On October 9 and October 10, California Film Institute‘s Mill Valley Film Festival featured “Metallica Saved My Life”, a documentary that explores the life-changing impact of the San Francisco Bay Area heavy metal band on its fans, as its Centerpiece Screening at Sequoia Cinema in Mill Valley, California. METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich and “Metallica Saved My Life” director Jonas Åkerlund were on hand for a post-show conversation followed by a reception.
Asked by one of the attendees how it is possible that his “feet have gotten faster” as he has gotten older, Lars responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, thank you for all that. I don’t know if I a hundred percent agree with that, but I’ll take the compliment.”
He continued: “Long story short, I just put a lot more work into it now than I ever used to. Growing up in sports and athletics, I’ve always had a part of that with me in my approach to drumming, for better or worse. And so I still think about the idea that… I grew up around tennis and my dad was a professional tennis player and I was imagining that I was gonna follow in his footsteps up till I was around 16 or 17. But when I think about tennis, tennis players, they’re peaking in their twenties and then by their mid-thirties they start, ‘Okay, is he gonna retire? When is Federer? When is Djokovic?’ Is this his last this, the last US Open?’ blah, blah, blah. And so, a lot of people playing professional sports or whatever, by usually, if not late thirties and early forties, they start winding down. With rock and roll, that’s not applicable. And so there’s no different age groups. There’s not a, ‘Okay, all the rock bands over 45, they’re in these groups over here, and all the ones under 45…’ So it’s not like [it is] in tennis or in different sports, whatever, [where] there’s like a senior circuit or any of that shit. It’s just one big thing. So you’re just out there, in our early sixties, competing against the guys and gals that are in their twenties and thirties, and so you gotta kind of be at the top of your game. And so I just work harder at it. I call ’em lifestyle choices. But I’m certainly much more connected and in tune and on top of all of that. And we’re also — all of us in our own ways, all four of us — are much more sort of cautious about putting ourselves in harm’s way, or having people out traveling with us who can help us with preventative injuries, whether it’s the shoulders or the knees or the wrists or the necks or the throats or whatever it is. So all of that is trying to just maintain. There’s also slightly less of me than there used to be ten years ago, thanks to Taco Bell and whatever else was going on at the time. And so if my feet are lighter, then it certainly has something to do with what I call lifestyle choices, which is just diet and exercise regimens and all the rest of it.”
Ulrich added: “When we started, there was nobody in rock and roll in their fifties and sixties; the oldest guys in rock and roll at the time were in their thirties — the McCartneys and the Mick Jaggers and all those guys were literally in the their late thirties. And so the idea that you could play rock and roll in your sixties or seventies or eighties like McCartney and, say, Jagger are now, that was preposterous. That didn’t exist. That was almost the antithesis to what rock and roll represented. In the immortal words of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, ‘I hope I die before I get old.’ So, when you’re doing this in your sixties and looking to hopefully stay functioning and somewhat relevant up to for another 10 or 20 years, you gotta really be on top of all that shit.”
Nearly five ago, Lars told METALLICA‘s So What! fan-club magazine that he is no longer bothered by people’s criticism of his drumming abilities. At the time, the Danish-born musician said: “Unlike years ago, I basically don’t read any of the interviews that the other guys [in METALLICA] do. 20 or 30 years ago, we would all sit and fucking read every page of Kerrang! and every page of Circus magazine, see what so-and-so’s saying and what the other band members were saying, what James [Hetfield, METALLICA guitarist/vocalist] was saying about this and that. Now there’s just none of that. I also don’t really read what people say about METALLICA.
“I’ll say that occasionally, once every six months or something like that, it’s kind of fun to go through the trolling section just because of the ridiculousness of all of it, but it’s not something that I do regularly anymore,” he revealed. “20 years ago, it would’ve been, ‘Oh, my God, somebody said something bad,’ or, ‘That person said a nasty comment in the comments section,’ or whatever. Now, none of that really means anything to me.”
Back in 2016, Ulrich, who has gotten a lot of flak over the years from people who accused him of being a poor drummer, told the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast that he went through a period in the mid-1980s “that probably culminated in the ‘Justice’ album where I felt sort of compelled to try to show ability.”
According to Lars, part of the reason for him feeling insecure about his abilities was the increased competition from some of his peers.
“Listen, when you’ve got Dave Lombardo and Charlie Benante breathing down your back, it was, like, ‘Okay, I’ve gotta…’ I tried to step it up a little bit and tried to do my own thing and do all this crazy shit,” he said. “I was trying really hard to push the drums kind of into the foreground. And then, after like a year or two of that, I was, like, ‘Okay. Seriously? Just do your thing. Chill out. Support the riffs. Do what’s best for the song.’ So since around I guess the late ’80s — so I guess it’s been, like, 25 years now — the only thing that’s really interested me is just doing the best thing for the song.”
Asked in a 2008 interview with U.K.’s Rhythm magazine if he was troubled by the fact that he’s gotten a lot of criticism over the years from people who accused him of being a poor drummer, Lars said: “It used to, back in the day — and I spent a lot of time overcompensating for that on the early records. But then you wake up one day and you’re like, whatever. It hasn’t bothered me for [many] years. I’m no Joey Jordison, I’m no Mike Portnoy, and I have nothing but love and respect and admiration for all those guys. When I hear some of the young dudes, they blow my mind with what they can do with their feet and stuff — but it’s not something that makes me go, ‘I need to feel better about myself so I’m gonna learn how to do what they do with my feet.’ I’m not a particularly accomplished drummer but I am very, very, very good at understanding the role of the drums next to James Hetfield‘s rhythm guitar. I guarantee you I’m the best guy in the world for that, and that’s enough for me.”
Ulrich stated about his playing ability in a 2012 interview with DRUM! magazine: “I usually feel like I’ve regressed. [Laughs] I’m like, ‘Why can’t I do that anymore?'” He continued: “I can’t say that I necessarily sit down to practice, like, ‘I’m going to play and practice so I can get better.’ What happens is that I just sit down and kind of play to just more stay in shape.”
Ulrich added: “You know, METALLICA was up to two or three months off [in 2011], and I would sit down, I have an iPod next to my drums so I can play along to all kind of crazy stuff, and try to see if I can land in the same zip code of some of that stuff occasionally. But I can’t say that I sit down to necessarily practice to sort of get better. For most of my stuff, it’s about listening and about interpreting stuff that I’m listening to. So all the kind of sitting down and, you know, ‘Now I’m going to do thirty-second-note paradiddles standing on my head — you know what I mean? I don’t do that kind of stuff so much. For me it’s more about the regimen of staying in shape, running every day, eating healthy, you know, being on top of that side of it.”
