The first album that Metallica’s Lars Ulrich ever bought
Metallica are one of the pioneers of heavy metal music and, along with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, are considered one of the ‘Big Four’ of thrash metal. Their fast tempos, complex compositions and aggression set them apart from their competitors. Drummer Lars Ulrich once revealed his early inspiration came from the first album he ever bought.
“When I was nine years old, in 1973, my dad took me to see Deep Purple in Copenhagen,” he said. “The next day after school, as I was biking home, I stopped off at the record store. It was out in the suburbs where I lived, a run-of-the-mill local chain. I asked what Deep Purple records they had. They had Fireball – so I bought Fireball. And that was the beginning of it.”
Fireball is the fifth studio album by Deep Purple. It was released in 1971 and was the first of the band’s three albums to reach number one on the UK album charts. It went on to sell over a million copies in the UK, though strangely has not received official certification.
Ulrich also said that Deep Purple are his favourite band of all time and was fortunate enough to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. During his induction speech, Ulrich said, “Everything was larger than life, the sound, the spectacle, the songs, the musicians, all doing things with their instruments that I had never seen before – and didn’t even know was possible.”
He added, “Deep Purple were a beautiful contradiction, like you just walked in on five musicians at the top of their game jamming one classic after another with raw intensity, as if they were in a garage playing for no one but themselves. Yet at the same time projecting a thousand-yard deep stare into the bowels of the arena.”
Deep Purple formed in London in 1968 and are considered, along with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, to be the original pioneers of heavy metal. They were originally conceived as a psychedelic prog-rock band but soon found a richer sound with the release of 1970’s Deep Purple In Rock.
“These guys could play,” Ulrich continued during the induction speech. “They could improvise. They were in constant and curious cutthroat competition with each other to take the music someplace new, someplace unknown and never ever the same place twice. My life had officially changed forever.”
“With almost no exceptions, every hard rock band in the last 40 years, including mine, traces its lineage directly back to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple,” Ulrich added. “And as far as I’m concerned, these three bands should always be considered equals for their songwriting, their recordings, and their accomplishments.”
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