Stereo Warning

Here is the final piece of the interview with Lars Ulrich from Metallica. Enjoy !

Where do you see the music business going?
It's an interesting time right now. A lot of defining things will happen for the next decade but it's not settled yet. For the next record we can do whatever we want. We look at all options but it's too early to say. By the time the next Metallica record rolls around who knows what the landscape will be. It goes back to communicating with the fans -- a few options would be to cut out the record company. Their biggest function is being a bank. When you don't need them to pay for stuff you don't really need a record company. You can go with independent distribution or do it over the internet. I'll figure it out in five years. Now it's interesting to see what Trent is doing, what Radiohead is doing, but it feels like everything is in transition right now.

Let's talk about art for a bit. How did you become an art collector?
We had art all over the house when I was growing up. It’s been a passion of mine for 20-25 years. It’s one area where I can go and be myself. It’s not about being in Metallica or being the drummer in a rock band. I’m accepted for who I am in the art circles. I love going into artist spaces and galleries and auction houses. It’s great because it has absolutely nothing to do with Metallica. It’s my place of sanctuary.

What was the first painting you bought?
The first piece that I got was a Warhol. It’s a lithograph of three apples that my parents had when I was growing up. My parents sold it when they divorced and I chased it down and bought it back. So I have the apples that were hanging in the dining room when I was growing up.

How did you get into Basquiat?
Basquiat is just so incredible in his rawness and he was the last great American painter who got a lot of his inspiration and influence from a lot of guys that I really like, like Jean Dubufett and Asger Jorn. I really like paintings. I’m not much into conceptual art. I respect it but it’s not something that does a lot for me.

How many Basquiats did you have?
I’ve had four, but I just sold my last one.

Do you feel any nostalgia for the paintings?
Yes, but it’s also an exercise that I force myself to go through because you don’t own art. The artists own art. You just hold on to it to enjoy it for a while. It becomes a revolving door, and I have to continue to put those paintings out there. There is very little art that I hoard. I’ve had 10-15 great years with some of these paintings and now it’s time to get some other ones.

What else do you collect?
I collect a lot of modern design, furniture and artifacts. Danish design like Poul Kjaerholm, Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner and also a lot of African art. I enjoy a lot of different things.

How is Lars the art collector different than Lars the drummer?
I’m not sure he’s any different. He’s very passionate and he’s very into it. He researches and reads and gets to know the living artists that he’s collecting. He takes it very seriously.

When do you have the time for all of this with the band and three kids?
I don’t know. It’s what happens when you spend too much time in airplanes...

Do you have a favorite contemporary artist we should keep an eye on?
I’m getting into a lot of younger guys. In the last 10-15 years I’ve been buying a lot of more established names but in the last two or three years I’ve mostly been getting into really young guys that you’re not gonna know, like John Koerner. I’ve started going into galleries and studios a lot more, seeing artists paint. It’s very exciting. I’m meeting a lot of cool people - young guys who are really keen and hungry.

Tags: photos pictures lars ulrich metallica james hetfield kirk hammett rob trujillo robert trujillo

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Here is part II with Lars from Metallica. Check back tomorrow for the final installment.

Rick Rubin said he wanted you to go back to the mind set you had when you write Master of Puppets. How do you go back to that 80s mentality, where do you go to find that hunger?
I've always struggled with this concept that you have to be hungry to make a good heavy metal record. I'm not saying it's wrong but I don't know how applicable they are to us. We make fine records at home in our backyard where it's comfortable. With rick, he set the bar maybe higher than it's been set for a while and we were up for that just to challenge ourselves. It took a while to get to that place where we would feel comfortable revisiting some of the things we've done before. I purposefully tried to steer our band as far away from that as possible for many years out of fear of repetition and of cheapening the previous work by getting too close to it again. Rick found ways to make us feel comfortable about doing that again. It also coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Master of Puppets record, which we relearned and played on a nightly basis. As we got close to that record again and Rick was slowly steering us in that direction it started thawing away at that wall, that fear of repetition. It's been surprisingly efortless to go back to some of that stuff. Not as difficult physically or mentally as I anticipated.

