METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
02-17-11, 10:05 PM
#301
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
LARS ULRICH: METALLICA Has 'No Plans' To Resurrect 'Lost' Recordings
According to The Pulse Of Radio, METALLICA will not revert to their ten-year-old sessions from Presidio in San Francisco for their new album. The group's drummer Lars Ulrich states that the band did not use any of those 'lost' recordings on their 2008 album, "Death Magnetic", nor do they wish to revisit them for new material they will work on this spring.
Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio, "There's certainly no plans right now. The Presidio was a real awkward time as we were kind of getting our feet wet again and when we were doing the whole 'Death Magnetic' stuff, we didn't go back and wade through hours and hours of Presidio stuff to try and see what could be resurrected."
The Presidio sessions were abandoned after frontman James Hetfield entered rehab for an extended period. When the band later regrouped, they started fresh and recorded the album, "St. Anger".
METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett told RollingStone.com that the band will hit the studio in May to begin work on a mysterious new "recording project" that may not exactly be an album. Hammett elaborated, "We want to record it in two weeks. We had planned on doing it in March, but we pushed it back to May. I don't want to give too much away, but it's not really 100 percent a METALLICA record. It's a recording project, let's put it that way. Without getting too deep into it, it's more a recording project than a bona fide METALLICA album. Whether or not we can pull it off in just two weeks remains to be seen."
One question, however, is how any new record would come out, since Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio that METALLICA's contract with Warner Music Group is now done. "I do believe that we are without a record contract for the next record, so we'll come around to that one," he said. "I certainly at this point cannot say anything about what's gonna happen with the next record. It's not a conversation we've had, or at least not any conversation I've been part of in the last couple of years, and it's kind of cool to have nothing but options. So we'll see how it plays out."
ROADRUNNERRECORDS.com
According to The Pulse Of Radio, METALLICA will not revert to their ten-year-old sessions from Presidio in San Francisco for their new album. The group's drummer Lars Ulrich states that the band did not use any of those 'lost' recordings on their 2008 album, "Death Magnetic", nor do they wish to revisit them for new material they will work on this spring.
Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio, "There's certainly no plans right now. The Presidio was a real awkward time as we were kind of getting our feet wet again and when we were doing the whole 'Death Magnetic' stuff, we didn't go back and wade through hours and hours of Presidio stuff to try and see what could be resurrected."
The Presidio sessions were abandoned after frontman James Hetfield entered rehab for an extended period. When the band later regrouped, they started fresh and recorded the album, "St. Anger".
METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett told RollingStone.com that the band will hit the studio in May to begin work on a mysterious new "recording project" that may not exactly be an album. Hammett elaborated, "We want to record it in two weeks. We had planned on doing it in March, but we pushed it back to May. I don't want to give too much away, but it's not really 100 percent a METALLICA record. It's a recording project, let's put it that way. Without getting too deep into it, it's more a recording project than a bona fide METALLICA album. Whether or not we can pull it off in just two weeks remains to be seen."
One question, however, is how any new record would come out, since Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio that METALLICA's contract with Warner Music Group is now done. "I do believe that we are without a record contract for the next record, so we'll come around to that one," he said. "I certainly at this point cannot say anything about what's gonna happen with the next record. It's not a conversation we've had, or at least not any conversation I've been part of in the last couple of years, and it's kind of cool to have nothing but options. So we'll see how it plays out."
ROADRUNNERRECORDS.com
02-26-11, 08:59 PM
#303
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Big 4 Again!
Last week we told you there would be a few more Big 4 shows and today's installment takes us to Milan, Italy. Look for more good times with Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, and yours truly at the Fiera Open Air Arena on July 6, 2011.
Tickets will be available Friday, February 25 at 9:00 AM local time at www.ticketone.it. MetClub members should check MetClub.com for more details on a special pre-sale for Clubbers only.
One more on the docket . . . keep watching here!
Last week we told you there would be a few more Big 4 shows and today's installment takes us to Milan, Italy. Look for more good times with Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, and yours truly at the Fiera Open Air Arena on July 6, 2011.
Tickets will be available Friday, February 25 at 9:00 AM local time at www.ticketone.it. MetClub members should check MetClub.com for more details on a special pre-sale for Clubbers only.
One more on the docket . . . keep watching here!
03-05-11, 09:03 PM
#304
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Ulrich’s difficult relationship with Metallica albums
Drummer is astonished at still liking Death Magnetic five years on – as final Big 4 Euro show is announced
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is astonished to find he still likes the band’s most recent album Death Magnetic – because he usually has a difficult relationship with their recorded work.
They recently completed a 30-month world tour on the back of the release after after a short break will begin work on its follow-up. And Ulrich wonders if his enjoyment of the old record means the new one will be too challenging to make.
He tells The Vine: “The last two years have made me appreciate Death Magnetic even more – and this is coming from a guy who has not always had a great relationship with our records once they’re done.
“Usually there’s a lot of questions, a lot of raised eyebrows, a lot of ‘What were we thinking?’ that sets in rather quickly. Every record has been instinctive, but three or six months later you always go, ‘What the fuck were we thinking?’
“But I heard three or four songs in the car on our last break and I listened to one of the songs earlier to check on something. It still sounds great. We started working on Death Magnetic five years ago this month – that just blows my head off.”
The positive feelings lead Ulrich to suspect that Metallica’s return to the studio could be difficult.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he explains, “But it makes me a little wary. We’ll set out to top it, but we don’t take it for granted that we can. We’ll see how it plays out.”
Meanwhile, Metallica have announced the final addition to their European shows with their fellows of the Big 4. They’ll appear with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax at the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden, on July 3.
ROCKNEWSDECK.com
Drummer is astonished at still liking Death Magnetic five years on – as final Big 4 Euro show is announced
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich is astonished to find he still likes the band’s most recent album Death Magnetic – because he usually has a difficult relationship with their recorded work.
They recently completed a 30-month world tour on the back of the release after after a short break will begin work on its follow-up. And Ulrich wonders if his enjoyment of the old record means the new one will be too challenging to make.
He tells The Vine: “The last two years have made me appreciate Death Magnetic even more – and this is coming from a guy who has not always had a great relationship with our records once they’re done.
“Usually there’s a lot of questions, a lot of raised eyebrows, a lot of ‘What were we thinking?’ that sets in rather quickly. Every record has been instinctive, but three or six months later you always go, ‘What the fuck were we thinking?’
“But I heard three or four songs in the car on our last break and I listened to one of the songs earlier to check on something. It still sounds great. We started working on Death Magnetic five years ago this month – that just blows my head off.”
The positive feelings lead Ulrich to suspect that Metallica’s return to the studio could be difficult.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he explains, “But it makes me a little wary. We’ll set out to top it, but we don’t take it for granted that we can. We’ll see how it plays out.”
Meanwhile, Metallica have announced the final addition to their European shows with their fellows of the Big 4. They’ll appear with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax at the Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden, on July 3.
ROCKNEWSDECK.com
03-27-11, 05:26 PM
#305
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Speaking of Metallica, I hear you've tackled their story in your next book. Care to share a bit about that?
Yes, I've finished a biography on Metallica called Enter Night. It should be out in the US sometime this spring.
Unlike Zeppelin, Metallica are still very much alive. With the release of Death Magnetic (2008), many among the Metallica faithful are convinced that the band still have something important to say. What made you decide to take on Metallica at this point in their career?
It's not necessary to only write a book when the story is over. Metallica celebrate their 30th anniversary this year, which means they have been together nearly three times longer than Zeppelin were, or nearly four times longer than the Beatles. That's plenty to be going on with.
Also, they've reached an interesting moment in their story, seemingly coming full-circle. Except that that's an illusion. They are probably even further away right now from their Eighties selves, musically and personally, than they've ever been. They are less like a band now and more of a franchise. And that is a truly remarkable achievement for a group that set out positioned so far out on the edge. That's certainly something none of their peers has had the brains or talent to consider, let alone come close to emulating.
Also, just like Zep, I didn't see a good book out there on them that I would find captivating. The closest was Joel McIver's book, which I admire, but it's more of a fan book, packed with great info, but essentially written by a fan for other fans. I admire and respect Metallica but I was never a fan. How could I be when I'm older than them? And I don't write fan books anymore. I write books, not for them - the band or the fans, but for us, the general reading population, dig?
I get it, although it seems that the subjects of such bios rarely do. Care to share any of the new revelations we can expect in Enter Night?
Well, it's hard because obviously I don't want to spoil things by giving away the good stuff. I would rather make the point that this is not a book written by a Metallica fan for other Metallica fans. This is a book written by an author who has known the band off and on, for over 25 years, who has known all the other big rock bands of the same era and before and many since, and who has also worked in the record biz as a PR, a manager and a record company exec. And who has written it for other grown-ups who have experienced life and who are big enough boys and girls to hear the truth, not the fairy tales.
So, no, they did not carry on after Cliff Burton (Metallica bassist who was killed in 1986) died because that was what Ciff would have wanted, as every other book and story you've ever read on the subject tells you. No, they carried on because that's what Lars (Ulrich, Metallica drummer) and James (Hetfield, Metallica guitarist) wanted. Cliff, in fact, had been talking to James about replacing Lars just before he died.
Whoa...
Another example- yes of course they "sold out" by making the Black album with (producer) Bob Rock. That's what makes them so great. How much duller would their story be if they had stayed like Slayer and just stayed "true to their roots?" Instead, they did an utterly fabulous thing and made an album not only better than the ones Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses had been making but that sold more. An act of courage and vision entirely lacking in most other groups.
And yes they really did want to sack Jason (Newsted, former Metallica bassist who replaced Burton) within weeks of him joining. They were talked out of it by their very shrewd manager Peter Mensch, but Jason remained the bitch of the group for the rest of his time with them. But these are just a few facets to the larger story. There really is much more in the book.
I have to ask this, and it's somewhat loaded -- Lars Ulrich often comes across as opinionated, somewhat arrogant, and he seems to revel in his accomplishments. Is this a fair assessment? What's it like to interview him?
Lars is all those things and a hell of a lot more. I spoke to him again two weeks ago actually. He told me he'd bought the book and apologized for turning down the opportunity to be more directly involved in it. He wanted to be sure I knew it wasn't a personal reflection on me. I had made them aware I was doing the book early on and made the same offer I had to Jimmy Page, about wanting to be as involved or not as they felt comfortable with. They passed, saying they felt the time wasn't right for them to get all their skeletons out of the closet just yet, which I respected. Lars said that "We knew that if anyone would write a great Metallica book it would be you." Class, see. And shrewd. I admire that very, very much.
Unlike most of the rock stars I've worked with over the past 35 years, he really does have a big brain. In terms of what it's like to interview him, it's easy because he loves to talk. It's hard to get the right questions answered sometimes because he's slick and he's not going to blow his future plans, but he will make sure you go away with plenty of stuff to write about. And he's funny and good company.
rest of interview http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/j...ist-mick-wall/
Yes, I've finished a biography on Metallica called Enter Night. It should be out in the US sometime this spring.
Unlike Zeppelin, Metallica are still very much alive. With the release of Death Magnetic (2008), many among the Metallica faithful are convinced that the band still have something important to say. What made you decide to take on Metallica at this point in their career?
It's not necessary to only write a book when the story is over. Metallica celebrate their 30th anniversary this year, which means they have been together nearly three times longer than Zeppelin were, or nearly four times longer than the Beatles. That's plenty to be going on with.
