LARS ULRICH – Hetfield’s ‘Put Up With My Shit For 35 years’

To say the past couple of months have been eventful for Lars Ulrich and his band, METALLICA, would not only be an understatement… it would just prove you really don’t understand the full impact of what has transpired. In fact, it’s safe to say that things have been going no less than chaotic as hell since his band’s disastrous collaboration at The Grammys with pop star Lady Gaga, when frontman James Hetfield’s mic would not work for the first quarter of the song, the rock world itself was left scratching its head like never before. Did that really just happen? And joking or not, the further idea of inviting the woman to be the band’s 5th member truly scared the shit out of millions of us devoted metal heads. You know, the ones who actually buy the records, pay for the expensive concert tickets and purchase all the group’s endless merchandise. Although, Ulrich and his bandmates believe the Gaga pairing “Was a good fit”, tougher to please music critics have nonetheless had a field day carving up The Four Horsemen for performing with the dance music queen.

“Yeah-yeah, sharing a microphone sucks balls!”

Well, the purported publicity stunt has done well to pick album sales back up after slowing down… so that’s a plus, right? Or maybe not. Perhaps the long term damage that was done can’t ever be repaired.

In a brief Q&A with Rolling Stone in March, a few weeks after the incident, Ulrich took some time to reflect on his relationship with longtime partner in crime, James Hetfield. He even went as far as to admit that James is actually one of his heroes in life.

“He is just the coolest musician. He’s put up with my shit for 35 years, so there’s gotta be appreciation in there for that. Sometimes I think he may be underappreciated in terms of just how vast his talent is.”

Even after going to therapy together years ago to save their band from breaking up, the two men still go at it from time to time, most recently not having spoke to each other for one week period after a blow up happened during the songwriting phase for their new studio effort.

Hetfield explained: “We were in the studio and it was like, ‘Hey, I’m the guitar player, I like this guitar part, I wanna play it.’ He’d be like, ‘This part is better,’ and I was like, ‘Since when are you the Riff Police?’ So at that point it was, ‘Okay, I’m done…’

Millions of music fans this past April Fools were subjected to a cruel hoax pulled off by THE METAL DEN
that has people thinking the band was actually going to record “The White Album” with the international pop superstar.

Ulrich confided during the Q&A: “I’ve learned that there’s nothing more important than the health of the band. Rather than force people to do something they dont want to do…”

With his band set to kick off their US tour in support of their latest studio release “Hardwired…To Self Destruct” in May, Ulrich, now 53 years of age, seems to believe fans are ready to forgive and forget all of the ‘shit’ they have been subjected to, much like James Hetfield himself.

“Slow down. Take it all in. Appreciate what’s going on…”, he concludes.

Lars the only thing any of us appreciates is when you recognize that you aren’t the only member of METALLICA.

https://metallica.com/