The 2011 disaster that Lars Ulrich will always stand by: “It’s aged well”
Nothing that Metallica ever did was going to be looked at as perfect with someone like Lars Ulrich.
There are certainly pieces of their catalogue that can be perfect from back to front, but Ulrich has always preferred to look at the bigger picture and see what things they could do differently and make small suggestions about their future along the way. It was all about constantly growing, but there were also plenty of moments where he felt like the band weren’t given the time of day as they should.
Then again, the fact that Metallica have stepped into a lot of shit over the years hasn’t exactly endeared them to their fans. You have to remember that even Ride the Lightning ended up getting some shit because they had the gall to use an acoustic guitar on one of their songs, so the idea of them cutting their hair and making alternative music in the 1990s was never going to go over well with the purists in their audience.
The Black Album was already a step over the line for many, but hearing a song like ‘Until It Sleeps’ and ‘Mama Said’ would have broken the hearts of people who preferred the more intense songs like ‘Disposable Heroes’. So if they were going to go back to their roots and make a nasty record, you’d think St Anger would be great, right? Well, if you happen to be partially deaf, I can see the argument where you can defend it.
That record is one of the more unlistenable pieces of their catalogue because of the sheer cacophony happening throughout the album, but the band has at least seen it as a way for them to document their problems in therapy. There was a brief blip, but since Death Magnetic wiped that taste out of everyone’s mouths, they were at least ready to go for broke and make something else daring.
Surely that wouldn’t step in the same shit twice, but when pairing themselves up with Lou Reed, they were setting themselves up for a divided fanbase. Reed is a master of many different genres, and while he managed to pioneer a lot of great music throughout his career, metal wasn’t really one of them. So, to have him recite a lot of his poetry over top of Metallica instrumentals, it was no surprise that everyone in both fanbases had an adverse reaction to it.
But even if the album has been derided to the moon and back, Ulrich figured that the whole thing was blown out of proportion and stood by it regardless, saying, “What the fuck is it about Lulu that it got that kind of reaction?. I can’t quite figure it out, but years later, it’s aged extremely well. It sounds like a motherfucker still. So I can only put the reaction down to ignorance … It took our fans to a place I wish they would go more often.”
In all fairness, the album does have its fans, and the fact that David Bowie even called the record one of his favourites that Reed ever made is certainly nothing to scoff at, but the point of entry is a lot more difficult than they realised. Metallica fans didn’t need to hear slam poetry about a macabre theatre production, and the last thing that Reed fans wanted was the kind of record that sounded like it should be blaring out of every single stereo system in the parking lot of a metal show.
The record didn’t really have a prayer, but there’s a good chance that it will be recognised as something other than dogshit in a few years’ time. Lulu might not be destined to be a classic, but no one would have spent this much time perfecting a record like this if they didn’t have a vision for what it could be.