Also, they've reached an interesting moment in their story, seemingly coming full-circle. Except that that's an illusion. They are probably even further away right now from their Eighties selves, musically and personally, than they've ever been. They are less like a band now and more of a franchise. And that is a truly remarkable achievement for a group that set out positioned so far out on the edge. That's certainly something none of their peers has had the brains or talent to consider, let alone come close to emulating.
Also, just like Zep, I didn't see a good book out there on them that I would find captivating. The closest was Joel McIver's book, which I admire, but it's more of a fan book, packed with great info, but essentially written by a fan for other fans. I admire and respect Metallica but I was never a fan. How could I be when I'm older than them? And I don't write fan books anymore. I write books, not for them - the band or the fans, but for us, the general reading population, dig?
I get it, although it seems that the subjects of such bios rarely do. Care to share any of the new revelations we can expect in Enter Night?
Well, it's hard because obviously I don't want to spoil things by giving away the good stuff. I would rather make the point that this is not a book written by a Metallica fan for other Metallica fans. This is a book written by an author who has known the band off and on, for over 25 years, who has known all the other big rock bands of the same era and before and many since, and who has also worked in the record biz as a PR, a manager and a record company exec. And who has written it for other grown-ups who have experienced life and who are big enough boys and girls to hear the truth, not the fairy tales.
So, no, they did not carry on after Cliff Burton (Metallica bassist who was killed in 1986) died because that was what Ciff would have wanted, as every other book and story you've ever read on the subject tells you. No, they carried on because that's what Lars (Ulrich, Metallica drummer) and James (Hetfield, Metallica guitarist) wanted. Cliff, in fact, had been talking to James about replacing Lars just before he died.
Whoa...
Another example- yes of course they "sold out" by making the Black album with (producer) Bob Rock. That's what makes them so great. How much duller would their story be if they had stayed like Slayer and just stayed "true to their roots?" Instead, they did an utterly fabulous thing and made an album not only better than the ones Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses had been making but that sold more. An act of courage and vision entirely lacking in most other groups.
And yes they really did want to sack Jason (Newsted, former Metallica bassist who replaced Burton) within weeks of him joining. They were talked out of it by their very shrewd manager Peter Mensch, but Jason remained the bitch of the group for the rest of his time with them. But these are just a few facets to the larger story. There really is much more in the book.
I have to ask this, and it's somewhat loaded -- Lars Ulrich often comes across as opinionated, somewhat arrogant, and he seems to revel in his accomplishments. Is this a fair assessment? What's it like to interview him?
Lars is all those things and a hell of a lot more. I spoke to him again two weeks ago actually. He told me he'd bought the book and apologized for turning down the opportunity to be more directly involved in it. He wanted to be sure I knew it wasn't a personal reflection on me. I had made them aware I was doing the book early on and made the same offer I had to Jimmy Page, about wanting to be as involved or not as they felt comfortable with. They passed, saying they felt the time wasn't right for them to get all their skeletons out of the closet just yet, which I respected. Lars said that "We knew that if anyone would write a great Metallica book it would be you." Class, see. And shrewd. I admire that very, very much.
Unlike most of the rock stars I've worked with over the past 35 years, he really does have a big brain. In terms of what it's like to interview him, it's easy because he loves to talk. It's hard to get the right questions answered sometimes because he's slick and he's not going to blow his future plans, but he will make sure you go away with plenty of stuff to write about. And he's funny and good company.
rest of interview http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/j...ist-mick-wall/
03-27-11, 11:41 PM
#307
DVD Talk Special Edition
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
That was a pretty good interview but I am sure that Get in the Ring was written way before Mick Wall wrote the book on Axl 
03-28-11, 07:58 PM
#308
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Got the book and read it (been out in the uk for months). Good read. Yeah, the author knows the band and has lots of personal stories in it, but I don't think a band's biography should have the words "I" in it so much (in the intros to the chapters, yeah, it's ok, especially for this book and the author's history w/ the band; but in the chapters themselves? no). He also interjects his opinion in it way too much. Good book though and worth the read. Skips over a lot of the band's history in the later years though.
04-10-11, 04:03 PM
#309
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
REVOLVER PRESENTS THE BIG FOUR
SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S ISSUE
Inside the metal event to end them all. Exclusive interviews with all the bands!!! Their histories! Their great albums! More here:
http://secure.nps1.n...j844fanhhhrtqi2
While making the issue, Revolver talked to some of the "Big Four"'s most heralded musicians, including METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich. A few excerpts from the magazine follow below.
Revolver: Lars, how much attention did you pay MEGADETH early on?
Ulrich: I don't remember getting into that first record, but when "Peace Sells" came out in '86, it just blew me away. That was right up my alley. That literally became my favorite record for a long time. Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH mainman and former METALLICA guitarist] would come up and play San Francisco a lot. And I would always go find him, and we would drink and do lots of drugs and sit around. For those years, '84, '85, me and him got over our issues really quickly at that time.
I remember at the "...And Justice For All" tour, we played down in Irvine Meadows [near Los Angeles], and Dave came down and hung out at the last couple of shows at the "Justice" tour. This might have been '89, and we'd just hang out. I remember actually when we finished the "...And Justice For All" album in L.A., in the summer of '88, I went to some apartment and played it for him at 5 in the morning. We were sitting there, playing "Blackened" and a bunch of other stuff while we were busy keeping ourselves awake. Me and Dave had kind of a friendship and cool thing going at that time, up through most of the '80s.
It wasn't until both bands started getting bigger that this whole kind of thing started happening in the press, which was really kind of different than what we had going between us. There was almost like two relationships there. The press loved the whole MEGADETH-METALLICA [rivalry]. And I sort of think it got a life of its own. And in some way, you could argue that the thing press was doing, about setting our bands up, eventually started kind of transcending itself into our personal relationship and probably became a big part of the fact that over the '90s, it got a little frosty at times. You know what I mean?
Revolver: When do you feel you rekindled your friendship?
Ulrich: Dude, it's been so on and off over the years. We played a bunch of shows with them '93, towards the end of the "Black Album" cycle, where they played with us in Europe, where we were very close again for a while. We hung out again in, fuck, I think '99 at Milton Keynes, in England. And I think Dave came up and was kinda on a promotion tour of his new record, and he came up and hung out at the show and I remember him playing songs off "Risk". We would always hang out when we were in the same city.
The time where it got the chilliest, where there was an obvious stop in communication, was after [the METALLICA documentary] "Some Kind Of Monster" came out, and that whole thing with that scene in there, which we don't have to go into. [Referring to the encounter between Ulrich and Mustaine, who was kicked out of METALLICA in 1983. The meeting took place on September 13, 2001, at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco, California, and was refereed by band therapist Phil Towle. — Ed.] That stopped for about four or five years or whatever.
But other than that, up through the '90s, we would see other here and there. We would hang out. It would be all good. There were just two parallel trajectories. There was this big METALLICA-MEGADETH thing in the press, and then there was Lars and Dave hanging out, kind of doing their thing on the side, which was at times a little odd. You'd go, "Wait a minute. I'm supposed to not like this guy 'cause that's what's in this week's Kerrang!" It was kind of weird.
Revolver: Obviously things are on the up and up now. One of the most touching parts of the bonus documentary on the "Big 4" DVD is when you tell Dave how much your son loves his band.
Ulrich: Myles, my oldest, is a huge MEGADETH fan. And for a while. a couple of years ago, on the commute to school, we'd go through these phases, whether it's RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE or SYSTEM OF A DOWN. And there was a phase where we were listening to a lot of MEGADETH. And his favorite song was "Hook In Mouth" [off "So Far, So Good... So What!"]. So there was a while there, three or four years ago now, where basically I would wake up in the morning and get my kids ready for school, and get in my car at 7:40 in the morning and start blasting "Hook In Mouth" for the morning commute to school there. [Laughs] Sort of a different vibe from 15 years earlier.
On members of the four bands — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — getting up on stage at jamming on DIAMOND HEAD's "Am I Evil?" in Sofia, Bulgaria in July 2010:
Ulrich: There was a time, sure, when there was a competitive edge to all of us, but I really don't feel that anymore. No matter how much anybody will push it in the press, or how many people don't buy it, I can tell you hand-on-heart that there's no competitive edge. It's not a bunch of 27-year-olds trying to see who's got the biggest dick. ANTHRAX, MEGADETH, SLAYER, METALLICA, we all kind of have our own little niche, our own little unique place. So it's not sorta like, Who's better at this? 'Cause at the end of the day, we all do our own thing. And when it comes to drums, Dave Lombardo [SLAYER] is, by far and away, God. There's no competitive edge, but if there was, Dave would win. Lombardo could kick the rest of our asses with just a whip of his little finger. So there was no competitive edge. That's the thing that I can truly say is the biggest difference now.
If someone had said 15 years ago, "Let's try and do this," people probably would have sat there and grumbled over this and that. But now, all four of us do our own thing, and we celebrate the fact that everybody's unique and individual. And maybe it kind of just took everybody going through what we've all been through getting to this place. I don't know if it would've been possible 20 years ago.
Revolver: Lars, what was it like for you to be playing with Mustaine again?
Ulrich: It was great. Listen, I've always admired him. He's an incredibly talented musician. Playing with him, it's not awkward. It was one of those moments you want to slow down. It was cool to see it again when I looked at the DVD. You could tell there was just a good vibe. And I hope that people kind of relate to that.
SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S ISSUE
Inside the metal event to end them all. Exclusive interviews with all the bands!!! Their histories! Their great albums! More here:
http://secure.nps1.n...j844fanhhhrtqi2
While making the issue, Revolver talked to some of the "Big Four"'s most heralded musicians, including METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich. A few excerpts from the magazine follow below.
Revolver: Lars, how much attention did you pay MEGADETH early on?
Ulrich: I don't remember getting into that first record, but when "Peace Sells" came out in '86, it just blew me away. That was right up my alley. That literally became my favorite record for a long time. Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH mainman and former METALLICA guitarist] would come up and play San Francisco a lot. And I would always go find him, and we would drink and do lots of drugs and sit around. For those years, '84, '85, me and him got over our issues really quickly at that time.
I remember at the "...And Justice For All" tour, we played down in Irvine Meadows [near Los Angeles], and Dave came down and hung out at the last couple of shows at the "Justice" tour. This might have been '89, and we'd just hang out. I remember actually when we finished the "...And Justice For All" album in L.A., in the summer of '88, I went to some apartment and played it for him at 5 in the morning. We were sitting there, playing "Blackened" and a bunch of other stuff while we were busy keeping ourselves awake. Me and Dave had kind of a friendship and cool thing going at that time, up through most of the '80s.
It wasn't until both bands started getting bigger that this whole kind of thing started happening in the press, which was really kind of different than what we had going between us. There was almost like two relationships there. The press loved the whole MEGADETH-METALLICA [rivalry]. And I sort of think it got a life of its own. And in some way, you could argue that the thing press was doing, about setting our bands up, eventually started kind of transcending itself into our personal relationship and probably became a big part of the fact that over the '90s, it got a little frosty at times. You know what I mean?
Revolver: When do you feel you rekindled your friendship?
