The band Lars Ulrich called “more unpredictable” than Led Zeppelin: “That element of danger”
Black Sabbath is practically the holy grail for any up-and-coming band in metal circles. Many artists have taken the genre into newer places, but what Tony Iommi created with his maniacal riffs provided the basic skeleton for what the genre would become for decades to come. If it weren’t for Sabbath, a group like Metallica couldn’t have existed, but still Lars Ulrich always gravitated more towards Deep Purple when he was growing up.
That’s not to say that Ulrich didn’t have love for Sabbath. Any metal fan that says that they don’t like Sabbath should usually have their metal credentials card revoked, and given that Ulrich thought enough to induct Sabbath into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with James Hetfield, he still has a certain reverence for everything that they have done.
When looking at the protometal bands of the 1970s, Deep Purple were a much different animal. Though Led Zeppelin ran from the metal tags and Sabbath got treated like the ugly stepsister of hard rock, Deep Purple were a well-oiled machine in their prime, taking the basis of hard rock and sprinkling in everything from classical music to jazz to blues to pop whenever they felt like it.
Going through their discography, it’s almost impossible to nail down what they were in the beginning, going from the kind of dime-a-dozen jam band in their early days to a musical tour de force with Ian Gillan. Despite their classic lineup changing more than a few times, Ritchie Blackmore was always the one putting the classic riffs together, either pulling pages from Beethoven on ‘Smoke on the Water’ or getting percussive on ‘Highway Star’ or ‘Burn’.
Despite the supposed metal sacrilege, Ulrich said that he always preferred the sonic leaps that Blackmore would take compared to every other band on the scene, telling Rolling Stone, “Blackmore epitomised this fascination I had with the bare essence of rock and roll, that element of danger. Deep Purple, in their finest moments, were more unpredictable than Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin.”
For any drummer, though, someone like Ian Paice always deserved a spot alongside the John Bonhams of the world as well. Despite his calm and collected demeanour off his drum stool, hearing him assault his kit on Made in Japan slotted in somewhere between the wild abandon of Ginger Baker and the tight precision coming from Rush’s Neil Peart just a few years later.
While Ulrich’s own drumming style has been called into question more than a few times by drumming perfectionists, it’s easy to see his ambition to bring that dangerous element into Metallica’s music as well. Outside of the classics like Master of Puppets, albums like And Justice For All was his excuse to make something closer to progressive metal, usually taking cues from Purple by going from jams to carefully constructed works of steel.
For all the doors that Black Sabbath knocked down during their time in the spotlight, Deep Purple probably had a better impact in terms of how Ulrich saw Metallica moving forward. Sabbath was still a demented blues band at the end of the day, but it’s fitting that Ulrich’s favourite band elected to add a bit more colour to the genre.
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