Metallica’s Lars Ulrich thanks Deep Purple for him becoming a musician
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has thanked a Deep Purple concert for instigating him to quit tennis and become a professional musician.
In a new interview, Ulrich recalled seeing Deep Purple as a child at Copenhagen’s KB Halle. “I was just infatuated. Not just with the music but the event: the people, the volume, the reverberation, the light show, the whole thing,” he told Louder Sound. Following the performance, he went to a record store the following day to buy their album Fireball. “I started with that and I didn’t look back,” he added.
Years later, Ulrich moved to Los Angeles and tried to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a tennis professional, but his mind was already fixated on music. He continued: “I ended up playing tennis every day for six months and that was probably what turned me off. Then we decided to move to a suburb south of LA called Newport Beach, which was pretty fucking horrible.”
The drummer added: “It was really rich, conservative, pink Lacoste shirts. By the time I’d been there two or three months, it all fell apart. Music became all-encompassing and tennis just went away. I just wanted to play in a band.”
Earlier this year, Metallica released their new album 72 Seasons. In a two-star review of the LP, Far Out wrote: “These all might seem like standard complaints for a Metallica album, but that should be telling: Metallica are so committed to their established sound that nothing experimental, forward-thinking, or particularly notable can filter through. The energy and dedication to greatness is there, and it certainly seems like the four band members are more comfortable and happy to be together than ever before. That means that Metallica live shows will still delight millions for years to come. But it doesn’t mean that the group is making relevant work anymore.”
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