Ulrich: Dude, it's been so on and off over the years. We played a bunch of shows with them '93, towards the end of the "Black Album" cycle, where they played with us in Europe, where we were very close again for a while. We hung out again in, fuck, I think '99 at Milton Keynes, in England. And I think Dave came up and was kinda on a promotion tour of his new record, and he came up and hung out at the show and I remember him playing songs off "Risk". We would always hang out when we were in the same city.
The time where it got the chilliest, where there was an obvious stop in communication, was after [the METALLICA documentary] "Some Kind Of Monster" came out, and that whole thing with that scene in there, which we don't have to go into. [Referring to the encounter between Ulrich and Mustaine, who was kicked out of METALLICA in 1983. The meeting took place on September 13, 2001, at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco, California, and was refereed by band therapist Phil Towle. — Ed.] That stopped for about four or five years or whatever.
But other than that, up through the '90s, we would see other here and there. We would hang out. It would be all good. There were just two parallel trajectories. There was this big METALLICA-MEGADETH thing in the press, and then there was Lars and Dave hanging out, kind of doing their thing on the side, which was at times a little odd. You'd go, "Wait a minute. I'm supposed to not like this guy 'cause that's what's in this week's Kerrang!" It was kind of weird.
Revolver: Obviously things are on the up and up now. One of the most touching parts of the bonus documentary on the "Big 4" DVD is when you tell Dave how much your son loves his band.
Ulrich: Myles, my oldest, is a huge MEGADETH fan. And for a while. a couple of years ago, on the commute to school, we'd go through these phases, whether it's RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE or SYSTEM OF A DOWN. And there was a phase where we were listening to a lot of MEGADETH. And his favorite song was "Hook In Mouth" [off "So Far, So Good... So What!"]. So there was a while there, three or four years ago now, where basically I would wake up in the morning and get my kids ready for school, and get in my car at 7:40 in the morning and start blasting "Hook In Mouth" for the morning commute to school there. [Laughs] Sort of a different vibe from 15 years earlier.
On members of the four bands — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — getting up on stage at jamming on DIAMOND HEAD's "Am I Evil?" in Sofia, Bulgaria in July 2010:
Ulrich: There was a time, sure, when there was a competitive edge to all of us, but I really don't feel that anymore. No matter how much anybody will push it in the press, or how many people don't buy it, I can tell you hand-on-heart that there's no competitive edge. It's not a bunch of 27-year-olds trying to see who's got the biggest dick. ANTHRAX, MEGADETH, SLAYER, METALLICA, we all kind of have our own little niche, our own little unique place. So it's not sorta like, Who's better at this? 'Cause at the end of the day, we all do our own thing. And when it comes to drums, Dave Lombardo [SLAYER] is, by far and away, God. There's no competitive edge, but if there was, Dave would win. Lombardo could kick the rest of our asses with just a whip of his little finger. So there was no competitive edge. That's the thing that I can truly say is the biggest difference now.
If someone had said 15 years ago, "Let's try and do this," people probably would have sat there and grumbled over this and that. But now, all four of us do our own thing, and we celebrate the fact that everybody's unique and individual. And maybe it kind of just took everybody going through what we've all been through getting to this place. I don't know if it would've been possible 20 years ago.
Revolver: Lars, what was it like for you to be playing with Mustaine again?
Ulrich: It was great. Listen, I've always admired him. He's an incredibly talented musician. Playing with him, it's not awkward. It was one of those moments you want to slow down. It was cool to see it again when I looked at the DVD. You could tell there was just a good vibe. And I hope that people kind of relate to that.
04-23-11, 11:33 PM
#310
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Big 4: Metallica bringing the 'boom' to Indio
Metallica -- a band that has sold upward of 60 million albums in the U.S. alone, played 1,697 tour dates around the world and has made metal music heavy enough to melt faces -- has been taking baby steps when it comes to one of the biggest musical events in heavy music.
When the big four bands of thrash metal -- Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax -- got together and toured Europe last year, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said that the tour was "definitely an experiment."
"We were all keeping our fingers crossed that the experiment would work. When we played the first show in Warsaw, just about 10 months ago, in June of last year, everybody felt right away that this thing was really working and the 75,000 people who showed up in Warsaw really felt that it was working, too," Ulrich said in a telephone interview last week.
He said even with the success of The Big 4 in Europe, the bands still didn't want to cram the tour down the throats of fans.
"There's a fine line. You don't want to push it to the point so 'Now we're going to hit every arena, every theater, every backyard, everywhere.' You want to keep it special," Ulrich said.
The Big 4's first, and right now only, U.S. tour date is Saturday at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, a site where hipsters and celebrities watched the likes of Arcade Fire and Kanye West at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend and where country fans will see Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood next weekend.
"The Coachella Festival is probably the most revered both from the fans' and the bands' standpoint, the top U.S. destination festival on the yearly calendar in America. People love the polo grounds there and the whole vibe," Ulrich said.
Ulrich, who had a great time at Coachella when he went to see the Rage Against the Machine reunion in 2007, said that Coachella and Stagecoach promoter Goldenvoice offered to leave up the scaffolding at the site and it was an offer the band couldn't refuse.
The bands will be playing full sets and Metallica, with members Ulrich, singer and guitarist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo, will be bringing their high production values with them.
"We're bringing all the bells and whistles and all of the stuff that turns on and off and all of the stuff that pops and goes boom ," Ulrich said, laughing.
That means pyrotechnics and the massive stage production the band took to Europe. The Big 4 is going to be, well, big.
"Hopefully people all over Southern California will be able to experience some part of this, if not by direct association, then at least by indirect association," Ulrich said, laughing. "It will be cool. If the weather's clear, they'll be able to share this all over Southern California."
With the bands' ties to Southern California, Indio is a natural fit for the festival. Metallica started out in Los Angeles as did Megadeth, whose lead singer Dave Mustaine is a Fallbrook resident. Slayer started in Huntington Beach and guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman live in the Riverside and Hemet areas, respectively. Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax are also celebrating their 30-year anniversaries this year.
Ulrich said Metallica is starting to "throw ideas" around for its 30th anniversary.
"I think we sort of forgot. When you get to have been around as long as we have, you can almost find an anniversary in anything -- 10 years since this, 20 years since that came out, 15 years since somebody picked their nose. There's always an anniversary you can celebrate," he said.
But the fact that the band has been around for three decades is a reason to celebrate, Ulrich said.
One of the things that has made Metallica have enduring success is its ability to evolve as a band. Early albums such as "Kill 'Em All," "Ride the Lightning" and "Master of Puppets" saw the band rise to an arena success with breakneck beats and lightning riffs without the aid of MTV in a time where music videos made careers.
With the 1988 album "...And Justice For All," the epic "One" became some viewers' first look at the band. By the group's self-titled release in 1991, known as "The Black Album," Metallica cemented their place as one of the biggest bands in the world with hits such as "Enter Sandman," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters," "Wherever I May Roam" and "Sad But True" -- songs that have become part of America, played at sporting events and on rock radio 20 years later.
The band continued to push itself, recording with the San Francisco Symphony and pushing its metal envelope with albums such as "Load" and "St. Anger" before returning to thrash roots on most recent effort, 2008's "Death Magnetic."
Ulrich said the band was headed back into the studio to work on new material for about six to eight weeks after The Big 4 show in Indio.
When asked about the band's continued success and relevance, Ulrich credited the band's ability to change.
"We have a tendency to be pretty adventurous in Metallica. We're not afraid to move around on the musical map a little bit ... you've got a lot of curious personalities in this band; you've got a lot of people who are very inspired by many different things," Ulrich said. "There's always different flavor that comes up whenever we get together and do our thing. We like to mix it up as much as possible. Hopefully in the wake of that, there comes an unpredictability and something where people don't pigeonhole you and take you for granted."
http://www.inlandsocal.com/iguide/mu...ca.495144.html
Metallica -- a band that has sold upward of 60 million albums in the U.S. alone, played 1,697 tour dates around the world and has made metal music heavy enough to melt faces -- has been taking baby steps when it comes to one of the biggest musical events in heavy music.
When the big four bands of thrash metal -- Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax -- got together and toured Europe last year, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said that the tour was "definitely an experiment."
"We were all keeping our fingers crossed that the experiment would work. When we played the first show in Warsaw, just about 10 months ago, in June of last year, everybody felt right away that this thing was really working and the 75,000 people who showed up in Warsaw really felt that it was working, too," Ulrich said in a telephone interview last week.
He said even with the success of The Big 4 in Europe, the bands still didn't want to cram the tour down the throats of fans.
"There's a fine line. You don't want to push it to the point so 'Now we're going to hit every arena, every theater, every backyard, everywhere.' You want to keep it special," Ulrich said.
The Big 4's first, and right now only, U.S. tour date is Saturday at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, a site where hipsters and celebrities watched the likes of Arcade Fire and Kanye West at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend and where country fans will see Kenny Chesney and Carrie Underwood next weekend.
"The Coachella Festival is probably the most revered both from the fans' and the bands' standpoint, the top U.S. destination festival on the yearly calendar in America. People love the polo grounds there and the whole vibe," Ulrich said.
Ulrich, who had a great time at Coachella when he went to see the Rage Against the Machine reunion in 2007, said that Coachella and Stagecoach promoter Goldenvoice offered to leave up the scaffolding at the site and it was an offer the band couldn't refuse.
The bands will be playing full sets and Metallica, with members Ulrich, singer and guitarist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo, will be bringing their high production values with them.
"We're bringing all the bells and whistles and all of the stuff that turns on and off and all of the stuff that pops and goes boom ," Ulrich said, laughing.
That means pyrotechnics and the massive stage production the band took to Europe. The Big 4 is going to be, well, big.
"Hopefully people all over Southern California will be able to experience some part of this, if not by direct association, then at least by indirect association," Ulrich said, laughing. "It will be cool. If the weather's clear, they'll be able to share this all over Southern California."
With the bands' ties to Southern California, Indio is a natural fit for the festival. Metallica started out in Los Angeles as did Megadeth, whose lead singer Dave Mustaine is a Fallbrook resident. Slayer started in Huntington Beach and guitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman live in the Riverside and Hemet areas, respectively. Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax are also celebrating their 30-year anniversaries this year.
Ulrich said Metallica is starting to "throw ideas" around for its 30th anniversary.
"I think we sort of forgot. When you get to have been around as long as we have, you can almost find an anniversary in anything -- 10 years since this, 20 years since that came out, 15 years since somebody picked their nose. There's always an anniversary you can celebrate," he said.
But the fact that the band has been around for three decades is a reason to celebrate, Ulrich said.
One of the things that has made Metallica have enduring success is its ability to evolve as a band. Early albums such as "Kill 'Em All," "Ride the Lightning" and "Master of Puppets" saw the band rise to an arena success with breakneck beats and lightning riffs without the aid of MTV in a time where music videos made careers.
With the 1988 album "...And Justice For All," the epic "One" became some viewers' first look at the band. By the group's self-titled release in 1991, known as "The Black Album," Metallica cemented their place as one of the biggest bands in the world with hits such as "Enter Sandman," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters," "Wherever I May Roam" and "Sad But True" -- songs that have become part of America, played at sporting events and on rock radio 20 years later.
The band continued to push itself, recording with the San Francisco Symphony and pushing its metal envelope with albums such as "Load" and "St. Anger" before returning to thrash roots on most recent effort, 2008's "Death Magnetic."
Ulrich said the band was headed back into the studio to work on new material for about six to eight weeks after The Big 4 show in Indio.