Phil said in Some Kind of Monster that your work then was gonna pay off not on St Anger, but on the next album, which is this one. Is that true and if so what that say about your future work?
It's certainly true because this record was a lot less of a burden, a lot more stress free. Rick Rubin has a very calming aura around him that he shares with everybody. He's a pretty chill guy to be around. But I also think because James and me made a decision to let go of the reins a little by bringing Rick in. What we did back then (during SKOM) was an investment in the future. I think right now the future looks great, certainly from a mental point of view. The great unkown is the physical point of view. I just don't know how long we can do this physically. I think creatively and in terms of getting along this band can go on forever but at some point the necks and the legs and the backs might break or give out.

Do you see yourself play in a later age holding back a little and not slaming the drums so much?
It's kind of difficult not to play like that when I'm up on stage in front of 20,000 people. We'll have to see. I just don't know if it's possible to do this 20 years from now.

What would you do without Metallica?
I've got a whole laundry list. I'm pretty sure I'd probably start off in the movie world, most of my friends either make or produce or write movies. I'm not so interested in acting, Connie (Nielsen) can do that. Writing, producing... directing is more challenging, maybe I'll leave that for later. But I'd love to sit down for 6 months and write a movie. There's not shortage of things to do, I'm not scared about what's gonna happen on the other side of Metallica. I just hope I get to all the things I could do.

Any ideas of what kind of movies you might write?
I got things stored up in my head. There are more film people that come over to the house for dinner than musicians. It seems natural to go that direction.

Have you thought about writing your biography?
Briefly, when I get asked about it in interviews. I really am a proponent of the truth and if you're gonna do these things you have to give it all and can't hold back. This shouldn't be a gray area. In order to write that kind of book properly it would be so many things in there that maybe should not be told and you'd probably incriminate a few other people. There were 5-6 musicians biografies that all came out right before Christmas last year: Clapton, Dio, Nikki Sixx, Slash and I read every one of them. There were a few of them that were really watered down, because I know these people. So to me if you're gonna do it then you should do it full on. I think it's probably better to not do it because you might hurt people or piss people off or maybe your kids shouldn't know what happened in that room in Portland Oregon in 1992. I might change my mind but it's not something I'm itching to do.

Is there anything you'd change in your career?
I probably would've chosen not to wear a white leather jacket in the summer of 1992.

That's right, the jacked from the "A Year And A Half In The Life Of Metallica" video! Where is it now?
Locked away safely in the attic, trust me. I also wish I might have been more preapred for the backlash on the Napster thing. Obviously I wish I could change the accident that took Cliff Burton. But other than that I'm not a guy that spends to much time in the past. If anything I'm guilty of spending too much time in the future. In the last few years I feel like I've been in the present more. I wish I'd done it earlier on cause I missed out on a lot of things that were going on around me because I was always so occupied with long-range planning.

You were right about Napster and most people would probablly admit it now, but you took a lot of heat at the time. Was it a PR mistake to take on those guys then?
No, it was the right thing to do but we should've been better prepared. But that's Metallica, man, we just jump and we don't know where the fuck we're gonna land most of the time. And that's a beatiful thing to do but once in a while you also hurt yourself when you land. They were brilliant because they set us up against our fans. It wasn't true that Metallica was suing the fans, we never sued any of our fans. We said please take us off the server, they said we can't do that, we don't know who's downloading your music. We said that's bullshit. So we called up some company and they got the names of everybody. It was as easy as putting milk on your cereal. So we said here they are, and they said Lars is suing his fans. They were very smart. I wish we'd been more prepared. It was annoying that it was so misunderstood and still to this day, 8 years later some people remember that 'Metallica is about money.' It wasn't money, it was control. It wasn't supposed to be a big thing. The way I look at Metallica this is a footnote. but to some people Metallica are the guys that went after Napster.

COME BACK TOMORROW FOR THE LAST PART OF THIS INTERVIEW. HEY, IT'S LONG AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE TYPING IT ALL AT ONCE, OKAY? HE HE HE!
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