Lars Ulrich: “We all want to be like U2”
At some point during any musician’s career, they’ll face the frustrating pressure of getting it right. For many, this tension comes with the sophomore record, while for others, it appears further down the line, when momentum threatens to be overtaken by a more humbling reality. For Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich, this expectation ebbs and flows, though it rarely lets up against the unrelenting desires of outsider expectations.
For Metallica and many other hard rock artists, appeasing audiences while navigating reinvention is difficult. This becomes especially pronounced the longer they are in the game, with more material posing the risk of dips in interest. Even a band as monolithic as Metallica isn’t immune to such discrepancies, with many still seething from the surprising downturn of two records in particular.
Of course, there are some positives to Load and Reload, no matter how much some scramble to prove there isn’t any at all. And, despite becoming what Lars Ulrich described as an unsuspecting “Metallica punching bag”, the two records were exactly what the band needed to do in order to evolve. As he put it: “The hair, the pictures, the blues riffs, the country influences it was all what we wanted to do so fuck you!”
While the following records, St. Anger and Death Magnetic, in no way lived up to the standard set by Master of Puppets or The Black Album, their resolve to confront personal conflicts and musical tensions evoked a different flavour of raw authenticity, one that fans still cherished as quintessential Metallica. However, those inconsequential uncertainties still lingered, though in a way that pushed them to want to be better.
As Ulrich explained to Louder, the build-up to Death Magnetic wasn’t as meticulously poised as it may have seemed, with the band largely scrambling to make sure everything was as it should be, even if that was an unattainable dream they would never be able to achieve. “Maybe in the metal world people look to us and think, ‘Those guys have got it together.’ But it’s not something we think about a lot ourselves,” he said.
Distilling his point, he compared their composure to another band, showcasing how their chaotic fumble for perfection paled compared to those who already have the means to pull anything off effortlessly. “In terms of the way modern bands would like to operate, we all want to be like U2,” he said, adding, “There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think this is amateur hour. We are so dorky and so many little details go wrong. We go: ‘D’oh! I bet that doesn’t happen to U2!’ U2 do everything properly and everybody else is just second-class on a professional level.”
On the surface, it may seem like Ulrich’s only means of referencing U2 would be in the tongue-in-cheek manner he does in that quote. In reality, however, it likely keeps him on his toes, thinking about those who seem to have it all worked out when Metallica’s slip-up appears on the horizon at any given moment. It’s a double-edged sword to exist on the edge artistically, but one that keeps them pushing on, forever reaching for their Joshua Tree.