When asked about the band's continued success and relevance, Ulrich credited the band's ability to change.
"We have a tendency to be pretty adventurous in Metallica. We're not afraid to move around on the musical map a little bit ... you've got a lot of curious personalities in this band; you've got a lot of people who are very inspired by many different things," Ulrich said. "There's always different flavor that comes up whenever we get together and do our thing. We like to mix it up as much as possible. Hopefully in the wake of that, there comes an unpredictability and something where people don't pigeonhole you and take you for granted."
http://www.inlandsocal.com/iguide/mu...ca.495144.html
04-24-11, 12:50 AM
#312
DVD Talk Hero
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
set list thus far
Creeping Death
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Fuel
Ride The Lightning
Fade to Black
Cyanide
All Nightmare Long
Sad But True
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Orion
One
Master of Puppets
Blackened
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
-----------------------
Am I Evil? w/ Big 4
Hit The Lights
Creeping Death
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Fuel
Ride The Lightning
Fade to Black
Cyanide
All Nightmare Long
Sad But True
Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
Orion
One
Master of Puppets
Blackened
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
-----------------------
Am I Evil? w/ Big 4
Hit The Lights
04-24-11, 06:00 AM
#313
DVD Talk Special Edition
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Los Angeles
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Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
I just got back from the show and it was fucking awesome. The Slayer Mosh pit was BRUTAL. Btw, after Hit The Lights was Seek And Destroy.
04-24-11, 11:25 AM
#314
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Did they play the WHOLE version of "Am I Evil?" this time? Or did they puss out?
Metallica really should drop "Nothing Else Matters" when they play with these bands. Makes them look VERY wimpy. Even compared to Anthrax.
Metallica really should drop "Nothing Else Matters" when they play with these bands. Makes them look VERY wimpy. Even compared to Anthrax.
04-24-11, 07:05 PM
#315
DVD Talk Hero
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Agreed about "Nothing Else Matters."
It's so bad that I feel embarrassed for the band and fans every time I hear it. If they want to do a slow number from the black album, they should stick to "The Unforgiven."
It's so bad that I feel embarrassed for the band and fans every time I hear it. If they want to do a slow number from the black album, they should stick to "The Unforgiven."
04-24-11, 08:22 PM
#316
DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Persistence of Time is as heavy as anything the other three have released.
04-27-11, 03:45 PM
#317
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
page 1
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...0110425?page=1
The Big 4 Put Aside Their Differences for Spectacular Metal Show
Ultimately, though, the night belonged to the band at the top of the bill, Metallica. Arriving on stage to a clip from the spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and its hypnotic Ennio Morricone soundtrack, the band ripped into "Creeping Death" from their second album, 1984's Ride The Lightning. Singer/guitarist James Hetfield led the crowd in a "Die! Die!" chant that was the first of many epic singalongs, only topped by the audience shouting along to every chorus in "Master Of Puppets." The crowd followed Metallica through a career-spanning 18 songs that didn't let up for two and half hours. The crushing anti-war ballad "One" proved to be the big camera-phone moment, but the most moving one occurred when the band paid tribute to late bassist Cliff Burton on the instrumental "Orion."
During the set's peak with "Enter Sandman," fans got so worked up they started a roaring bonfire in the middle of a large mosh pit, lighting their shirts aflame and twirling them above their heads. It was an exciting, dangerous moment where everything nearly spun out of control, but Metallica maintained the crowd's attention. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett shredded one deeply lyrical, intricate solo after another, while Hetfield repeatedly returned to the drum riser to jam in unison with Ulrich, and it was thrilling to watch them create their distinctive lockstep grooves in real time. Throughout, they clearly showed how they dragged thrash sounds to the mainstream through sheer musical charisma and commitment. This was a defining performance, demonstrating why Metallica remains one of the tightest, most powerful bands ever, metal or otherwise.
For the encore, Metallica brought out nearly every member of the "Big 4" bands to play together on a raucous cover of "Am I Evil?" – a song originally by "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" band Diamond Head, and a key influence on this generation of headbangers. The crowd audibly gasped when Mustaine walked onstage – but the ensuing performance showed that the once infamous thrash-band rivalries were now a thing of the past.
And maintaining the momentum the "Big 4" kicked off in Indio seems to be an immediate priority – particularly for Metallica. "We are looking to book something on the East Coast because of the success of this – it should hopefully come together in a week or two," Ulrich said. "Maybe we'll do somewhere in the Midwest and South, too. Still, I don't think it will turn into a 40-date arena tour; that would make it less special. I like the fact that there's an element of chaos to the whole thing. It shouldn't be sterile, streamlined and perfect: it needs an edgy underbelly to remain authentic."
page 2
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...0110425?page=2
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...0110425?page=1
The Big 4 Put Aside Their Differences for Spectacular Metal Show
Ultimately, though, the night belonged to the band at the top of the bill, Metallica. Arriving on stage to a clip from the spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and its hypnotic Ennio Morricone soundtrack, the band ripped into "Creeping Death" from their second album, 1984's Ride The Lightning. Singer/guitarist James Hetfield led the crowd in a "Die! Die!" chant that was the first of many epic singalongs, only topped by the audience shouting along to every chorus in "Master Of Puppets." The crowd followed Metallica through a career-spanning 18 songs that didn't let up for two and half hours. The crushing anti-war ballad "One" proved to be the big camera-phone moment, but the most moving one occurred when the band paid tribute to late bassist Cliff Burton on the instrumental "Orion."
During the set's peak with "Enter Sandman," fans got so worked up they started a roaring bonfire in the middle of a large mosh pit, lighting their shirts aflame and twirling them above their heads. It was an exciting, dangerous moment where everything nearly spun out of control, but Metallica maintained the crowd's attention. Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett shredded one deeply lyrical, intricate solo after another, while Hetfield repeatedly returned to the drum riser to jam in unison with Ulrich, and it was thrilling to watch them create their distinctive lockstep grooves in real time. Throughout, they clearly showed how they dragged thrash sounds to the mainstream through sheer musical charisma and commitment. This was a defining performance, demonstrating why Metallica remains one of the tightest, most powerful bands ever, metal or otherwise.
For the encore, Metallica brought out nearly every member of the "Big 4" bands to play together on a raucous cover of "Am I Evil?" – a song originally by "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" band Diamond Head, and a key influence on this generation of headbangers. The crowd audibly gasped when Mustaine walked onstage – but the ensuing performance showed that the once infamous thrash-band rivalries were now a thing of the past.
And maintaining the momentum the "Big 4" kicked off in Indio seems to be an immediate priority – particularly for Metallica. "We are looking to book something on the East Coast because of the success of this – it should hopefully come together in a week or two," Ulrich said. "Maybe we'll do somewhere in the Midwest and South, too. Still, I don't think it will turn into a 40-date arena tour; that would make it less special. I like the fact that there's an element of chaos to the whole thing. It shouldn't be sterile, streamlined and perfect: it needs an edgy underbelly to remain authentic."
page 2
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...0110425?page=2
04-27-11, 03:52 PM
#318
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
The Big 4
EXCLUSIVE: Metallica's Lars Ulrich On Surviving the Big 4 and the Roots of Thrash
Months of anticipation came to an explosive finish in the California desert on Saturday night, as Metallica closed their "Big 4" thrash-fest with a thundering "Seek & Destroy" for 50,000 weary headbangers spread across Empire Polo Field in Indio. By acknowledging their shared roots as thrash-originators with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, Metallica has found that looking back can also suggest a way forward for the band.
In an exclusive interview the day after, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich tells the LA Weekly how a partnership with Goldenvoice brought the Big 4 to the site of Coachella, the role their late bassist Cliff Burton played in Saturday's set, and how Metallica's newest album, Death Magnetic, (and producer Rick Rubin) somehow led them into the desert:
How was it playing on the polo fields last night?
It was a little bit windy, but other than that it was great. The kids were great. The band was semi-okay, even though we hadn't played live since November. We jumped in the deep end. I'm a little bit in need for someone to walk on my back for a couple of hours. But I had a good time. A lot of friends came out, a lot of familiar faces from the last 25-30 years, new friends and old friends. All around it was a pretty successful day. People were psyched, the sound was good.
How much of the set-up was Metallica's and how much provided by Goldenvoice?
It was a partnership. We did this [Big 4 tour] in Europe for two weeks last year, and we knew we wanted to play in America. The Goldenvoice people came to us with the proposal of slotting it in during that weekend between Coachella and Stagecoach. It seemed like a cool idea. Anytime that you can give the kids an experience in a place that already has an infrastructure, it always has a chance of coming off better than throwing a dart on the map and setting up a show.
I was out there three or four years ago when Rage Against the Machine played Coachella, and I thought it was such a brilliant set-up. The vibe there is just really good. Coachella may be the best festival experience in America. From what I've seen, it rivals the absolute best European set-ups - from Redding to Roskilde.
Did you plan your set any different for this show?
When you play to 50,000 people in that kind of a setting, you primarily want to play songs that people know. You maybe play more of the anthems. Sometimes the really fast songs can get kind of lost in big settings. We play so many different types of set-ups: festivals, stadiums, arenas, amphitheaters. Over the course of that, we've found what works in different situations. When we play arenas, we change the set-list up every day and play lots of obscure songs, album cuts and B-sides, but when you 're playing these really big special events like last night, I don't know if you want to start digging into super-obscure album cuts and play songs people have never heard of. It can bring the vibe down a little bit, especially when people have been standing on the desert floor for six or eight hours in 90 degree heat.
And yet there was a long instrumental in the middle of your set that really worked, and didn't seem like an obvious choice.
You're referring to a song called "Orion" from [1986's] Master of Puppets. That was primarily based around this almost classical piece that Cliff Burton brought in. I don't think we've played that song very much in America over the years -- we certainly haven't in the last 10 years. We finished a two-year run on Death Magnetic in November, and we were down in Australia four or five nights in every venue there, and we started going really obscure and digging into things that we hadn't played in years and years. "Orion" was one of the songs that we pulled out. It's such a different piece of music that we were sort of surprised at how much the fans really embraced it. We threw it in last night because we figured it was something people would consider special.
When you're playing with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, it seems to make a statement about your shared roots and the kind of band you started as. It's not just another concert for you.
When the whole Death Magnetic thing started, Rick Rubin, our producer, was very encouraging of embracing certain elements of our past. Things got a little more metal, harder, edgier with the last record. That brought along playing some of the older songs [live] -- which in turn sort of brought this [Big 4] thing along to celebrate the past. It's a real fine line, because we obviously don't want to be considered a nostalgic band, and we don't want to rest our laurels on something we did in 1986.
There are many young kids that have never experienced a lot of this stuff. Kids at 13 or 14, it's time for them to jump into the Black Sabbaths or the Deep Purples or the Metallicas or the Slayers. A lot of these kids were obviously not around back in the day. There's some countries in Europe -- I swear to you, half the audience is 15 and younger. You don't want to turn your back on your past, but you don't want to rely on it either. You try to find that middle ground.
Last night, when you did "Am I Evil?" you managed to get two members of Slayer onstage this time.
Listen, it keeps going up and different guys show up. If we keep being persistent, we may get everybody up there at some point. I was telling [Slayer guitarist] Kerry King last night after the show, between Sofia [Bulgaria] and last night, we've had all four members of Slayer up there -- either for the jam or for the picture on the back of the [Big 4] DVD. We're batting a thousand between Sofia and Coachella.
