Lars Ulrich explains how he prepares for a Metallica tour
Now entering their fourth decade of existence, thrash metal gods Metallica have to take things a little easier in comparison to how they put on a show back in the day. The band that was once derisively labelled “Alcoholica” thanks to their intake is now a calmer and more sober enterprise. That grounded reality makes albums like 2023’s 72 Seasons and new worldwide tours possible for four men approaching their 60s.
So how does drummer Lars Ulrich prepare for two years of global travel and nightly three-hour concerts? As he told Conan O’Brien for his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Ulrich has to maintain a much stricter diet and exercise routine than he had ever attempted during the band’s initial days.
“The easy answer is that it doesn’t get any easier whatsoever,” Ulrich explains. “It takes twice the effort or more just to reach the same level. Just to plateau. You know, I’m on the Pedelton an hour and a half every day and I’m working out and I’m watching what I’m eating and all that. And not to get better: it’s to stay the same.”
“I take it seriously. All of us, in our own ways, take it seriously,” Ulrich adds. “All of us have different routines, our own unique ways of approaching it. The main thing is that when we get up on that stage, we want to be there for the other guys in the band and obviously for the audience and be the best we can be.”
That’s not to make it sound easy. Ulrich’s air-tight diet means that simple pleasures are often out. “I do find myself often at a sort of crossroads in my mind where I eat the same shit for breakfast every day, the same shit for lunch every day, more or less the same thing for dinner every day. I’m very very routine-based and I really like to be in that routine, but as soon as I’m out of that routine, it’s like ‘I need my tofu for dinner! I need my protean!'”
“And I think, ‘Really? You can’t just go to a restaurant with your friends and have what’s on the menu? You’ve gotta be that rigid?’ So there is that kind of rigid thing that you really feel like that’s how you get to the place where you can be your best every day at those shows. The other side of that: if you could sit here with your 22-year-old [self] and say, ‘Really? That’s what you’ve become?'”
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