The one musician Lars Ulrich knew always belonged in Metallica: “Part of our legacy”
Given how much Lars Ulrich has done over the past few years, it’s easy to forget how important he was to the actual music of Metallica.
He has always been the one not only championing the band as a musical collective but also as a brand to sell, and there’s a good chance that even non-drummers will know that he isn’t exactly what he used to be behind the kit or anything like that. Ulrich did have a keen ear for what Metallica needed, though, and he understood that some people belonged in the band without question.
But when you look at the heart of Metallica, it all comes back to the relationship between Ulrich and James Hetfield. They were clearly musical brothers in a sense, and while they have had their fair share of fights, just like all brothers do, there’s nothing that the band has ever done that didn’t get the approval of both of them before it ended up getting put out on any one of their albums.
When you look at their history, though, there were more than a few times where they could be downright cutthroat to some of their bandmates. Dave Mustaine might have worked wonders for Megadeth, but getting kicked out of the band without any second chance probably wasn’t going to feel great right after getting a record deal. At the same time, he at least had it a little better than what Jason Newsted went through.
Mustaine was treated as an equal throughout his time in the band, whereas Newsted seemed like the new kid who was the butt of every single joke that they made. He was at least goofy enough to take it on the chin a lot of the time, but when you look at the way that he was operating behind the scenes, anyone else would have been pissed if they heard their instrument turned down on And Justice For All or were forced to hang around in the background during interviews.
Then again, a lot of that resentment came from the fact that Newsted simply wasn’t Cliff Burton at the end of the day. No one could have replaced the original bassist, and from the minute that Ulrich heard Burton playing in the band Trauma, he knew that there was no choice but to get him in the band. Burton was a musical genius, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world caught on to what he was doing.
Given the classical background he came from and the intricate lines that he would weave throughout every single song, Ulrich felt that there was no one else who could possibly fill the slot Burton left behind following his death in a bus crash, saying on the anniversary of his death, “He’s continuously a part of our legacy. There are days when I still think about him.” And if Ulrich still felt that way, every bassist that came after him was going to need to show their respect for Burton’s legacy as well.
Newsted was already a massive fan of Burton well before he even joined Metallica, and even though Robert Trujillo came from a more funk background than the rest of the band, there wasn’t a day that went by where he didn’t give his respect, whether that was cranking out the intro to ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ or working in pieces of Burton’s bass solo ‘Anaesthesia’ into his own bass breaks whenever he played live.
It wasn’t going to be easy for any member of the band to move on, but even if it’s been decades since Burton’s death, Ulrich knew that he would always be a part of the band’s story. He didn’t deserve to be known as the Metallica member that died; he was the bandmate that spent his every breath trying to play the kind of music that he loved every single time he got up onstage.