Why is Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" the song you choose?
I can't tell you a cosmic reason. We felt that you're not going to invite people to come onstage and start playing a Metallica song. That would seem a little selfish, so you want to find a cover song that had some resonance towards what's going on. Everybody's got different influences, different inspirations, but certainly the band Diamond Head has a lot to answer for when it comes to four bands playing out the desert in 2011 in terms of lineage. They're probably one of the biggest reasons that we exist. When Mustaine was in Metallica, he was very inspired by them. I know Diamond Head may not have the same relevance for the boys in Slayer, but you've got to find a happy medium at some point.
We've got another half-dozen shows this summer. I would like to be a little more adventurous and not rely on the same song if there are continued jams. There are other things we can do, and I know that Tom [Araya] from Slayer was talking about [Metallica's] "The Four Horsemen." Inviting the other bands to come up and play a Metallica song just doesn't seem right.
Based on what I've heard from them, I think they'd all be up for it.
You know, I'm not afraid to go anywhere. Maybe we'll play a Slayer song instead.
The first time you and Slayer shared a bill was about 30 years ago at the Woodstock club in Orange County. Do you remember anything about that night?
I remember it vaguely. The Woodstock was a club in Anaheim that held about 17 people. We played a show there I believe in '82, and we were just finding our feet at the time. I'm pretty sure [Slayer] played Deep Purple's "Highway Star" because at that point, and still to this day, I'm the biggest Deep Purple fan, and when anybody plays a Deep Purple song I take notice. Obviously, we've come a long way from back at the Woodstock. I think I still have the flyer somewhere. It's awesome that we're still at it, and that 50,000 people wanted to be part of it.
Metallica's Big 4 set-list for Saturday, April 23, 2011:
"Creeping Death"
"For Whom the Bell Tolls"
"Fuel"
"Ride the Lightning"
"Fade to Black"
"Cyanide"
"All Nightmare Long"
"Sad But True"
"Welcome Home (Sanitarium)"
"Orion"
"One"
"Master of Puppets"
"Blackened"
"Nothing Else Matters"
"Enter Sandman"
Encore: "Am I Evil?" (with members of Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer), "Hit the Lights" and "Seek & Destroy"
LAWEEKLY.com
EXCLUSIVE: Metallica's Lars Ulrich On Surviving the Big 4 and the Roots of Thrash
Months of anticipation came to an explosive finish in the California desert on Saturday night, as Metallica closed their "Big 4" thrash-fest with a thundering "Seek & Destroy" for 50,000 weary headbangers spread across Empire Polo Field in Indio. By acknowledging their shared roots as thrash-originators with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, Metallica has found that looking back can also suggest a way forward for the band.
In an exclusive interview the day after, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich tells the LA Weekly how a partnership with Goldenvoice brought the Big 4 to the site of Coachella, the role their late bassist Cliff Burton played in Saturday's set, and how Metallica's newest album, Death Magnetic, (and producer Rick Rubin) somehow led them into the desert:
How was it playing on the polo fields last night?
It was a little bit windy, but other than that it was great. The kids were great. The band was semi-okay, even though we hadn't played live since November. We jumped in the deep end. I'm a little bit in need for someone to walk on my back for a couple of hours. But I had a good time. A lot of friends came out, a lot of familiar faces from the last 25-30 years, new friends and old friends. All around it was a pretty successful day. People were psyched, the sound was good.
How much of the set-up was Metallica's and how much provided by Goldenvoice?
It was a partnership. We did this [Big 4 tour] in Europe for two weeks last year, and we knew we wanted to play in America. The Goldenvoice people came to us with the proposal of slotting it in during that weekend between Coachella and Stagecoach. It seemed like a cool idea. Anytime that you can give the kids an experience in a place that already has an infrastructure, it always has a chance of coming off better than throwing a dart on the map and setting up a show.
I was out there three or four years ago when Rage Against the Machine played Coachella, and I thought it was such a brilliant set-up. The vibe there is just really good. Coachella may be the best festival experience in America. From what I've seen, it rivals the absolute best European set-ups - from Redding to Roskilde.
Did you plan your set any different for this show?
When you play to 50,000 people in that kind of a setting, you primarily want to play songs that people know. You maybe play more of the anthems. Sometimes the really fast songs can get kind of lost in big settings. We play so many different types of set-ups: festivals, stadiums, arenas, amphitheaters. Over the course of that, we've found what works in different situations. When we play arenas, we change the set-list up every day and play lots of obscure songs, album cuts and B-sides, but when you 're playing these really big special events like last night, I don't know if you want to start digging into super-obscure album cuts and play songs people have never heard of. It can bring the vibe down a little bit, especially when people have been standing on the desert floor for six or eight hours in 90 degree heat.
And yet there was a long instrumental in the middle of your set that really worked, and didn't seem like an obvious choice.
You're referring to a song called "Orion" from [1986's] Master of Puppets. That was primarily based around this almost classical piece that Cliff Burton brought in. I don't think we've played that song very much in America over the years -- we certainly haven't in the last 10 years. We finished a two-year run on Death Magnetic in November, and we were down in Australia four or five nights in every venue there, and we started going really obscure and digging into things that we hadn't played in years and years. "Orion" was one of the songs that we pulled out. It's such a different piece of music that we were sort of surprised at how much the fans really embraced it. We threw it in last night because we figured it was something people would consider special.
When you're playing with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, it seems to make a statement about your shared roots and the kind of band you started as. It's not just another concert for you.
When the whole Death Magnetic thing started, Rick Rubin, our producer, was very encouraging of embracing certain elements of our past. Things got a little more metal, harder, edgier with the last record. That brought along playing some of the older songs [live] -- which in turn sort of brought this [Big 4] thing along to celebrate the past. It's a real fine line, because we obviously don't want to be considered a nostalgic band, and we don't want to rest our laurels on something we did in 1986.
There are many young kids that have never experienced a lot of this stuff. Kids at 13 or 14, it's time for them to jump into the Black Sabbaths or the Deep Purples or the Metallicas or the Slayers. A lot of these kids were obviously not around back in the day. There's some countries in Europe -- I swear to you, half the audience is 15 and younger. You don't want to turn your back on your past, but you don't want to rely on it either. You try to find that middle ground.
Last night, when you did "Am I Evil?" you managed to get two members of Slayer onstage this time.
Listen, it keeps going up and different guys show up. If we keep being persistent, we may get everybody up there at some point. I was telling [Slayer guitarist] Kerry King last night after the show, between Sofia [Bulgaria] and last night, we've had all four members of Slayer up there -- either for the jam or for the picture on the back of the [Big 4] DVD. We're batting a thousand between Sofia and Coachella.
Why is Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" the song you choose?
I can't tell you a cosmic reason. We felt that you're not going to invite people to come onstage and start playing a Metallica song. That would seem a little selfish, so you want to find a cover song that had some resonance towards what's going on. Everybody's got different influences, different inspirations, but certainly the band Diamond Head has a lot to answer for when it comes to four bands playing out the desert in 2011 in terms of lineage. They're probably one of the biggest reasons that we exist. When Mustaine was in Metallica, he was very inspired by them. I know Diamond Head may not have the same relevance for the boys in Slayer, but you've got to find a happy medium at some point.
We've got another half-dozen shows this summer. I would like to be a little more adventurous and not rely on the same song if there are continued jams. There are other things we can do, and I know that Tom [Araya] from Slayer was talking about [Metallica's] "The Four Horsemen." Inviting the other bands to come up and play a Metallica song just doesn't seem right.
Based on what I've heard from them, I think they'd all be up for it.
You know, I'm not afraid to go anywhere. Maybe we'll play a Slayer song instead.
The first time you and Slayer shared a bill was about 30 years ago at the Woodstock club in Orange County. Do you remember anything about that night?
I remember it vaguely. The Woodstock was a club in Anaheim that held about 17 people. We played a show there I believe in '82, and we were just finding our feet at the time. I'm pretty sure [Slayer] played Deep Purple's "Highway Star" because at that point, and still to this day, I'm the biggest Deep Purple fan, and when anybody plays a Deep Purple song I take notice. Obviously, we've come a long way from back at the Woodstock. I think I still have the flyer somewhere. It's awesome that we're still at it, and that 50,000 people wanted to be part of it.
Metallica's Big 4 set-list for Saturday, April 23, 2011:
"Creeping Death"
"For Whom the Bell Tolls"
"Fuel"
"Ride the Lightning"
"Fade to Black"
"Cyanide"
"All Nightmare Long"
"Sad But True"
"Welcome Home (Sanitarium)"
"Orion"
"One"
"Master of Puppets"
"Blackened"
"Nothing Else Matters"
"Enter Sandman"
Encore: "Am I Evil?" (with members of Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer), "Hit the Lights" and "Seek & Destroy"
LAWEEKLY.com
04-27-11, 03:53 PM
#319
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Metallica to Team Up With Rick Rubin Again On Next Album
According to Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, producer Rick Rubin is set to work with the band on its next album. Rubin previously worked with Metallica on its most recent album, 2008's "Death Magnetic." " "Rick, to me, he's sort of a Zen guru spirit that Metallica needs right now," Trujillo told 93.7 KCLB Rocks! Radio. Prior to recording the album, the band will be touring worldwide alongside other members of the Big Four (Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth).
BILLBOARD.com
According to Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, producer Rick Rubin is set to work with the band on its next album. Rubin previously worked with Metallica on its most recent album, 2008's "Death Magnetic." " "Rick, to me, he's sort of a Zen guru spirit that Metallica needs right now," Trujillo told 93.7 KCLB Rocks! Radio. Prior to recording the album, the band will be touring worldwide alongside other members of the Big Four (Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth).
BILLBOARD.com
05-01-11, 08:17 PM
#320
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER, ANTHRAX COMING TO YANKEE STADIUM!
Following last Saturday's (April 23) first U.S. "Big Four" concert in Indio, California, the "Big Four" bands of 1980s thrash metal — Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax — have announced that they will perform in the new version of the famed Yankee Stadium in Bronx, New York on September 14, 2011. All seats are reserved for this show and tickets go on sale Friday, May 6 at 10:00 a.m. via Ticketmaster.com.
Following last Saturday's (April 23) first U.S. "Big Four" concert in Indio, California, the "Big Four" bands of 1980s thrash metal — Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax — have announced that they will perform in the new version of the famed Yankee Stadium in Bronx, New York on September 14, 2011. All seats are reserved for this show and tickets go on sale Friday, May 6 at 10:00 a.m. via Ticketmaster.com.
05-01-11, 08:26 PM
#321
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Q&A: The Big 4 Reunite and Talk Metal!
Last weekend in Indo, CA, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — the four bands who elevated the furious carnage of thrash-metal from the tape-trading underground to the top of the Billboard charts — played their very first show together on American soil. After 30 years of being savaged by the PMRC, suffering legendary bouts of inter-band feuding, and surviving the alternative revolution against all odds, the quartet's massive concert was a victory lap for heavy metal's legacy in the states.
Before the show, SPIN caught up with the bands — Metallica's Lars Ulrich, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine, Slayer's Tom Araya, and Anthrax's Scott Ian — to find out what's changed, what hasn't, and who still pukes before the show.
SPIN: You've all been at this for 30 years. Do you still get nervous for a big show?
