should not be too comfortable. I think too many fans in the hard rock world are too comfortable and they're not challenged enough. And I think that, looking back on it, there was a degree of wanting to do that. And I'm really happy that we decided to shake it up.

G: Do you think Load suffered because of it, that people wouldn't give it a chance?

L: Maybe a little bit, but not anything to lose sleep over. You can talk about, all the people that fell away, but there's always somebody else who comes in. I probably would have told you a year and a half ago that if Load would sell half of the Black album I would be happy. Those numbers are pretty much in line with what I thought would happen. But what went way above my expectations was the amount of people that came and saw us play live. That just blew my mind that we could go in there and when some of the numbers we were doing were double the Black album. It was mind-boggling.

G: You're touring next summer, but overseas first.

L: We're going to start in Europe in June play about a month.There's June up till like, I think up to the July 4th weekend, and then we start in America about the middle of July for about 10 weeks and play all the sheds, a three month block of the sheds.

G: I don't envy you choosing a set list. L: It becomes harder and harder. Over in Europe in August we played "Stone Cold Crazy," which we hadn't played live for about five or six years, which was a lot of fun. And so we try and pull some different things out of the sleeve.

G: Can you tell me about this Metallica movie I've heard about?

L: There are two movie projects that are different from each other. There's the stuff we filmed down in Dallas-Fort Worth in May which were two or three shows, it's more of the kind of standard long form concert movie type of thing. But we shot it all on film stock and we're gonna try and get it into theaters and get a video [from it]. And then the people from IMAX are really interested in doing something with us and we are in the process of figuring out what to do. If we're going to do it, we're probably going to dust all the cobwebs off the two stages from the indoor tour. Set up a couple of gigs. The cost involved in shooting an IMAX thing is about four or five times more because of what the film stock costs. We're working it out, we're looking to try to fit it into the schedule in 1998. No IMAX movie has ever been more than 50 minutes long. It's something that we would try to make happen because we think it could be a lot of fun, but we are entering into a territory that is really uncharted. There are a lot of logistics. Instead of bringing a film crew into film a concert, it will be more like having a film shoot and bringing in an audience. And that will be some time next year.

G: Anything else you want to tell the readers of Metal Edge?

L: I just think that, as you know, and as most of your readers know, you guys are it. There are no other real cool hard rock magazines left and when you want to read what other people have to say, this is it. So that's cool. We all survived together. We all made it.