The songs Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich wants to be played at his funeral: “Could be me in my afterlife”
If you consider yourself to be a true lover of music in any genre or style, there is a good chance that you have considered the soundtrack of your life. You’ve taken some moments to think of the best track to be played during your life’s most memorable moments, like birthdays, parties, graduations and perhaps, among the more morbid of us, our funerals too. Although it’s not quite a joyful topic, you can learn a lot about someone from the track they want to be played as they are lowered to the ground, and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is no different.
Perhaps owing to his life in the spotlight, dabbling in the excesses of being in one of the biggest metal bands of all time, one song isn’t good enough for the Metallica drummer. Ulrich instead elected to name four tracks when the question of what song he would pick to soundtrack his passing. Each selection shows a different side to his persona, and his choices hold significant weight.
The first suggestion from Ulrich is Rage Against The Machine’s rebel anthem ‘Killing In The Name Of’. Speaking to Louder Sound, the drummer repeated the line, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” but then reassessed his decision and admitted, “But I don’t know if that’s a song I feel defines my life.” It’s a powerful track, there’s no doubt about it. However, one might question whether it would deliver the reverence most of us would prefer when moving on to a new plane.
Rage Against The Machine is a band Ulrich has championed on several occasions, and their debut album helped navigate him through the dystopian maze of 2020. He remarked: “The first Rage Against the Machine album. From my worldview, there’s nothing that seems to put things more in perspective than Rage Against the Machine”.
Ulrich added: “The music, themes, lyrics, delivery – everything seems to be so spot-on and relevant to the daily craziness that shows up whenever you unlock your device. I think it’s the perfect soundtrack to the 2020.” The year was a particularly disastrous one, so we can permiss Ulrich’s want for the establishment-challenging group.
Ulrich’s second selection for his funeral song is a tonal shift from Rage Against The Machine. It comes courtesy of Oasis with ‘Supersonic’, who are another one of the Metallica man’s all-time favourite groups. Metallica and Oasis may not seem like perfect bedfellows, but Ulrich has always championed the Mancunians. He even once suggested Noel Gallagher is the greatest songwriter ever.
“The hardest thing in the world – trust me, we know this first hand – is to write a simple song,” Ulrich said in the same interview. “And the shorter and simpler, the harder it is. Those great Oasis songs – ‘Wonderwall’, ‘Live Forever’, ‘Supersonic’ – if you hear Noel do them by himself, just guitar and voice, it’s pretty incredible what those songs break down to when you’re that naked and that vulnerable.”
Ulrich then considered ‘Am I Evil? which appeared on the debut album by British metallers Diamond Head in 1980, as a song he would love to have to see him off during his funeral. He then contemplated one more song and added: “Or I guess ‘Return Of The Vampire’ by Mercyful Fate. That’s an old classic that I played on when they re-recorded it around 1993, and maybe in some weird way ‘Return Of The Vampire’ could be me in my afterlife coming back.”
As Ulrich’s longwinded answer proves, musicians can spend all day considering their perfect funeral song and never arrive with a definitive answer. Ulrich is a hedonist, even with his funeral song choice, and an hour-long DJ set might be required at the service when he eventually departs.