Lars Ulrich: I prefer to use the word "anxious." There's an anticipatory energy that sits around the whole day. You wanna get up there and do you thing... and on the other side of that, there's a shower and a glass of wine [laughs]. That's always good after spending the whole day in the desert.
Scott Ian: Oh, yeah. I definitely have nerves. It's nervous excitement like when you're a kid and it's a week away from Christmas and you can't sleep.
Dave Mustaine: I guess the clinical term is nervous. My adrenaline starts to rev and I start getting fired up. But I love getting up on stage. On this last tour I had some really weird thing where I had a bunch of kidney stones. I thought I had appendicitis and I was gonna die in Siberia. I'm sweating, jumping up and down in pain, the doctor says I've got blood in my pee and a kidney stone. The promoter went out there and said in their native tongue, "Dave is supposed to go to the hospital but is refusing to go. He's gonna play for you and he'll be going to the hospital after the concert." I love playing.
Tom Araya: I always get nervous before I perform. It doesn't really matter the size of the gig. It could be before 100 people and I'll get nervous. My heart palpitates and sometimes I get nervous enough that I throw up. It used to happen a lot in my earlier days.
SPIN: Did you throw up at any of the Big 4 shows in Europe?
Araya: No, but those are nerve-wracking because you want to be better than everybody else. Whenever we do a show where we're opening, we go out with the attitude of like, "Beat this." It's a competitive attitude, but it makes you play well.
SPIN: It's going to be hard to be the best on a formidable bill like this...
Araya: Nah. Not for us [laughs].
SPIN: If you look back at 1986, thrash metal's golden year, is there an event that makes you say, "I can't believe I was that person"?
Ian: I don't even know who that person was in the '80s. I see pictures of myself from back then and I don't even recognize myself. Who were those guys?
Araya: In '86, we opened up for W.A.S.P. [laughs]. And we thought that would be an awesome tour. I had this image of W.A.S.P. being this huge band, and it was a club tour. And that was at the time when they were apparently at the height of their popularity.
Ulrich: In 1986, there were different priorities. The priorities on a daily basis were somewhere between getting drunk, getting laid and playing music. Those were the three priorities that fought for pole position on a daily basis. Now it's taking care of kids, working out, eating healthy... In 1986, it was a tour bus, a bottle of vodka and a testosterone working overload trying to get its daily release... Things were pretty nutty when you're 22 years old and you're thrown in the deep end of the rock 'n' roll swimming pool, and everything that has to offer for an only child from Copenhagen, Denmark.
SPIN: Is there anyone from the other three bands that you share a hobby with?
Mustaine: [Anthrax drummer] Charlie Benante had gotten involved with a charity thing my wife and I were doing for an orphanage in Mexico. This orphanage needed drinking water and the well they had was broken. We bought a coffee company [to raise money]. It's not our desire to sell coffee beans, but it was fun while it lasted.
Ian: Certainly Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] and I would be the closest. We've been friends since '84. We're into comics and horror and sci-fi and TV shows — none of that's changed since we were 20 years old. We turn each other on to things all the time. I got Kirk into Lost and then he became addicted to that. We just saw each other for a couple of days in Hawaii, he turned me on to this smoked ahi spread from this shop in Oahu that blows my mind. He showed up with it in this crappy plastic shopping bag and said, "Hey, bro, I brought this for you." Oh my God, you rule!
Araya: As far as the other bands, we share family stories. When we had a roundtable before the very first show that we did [in Warsaw, Poland], I spent my time with [Metallica bassist] Robert Trujillo, [Megadeth bassist] Dave Ellefson and [Anthrax bassist] Frankie [Bello]. We spent our time talking about family. Kids. That's what we share with each other. After all these years, it was comforting that I was able to have normal conversations about life with them.
Ulrich: I think the one thing that we all have in common is that pretty much everybody is parenting. It changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others — which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.
Mustaine: [I'm excited] to play for my family. My mom's side of the family are Jehovah's Witnesses — poor misled things, they think I'm a black sheep. Boy, they got that wrong. But my sister and my family and my kids get to come. We're all parents now, just about. It's funny when you think we were 18 playing on the Sunset Strip, struggling our butts off that we'd end up with houses and cars that are paid for. I remember when Dave Ellefson and I first started playing in Megadeth, we would panhandle for booze money and Astro Burgers — they gave you a lot of french fries.
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C0
SPIN: Of all the musicians on the tour, who's your favorite to watch on stage?
Araya: That's a tough one, but entertaiment-wise, Anthrax is very animated. They move, they run.
Ulrich: I don't want to play favorites. The complete O.T.T.-ness of what Slayer does blows me away. Anthrax, the unity they have, the balance they have is really, really cool. But the band that's closest to my own heart musically is definitely Megadeth. My DNA makeup and what gets my dick hard; there's more stuff I grew up on.
Ian: [Slayer drummer Dave] Lombardo comes to mind first. He's such a fucking maniac, he's such an insane drummer. And he just makes it look effortless... Seeing Slayer on the Clash Of The Titans tour back in '91, there were so many nights where I had my own circle pit of one behind Lombardo's drum riser. I would just be back there going around in a circle by myself.
Mustaine: I would have to say that Dave is pretty much the most talented drummer out of all of 'em. I think everybody knows that. Scott's a fun guitar player. And the hit-writing team of Hetfield, Hammett and Ulrich? They've taken the guitar style we developed and perfected it. [My favorite] changes from night to night — plus, Slayer has a different guitar player every night because of Jeff [Hanneman]'s unfortunate accident. [Hanneman is currently recovering from a flesh-eating virus that attacked his arm--Ed.] God bless you, Jeff, I hope you get better.
SPIN: Well, it looks like Jeff is on the mend...
Mustaine: I've been keeping in touch with Jeff, even though he doesn't respond to people very verbosely. I've been telling him I've been praying about him. He's probably going, "What are you praying for me for? You're gonna melt if you pray for me."
SPIN: Now that all the Megadeth/Slayer feuding and Megadeth/Metallica feuding from the '90s is over, how do you look back at that time?
Araya: It wasn't really a beef. It was competitiveness. "We're better" — you know what I mean? And then as you get older [pause] it doesn't really change [laughs]. It's mellowed a little bit, but you still have the same attitude. You're a little older and you handle things in a more mature way. Not like back then when you were young and saying, "I wanna kick his ass." But deep down inside, people still have egos... I like to think that I'm not one of them.
Ian: It's just too bad things couldn't have been squashed at a much earlier date. When you're younger — duh — you don't really have the tools to deal with certain things in your life.
Ulrich: Listen, the first word that comes to mind is "exaggerated." Of course there was competition, of course we were all keeping close tabs on what everybody else was doing, of course when you're 25 years old you wanna be better than the next guy. But, through it, no matter what the press was writing about Metallica and Megadeth, me and [Mustaine] would hang out. The things we shared were greater than the things we differed on... Underneath all the posturing, there was always a genuine respect and genuine admiration. Maybe a slight jealousy in some cases, which is fine. We're not talking about Oasis fistfights.
SPIN: Members of all four bands covered Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" together in Europe...
Mustaine: Yeah, the cool thing about that is that it when we were in the practice room, it was almost like a symbolic passing of the torch. It was like everything's finally, finally, finally cool with everybody. Fifty or 60 seconds into the song, there's a part where the whole band stops and there's a little guitar solo. And Lars stopped and said, "What do you think about having Dave do it?" And at that moment I knew that the world had completely healed. My whole life changed and I've been a different man ever since. It's all just been a great, magical play, hasn't it?
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C1
Last weekend in Indo, CA, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — the four bands who elevated the furious carnage of thrash-metal from the tape-trading underground to the top of the Billboard charts — played their very first show together on American soil. After 30 years of being savaged by the PMRC, suffering legendary bouts of inter-band feuding, and surviving the alternative revolution against all odds, the quartet's massive concert was a victory lap for heavy metal's legacy in the states.
Before the show, SPIN caught up with the bands — Metallica's Lars Ulrich, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine, Slayer's Tom Araya, and Anthrax's Scott Ian — to find out what's changed, what hasn't, and who still pukes before the show.
SPIN: You've all been at this for 30 years. Do you still get nervous for a big show?
Lars Ulrich: I prefer to use the word "anxious." There's an anticipatory energy that sits around the whole day. You wanna get up there and do you thing... and on the other side of that, there's a shower and a glass of wine [laughs]. That's always good after spending the whole day in the desert.
Scott Ian: Oh, yeah. I definitely have nerves. It's nervous excitement like when you're a kid and it's a week away from Christmas and you can't sleep.
Dave Mustaine: I guess the clinical term is nervous. My adrenaline starts to rev and I start getting fired up. But I love getting up on stage. On this last tour I had some really weird thing where I had a bunch of kidney stones. I thought I had appendicitis and I was gonna die in Siberia. I'm sweating, jumping up and down in pain, the doctor says I've got blood in my pee and a kidney stone. The promoter went out there and said in their native tongue, "Dave is supposed to go to the hospital but is refusing to go. He's gonna play for you and he'll be going to the hospital after the concert." I love playing.
Tom Araya: I always get nervous before I perform. It doesn't really matter the size of the gig. It could be before 100 people and I'll get nervous. My heart palpitates and sometimes I get nervous enough that I throw up. It used to happen a lot in my earlier days.
SPIN: Did you throw up at any of the Big 4 shows in Europe?
Araya: No, but those are nerve-wracking because you want to be better than everybody else. Whenever we do a show where we're opening, we go out with the attitude of like, "Beat this." It's a competitive attitude, but it makes you play well.
SPIN: It's going to be hard to be the best on a formidable bill like this...
Araya: Nah. Not for us [laughs].
SPIN: If you look back at 1986, thrash metal's golden year, is there an event that makes you say, "I can't believe I was that person"?
Ian: I don't even know who that person was in the '80s. I see pictures of myself from back then and I don't even recognize myself. Who were those guys?
Araya: In '86, we opened up for W.A.S.P. [laughs]. And we thought that would be an awesome tour. I had this image of W.A.S.P. being this huge band, and it was a club tour. And that was at the time when they were apparently at the height of their popularity.
Ulrich: In 1986, there were different priorities. The priorities on a daily basis were somewhere between getting drunk, getting laid and playing music. Those were the three priorities that fought for pole position on a daily basis. Now it's taking care of kids, working out, eating healthy... In 1986, it was a tour bus, a bottle of vodka and a testosterone working overload trying to get its daily release... Things were pretty nutty when you're 22 years old and you're thrown in the deep end of the rock 'n' roll swimming pool, and everything that has to offer for an only child from Copenhagen, Denmark.
SPIN: Is there anyone from the other three bands that you share a hobby with?
Mustaine: [Anthrax drummer] Charlie Benante had gotten involved with a charity thing my wife and I were doing for an orphanage in Mexico. This orphanage needed drinking water and the well they had was broken. We bought a coffee company [to raise money]. It's not our desire to sell coffee beans, but it was fun while it lasted.
Ian: Certainly Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] and I would be the closest. We've been friends since '84. We're into comics and horror and sci-fi and TV shows — none of that's changed since we were 20 years old. We turn each other on to things all the time. I got Kirk into Lost and then he became addicted to that. We just saw each other for a couple of days in Hawaii, he turned me on to this smoked ahi spread from this shop in Oahu that blows my mind. He showed up with it in this crappy plastic shopping bag and said, "Hey, bro, I brought this for you." Oh my God, you rule!
Araya: As far as the other bands, we share family stories. When we had a roundtable before the very first show that we did [in Warsaw, Poland], I spent my time with [Metallica bassist] Robert Trujillo, [Megadeth bassist] Dave Ellefson and [Anthrax bassist] Frankie [Bello]. We spent our time talking about family. Kids. That's what we share with each other. After all these years, it was comforting that I was able to have normal conversations about life with them.
Ulrich: I think the one thing that we all have in common is that pretty much everybody is parenting. It changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others — which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.
Mustaine: [I'm excited] to play for my family. My mom's side of the family are Jehovah's Witnesses — poor misled things, they think I'm a black sheep. Boy, they got that wrong. But my sister and my family and my kids get to come. We're all parents now, just about. It's funny when you think we were 18 playing on the Sunset Strip, struggling our butts off that we'd end up with houses and cars that are paid for. I remember when Dave Ellefson and I first started playing in Megadeth, we would panhandle for booze money and Astro Burgers — they gave you a lot of french fries.
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C0
SPIN: Of all the musicians on the tour, who's your favorite to watch on stage?
Araya: That's a tough one, but entertaiment-wise, Anthrax is very animated. They move, they run.
Ulrich: I don't want to play favorites. The complete O.T.T.-ness of what Slayer does blows me away. Anthrax, the unity they have, the balance they have is really, really cool. But the band that's closest to my own heart musically is definitely Megadeth. My DNA makeup and what gets my dick hard; there's more stuff I grew up on.
Ian: [Slayer drummer Dave] Lombardo comes to mind first. He's such a fucking maniac, he's such an insane drummer. And he just makes it look effortless... Seeing Slayer on the Clash Of The Titans tour back in '91, there were so many nights where I had my own circle pit of one behind Lombardo's drum riser. I would just be back there going around in a circle by myself.
Mustaine: I would have to say that Dave is pretty much the most talented drummer out of all of 'em. I think everybody knows that. Scott's a fun guitar player. And the hit-writing team of Hetfield, Hammett and Ulrich? They've taken the guitar style we developed and perfected it. [My favorite] changes from night to night — plus, Slayer has a different guitar player every night because of Jeff [Hanneman]'s unfortunate accident. [Hanneman is currently recovering from a flesh-eating virus that attacked his arm--Ed.] God bless you, Jeff, I hope you get better.
SPIN: Well, it looks like Jeff is on the mend...
Mustaine: I've been keeping in touch with Jeff, even though he doesn't respond to people very verbosely. I've been telling him I've been praying about him. He's probably going, "What are you praying for me for? You're gonna melt if you pray for me."
SPIN: Now that all the Megadeth/Slayer feuding and Megadeth/Metallica feuding from the '90s is over, how do you look back at that time?
Araya: It wasn't really a beef. It was competitiveness. "We're better" — you know what I mean? And then as you get older [pause] it doesn't really change [laughs]. It's mellowed a little bit, but you still have the same attitude. You're a little older and you handle things in a more mature way. Not like back then when you were young and saying, "I wanna kick his ass." But deep down inside, people still have egos... I like to think that I'm not one of them.
Ian: It's just too bad things couldn't have been squashed at a much earlier date. When you're younger — duh — you don't really have the tools to deal with certain things in your life.
Ulrich: Listen, the first word that comes to mind is "exaggerated." Of course there was competition, of course we were all keeping close tabs on what everybody else was doing, of course when you're 25 years old you wanna be better than the next guy. But, through it, no matter what the press was writing about Metallica and Megadeth, me and [Mustaine] would hang out. The things we shared were greater than the things we differed on... Underneath all the posturing, there was always a genuine respect and genuine admiration. Maybe a slight jealousy in some cases, which is fine. We're not talking about Oasis fistfights.
SPIN: Members of all four bands covered Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" together in Europe...
Mustaine: Yeah, the cool thing about that is that it when we were in the practice room, it was almost like a symbolic passing of the torch. It was like everything's finally, finally, finally cool with everybody. Fifty or 60 seconds into the song, there's a part where the whole band stops and there's a little guitar solo. And Lars stopped and said, "What do you think about having Dave do it?" And at that moment I knew that the world had completely healed. My whole life changed and I've been a different man ever since. It's all just been a great, magical play, hasn't it?
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C1
05-01-11, 08:26 PM
#322
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Q&A: The Big 4 Reunite and Talk Metal!
Last weekend in Indo, CA, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — the four bands who elevated the furious carnage of thrash-metal from the tape-trading underground to the top of the Billboard charts — played their very first show together on American soil. After 30 years of being savaged by the PMRC, suffering legendary bouts of inter-band feuding, and surviving the alternative revolution against all odds, the quartet's massive concert was a victory lap for heavy metal's legacy in the states.
Before the show, SPIN caught up with the bands — Metallica's Lars Ulrich, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine, Slayer's Tom Araya, and Anthrax's Scott Ian — to find out what's changed, what hasn't, and who still pukes before the show.
SPIN: You've all been at this for 30 years. Do you still get nervous for a big show?
Lars Ulrich: I prefer to use the word "anxious." There's an anticipatory energy that sits around the whole day. You wanna get up there and do you thing... and on the other side of that, there's a shower and a glass of wine [laughs]. That's always good after spending the whole day in the desert.
Scott Ian: Oh, yeah. I definitely have nerves. It's nervous excitement like when you're a kid and it's a week away from Christmas and you can't sleep.
Dave Mustaine: I guess the clinical term is nervous. My adrenaline starts to rev and I start getting fired up. But I love getting up on stage. On this last tour I had some really weird thing where I had a bunch of kidney stones. I thought I had appendicitis and I was gonna die in Siberia. I'm sweating, jumping up and down in pain, the doctor says I've got blood in my pee and a kidney stone. The promoter went out there and said in their native tongue, "Dave is supposed to go to the hospital but is refusing to go. He's gonna play for you and he'll be going to the hospital after the concert." I love playing.
Tom Araya: I always get nervous before I perform. It doesn't really matter the size of the gig. It could be before 100 people and I'll get nervous. My heart palpitates and sometimes I get nervous enough that I throw up. It used to happen a lot in my earlier days.
SPIN: Did you throw up at any of the Big 4 shows in Europe?
Araya: No, but those are nerve-wracking because you want to be better than everybody else. Whenever we do a show where we're opening, we go out with the attitude of like, "Beat this." It's a competitive attitude, but it makes you play well.
SPIN: It's going to be hard to be the best on a formidable bill like this...
Araya: Nah. Not for us [laughs].
SPIN: If you look back at 1986, thrash metal's golden year, is there an event that makes you say, "I can't believe I was that person"?
Ian: I don't even know who that person was in the '80s. I see pictures of myself from back then and I don't even recognize myself. Who were those guys?
Araya: In '86, we opened up for W.A.S.P. [laughs]. And we thought that would be an awesome tour. I had this image of W.A.S.P. being this huge band, and it was a club tour. And that was at the time when they were apparently at the height of their popularity.
Ulrich: In 1986, there were different priorities. The priorities on a daily basis were somewhere between getting drunk, getting laid and playing music. Those were the three priorities that fought for pole position on a daily basis. Now it's taking care of kids, working out, eating healthy... In 1986, it was a tour bus, a bottle of vodka and a testosterone working overload trying to get its daily release... Things were pretty nutty when you're 22 years old and you're thrown in the deep end of the rock 'n' roll swimming pool, and everything that has to offer for an only child from Copenhagen, Denmark.
SPIN: Is there anyone from the other three bands that you share a hobby with?
Mustaine: [Anthrax drummer] Charlie Benante had gotten involved with a charity thing my wife and I were doing for an orphanage in Mexico. This orphanage needed drinking water and the well they had was broken. We bought a coffee company [to raise money]. It's not our desire to sell coffee beans, but it was fun while it lasted.
Ian: Certainly Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] and I would be the closest. We've been friends since '84. We're into comics and horror and sci-fi and TV shows — none of that's changed since we were 20 years old. We turn each other on to things all the time. I got Kirk into Lost and then he became addicted to that. We just saw each other for a couple of days in Hawaii, he turned me on to this smoked ahi spread from this shop in Oahu that blows my mind. He showed up with it in this crappy plastic shopping bag and said, "Hey, bro, I brought this for you." Oh my God, you rule!
Araya: As far as the other bands, we share family stories. When we had a roundtable before the very first show that we did [in Warsaw, Poland], I spent my time with [Metallica bassist] Robert Trujillo, [Megadeth bassist] Dave Ellefson and [Anthrax bassist] Frankie [Bello]. We spent our time talking about family. Kids. That's what we share with each other. After all these years, it was comforting that I was able to have normal conversations about life with them.
Ulrich: I think the one thing that we all have in common is that pretty much everybody is parenting. It changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others — which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.
Mustaine: [I'm excited] to play for my family. My mom's side of the family are Jehovah's Witnesses — poor misled things, they think I'm a black sheep. Boy, they got that wrong. But my sister and my family and my kids get to come. We're all parents now, just about. It's funny when you think we were 18 playing on the Sunset Strip, struggling our butts off that we'd end up with houses and cars that are paid for. I remember when Dave Ellefson and I first started playing in Megadeth, we would panhandle for booze money and Astro Burgers — they gave you a lot of french fries.
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C0
SPIN: Of all the musicians on the tour, who's your favorite to watch on stage?
Araya: That's a tough one, but entertaiment-wise, Anthrax is very animated. They move, they run.
Ulrich: I don't want to play favorites. The complete O.T.T.-ness of what Slayer does blows me away. Anthrax, the unity they have, the balance they have is really, really cool. But the band that's closest to my own heart musically is definitely Megadeth. My DNA makeup and what gets my dick hard; there's more stuff I grew up on.
Ian: [Slayer drummer Dave] Lombardo comes to mind first. He's such a fucking maniac, he's such an insane drummer. And he just makes it look effortless... Seeing Slayer on the Clash Of The Titans tour back in '91, there were so many nights where I had my own circle pit of one behind Lombardo's drum riser. I would just be back there going around in a circle by myself.
Mustaine: I would have to say that Dave is pretty much the most talented drummer out of all of 'em. I think everybody knows that. Scott's a fun guitar player. And the hit-writing team of Hetfield, Hammett and Ulrich? They've taken the guitar style we developed and perfected it. [My favorite] changes from night to night — plus, Slayer has a different guitar player every night because of Jeff [Hanneman]'s unfortunate accident. [Hanneman is currently recovering from a flesh-eating virus that attacked his arm--Ed.] God bless you, Jeff, I hope you get better.
SPIN: Well, it looks like Jeff is on the mend...
Mustaine: I've been keeping in touch with Jeff, even though he doesn't respond to people very verbosely. I've been telling him I've been praying about him. He's probably going, "What are you praying for me for? You're gonna melt if you pray for me."
SPIN: Now that all the Megadeth/Slayer feuding and Megadeth/Metallica feuding from the '90s is over, how do you look back at that time?
Araya: It wasn't really a beef. It was competitiveness. "We're better" — you know what I mean? And then as you get older [pause] it doesn't really change [laughs]. It's mellowed a little bit, but you still have the same attitude. You're a little older and you handle things in a more mature way. Not like back then when you were young and saying, "I wanna kick his ass." But deep down inside, people still have egos... I like to think that I'm not one of them.
Ian: It's just too bad things couldn't have been squashed at a much earlier date. When you're younger — duh — you don't really have the tools to deal with certain things in your life.
Ulrich: Listen, the first word that comes to mind is "exaggerated." Of course there was competition, of course we were all keeping close tabs on what everybody else was doing, of course when you're 25 years old you wanna be better than the next guy. But, through it, no matter what the press was writing about Metallica and Megadeth, me and [Mustaine] would hang out. The things we shared were greater than the things we differed on... Underneath all the posturing, there was always a genuine respect and genuine admiration. Maybe a slight jealousy in some cases, which is fine. We're not talking about Oasis fistfights.
SPIN: Members of all four bands covered Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" together in Europe...
Mustaine: Yeah, the cool thing about that is that it when we were in the practice room, it was almost like a symbolic passing of the torch. It was like everything's finally, finally, finally cool with everybody. Fifty or 60 seconds into the song, there's a part where the whole band stops and there's a little guitar solo. And Lars stopped and said, "What do you think about having Dave do it?" And at that moment I knew that the world had completely healed. My whole life changed and I've been a different man ever since. It's all just been a great, magical play, hasn't it?
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C1
Last weekend in Indo, CA, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax — the four bands who elevated the furious carnage of thrash-metal from the tape-trading underground to the top of the Billboard charts — played their very first show together on American soil. After 30 years of being savaged by the PMRC, suffering legendary bouts of inter-band feuding, and surviving the alternative revolution against all odds, the quartet's massive concert was a victory lap for heavy metal's legacy in the states.
Before the show, SPIN caught up with the bands — Metallica's Lars Ulrich, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine, Slayer's Tom Araya, and Anthrax's Scott Ian — to find out what's changed, what hasn't, and who still pukes before the show.
SPIN: You've all been at this for 30 years. Do you still get nervous for a big show?
Lars Ulrich: I prefer to use the word "anxious." There's an anticipatory energy that sits around the whole day. You wanna get up there and do you thing... and on the other side of that, there's a shower and a glass of wine [laughs]. That's always good after spending the whole day in the desert.
Scott Ian: Oh, yeah. I definitely have nerves. It's nervous excitement like when you're a kid and it's a week away from Christmas and you can't sleep.
Dave Mustaine: I guess the clinical term is nervous. My adrenaline starts to rev and I start getting fired up. But I love getting up on stage. On this last tour I had some really weird thing where I had a bunch of kidney stones. I thought I had appendicitis and I was gonna die in Siberia. I'm sweating, jumping up and down in pain, the doctor says I've got blood in my pee and a kidney stone. The promoter went out there and said in their native tongue, "Dave is supposed to go to the hospital but is refusing to go. He's gonna play for you and he'll be going to the hospital after the concert." I love playing.
Tom Araya: I always get nervous before I perform. It doesn't really matter the size of the gig. It could be before 100 people and I'll get nervous. My heart palpitates and sometimes I get nervous enough that I throw up. It used to happen a lot in my earlier days.
SPIN: Did you throw up at any of the Big 4 shows in Europe?
Araya: No, but those are nerve-wracking because you want to be better than everybody else. Whenever we do a show where we're opening, we go out with the attitude of like, "Beat this." It's a competitive attitude, but it makes you play well.
SPIN: It's going to be hard to be the best on a formidable bill like this...
Araya: Nah. Not for us [laughs].
SPIN: If you look back at 1986, thrash metal's golden year, is there an event that makes you say, "I can't believe I was that person"?
Ian: I don't even know who that person was in the '80s. I see pictures of myself from back then and I don't even recognize myself. Who were those guys?
Araya: In '86, we opened up for W.A.S.P. [laughs]. And we thought that would be an awesome tour. I had this image of W.A.S.P. being this huge band, and it was a club tour. And that was at the time when they were apparently at the height of their popularity.
Ulrich: In 1986, there were different priorities. The priorities on a daily basis were somewhere between getting drunk, getting laid and playing music. Those were the three priorities that fought for pole position on a daily basis. Now it's taking care of kids, working out, eating healthy... In 1986, it was a tour bus, a bottle of vodka and a testosterone working overload trying to get its daily release... Things were pretty nutty when you're 22 years old and you're thrown in the deep end of the rock 'n' roll swimming pool, and everything that has to offer for an only child from Copenhagen, Denmark.
SPIN: Is there anyone from the other three bands that you share a hobby with?
Mustaine: [Anthrax drummer] Charlie Benante had gotten involved with a charity thing my wife and I were doing for an orphanage in Mexico. This orphanage needed drinking water and the well they had was broken. We bought a coffee company [to raise money]. It's not our desire to sell coffee beans, but it was fun while it lasted.
Ian: Certainly Kirk [Hammett, Metallica guitarist] and I would be the closest. We've been friends since '84. We're into comics and horror and sci-fi and TV shows — none of that's changed since we were 20 years old. We turn each other on to things all the time. I got Kirk into Lost and then he became addicted to that. We just saw each other for a couple of days in Hawaii, he turned me on to this smoked ahi spread from this shop in Oahu that blows my mind. He showed up with it in this crappy plastic shopping bag and said, "Hey, bro, I brought this for you." Oh my God, you rule!
Araya: As far as the other bands, we share family stories. When we had a roundtable before the very first show that we did [in Warsaw, Poland], I spent my time with [Metallica bassist] Robert Trujillo, [Megadeth bassist] Dave Ellefson and [Anthrax bassist] Frankie [Bello]. We spent our time talking about family. Kids. That's what we share with each other. After all these years, it was comforting that I was able to have normal conversations about life with them.
Ulrich: I think the one thing that we all have in common is that pretty much everybody is parenting. It changes your life, it changes how you hear yourself in relationship to others — which is part of the reason that a bunch of people in the rock community are sick of the goodwill and positive energy and love between these 45-year-old musicians who they preferred when they were 25 and taking stabs at each other.
Mustaine: [I'm excited] to play for my family. My mom's side of the family are Jehovah's Witnesses — poor misled things, they think I'm a black sheep. Boy, they got that wrong. But my sister and my family and my kids get to come. We're all parents now, just about. It's funny when you think we were 18 playing on the Sunset Strip, struggling our butts off that we'd end up with houses and cars that are paid for. I remember when Dave Ellefson and I first started playing in Megadeth, we would panhandle for booze money and Astro Burgers — they gave you a lot of french fries.
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C0
SPIN: Of all the musicians on the tour, who's your favorite to watch on stage?
Araya: That's a tough one, but entertaiment-wise, Anthrax is very animated. They move, they run.
Ulrich: I don't want to play favorites. The complete O.T.T.-ness of what Slayer does blows me away. Anthrax, the unity they have, the balance they have is really, really cool. But the band that's closest to my own heart musically is definitely Megadeth. My DNA makeup and what gets my dick hard; there's more stuff I grew up on.
Ian: [Slayer drummer Dave] Lombardo comes to mind first. He's such a fucking maniac, he's such an insane drummer. And he just makes it look effortless... Seeing Slayer on the Clash Of The Titans tour back in '91, there were so many nights where I had my own circle pit of one behind Lombardo's drum riser. I would just be back there going around in a circle by myself.
Mustaine: I would have to say that Dave is pretty much the most talented drummer out of all of 'em. I think everybody knows that. Scott's a fun guitar player. And the hit-writing team of Hetfield, Hammett and Ulrich? They've taken the guitar style we developed and perfected it. [My favorite] changes from night to night — plus, Slayer has a different guitar player every night because of Jeff [Hanneman]'s unfortunate accident. [Hanneman is currently recovering from a flesh-eating virus that attacked his arm--Ed.] God bless you, Jeff, I hope you get better.
SPIN: Well, it looks like Jeff is on the mend...
Mustaine: I've been keeping in touch with Jeff, even though he doesn't respond to people very verbosely. I've been telling him I've been praying about him. He's probably going, "What are you praying for me for? You're gonna melt if you pray for me."
SPIN: Now that all the Megadeth/Slayer feuding and Megadeth/Metallica feuding from the '90s is over, how do you look back at that time?
Araya: It wasn't really a beef. It was competitiveness. "We're better" — you know what I mean? And then as you get older [pause] it doesn't really change [laughs]. It's mellowed a little bit, but you still have the same attitude. You're a little older and you handle things in a more mature way. Not like back then when you were young and saying, "I wanna kick his ass." But deep down inside, people still have egos... I like to think that I'm not one of them.
Ian: It's just too bad things couldn't have been squashed at a much earlier date. When you're younger — duh — you don't really have the tools to deal with certain things in your life.
Ulrich: Listen, the first word that comes to mind is "exaggerated." Of course there was competition, of course we were all keeping close tabs on what everybody else was doing, of course when you're 25 years old you wanna be better than the next guy. But, through it, no matter what the press was writing about Metallica and Megadeth, me and [Mustaine] would hang out. The things we shared were greater than the things we differed on... Underneath all the posturing, there was always a genuine respect and genuine admiration. Maybe a slight jealousy in some cases, which is fine. We're not talking about Oasis fistfights.
SPIN: Members of all four bands covered Diamond Head's "Am I Evil?" together in Europe...
Mustaine: Yeah, the cool thing about that is that it when we were in the practice room, it was almost like a symbolic passing of the torch. It was like everything's finally, finally, finally cool with everybody. Fifty or 60 seconds into the song, there's a part where the whole band stops and there's a little guitar solo. And Lars stopped and said, "What do you think about having Dave do it?" And at that moment I knew that the world had completely healed. My whole life changed and I've been a different man ever since. It's all just been a great, magical play, hasn't it?
http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-big-...tal?page=0%2C1
05-01-11, 08:55 PM
#323
DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
I just saw The Big 4 on Blu. Have to say, Megadeth was so bad I was embarrassed to watch. I've seen megadeth live 3 times and have seen concert footage many times and Mustaine always sounded excellent. WHAT was going on with his voice? He was singing in a high pitched, off key tone for every song. Whats worse is I read he overdubbed his vocals for the dvd/BR release. HOW could he have sounded worse than these overdubs??
05-15-11, 03:55 PM
#324
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
Hesher
Recognize this logo? We thought you might! You may have seen the Hesher version around as the film opens this Friday, May 13 in North America. The movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Hesher, a drifter who crashes uninvited in the garage of a father and son in suburbia. Rainn Wilson, Devin Brochu, Piper Laurie, and Natalie Portman round out the cast and the film includes no less than five Metallica songs... The Shortest Straw, Fight Fire With Fire, Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth), Battery, and Motorbreath all can be heard at some point during the action.
Check out the trailer here:
<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jkKjafEIebw?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jkKjafEIebw?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>
And the film website here: http://www.hesherthemovie.com
Recognize this logo? We thought you might! You may have seen the Hesher version around as the film opens this Friday, May 13 in North America. The movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Hesher, a drifter who crashes uninvited in the garage of a father and son in suburbia. Rainn Wilson, Devin Brochu, Piper Laurie, and Natalie Portman round out the cast and the film includes no less than five Metallica songs... The Shortest Straw, Fight Fire With Fire, Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth), Battery, and Motorbreath all can be heard at some point during the action.
Check out the trailer here:
<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jkKjafEIebw?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jkKjafEIebw?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>
And the film website here: http://www.hesherthemovie.com
07-14-17, 11:01 PM
#325
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Thread Starter
Re: METALLICA: "Death Magnetic" discussion part 2
woah
<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jSV9AJh4zu4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="480" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jSV9AJh4zu4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
