Lars Ulrich on Iron Maiden
None But My Own: But my thing is, you had the balls to actually dream that dream, and more or less set this goal for your band and sonofabitch if it didn't happen.Lars: I gotta tell ya, man, that's a little far-fetched, I mean if someone would've told me in 1981 or '82 that maybe one day we could be equals or even in their shadows (pause) listen, Iron Maiden is a different generation. I'll always look up to Iron Maiden because I grew up looking up to Iron Maiden. The rest of all that is up to the other people to figure the rest out. Like I said, I'll always look up to Iron Maiden, I had Iron Maiden posters on my wall growing up. Talk about bands holding a place in your heart, Iron Maiden holds a very special place in my heart. Yes, we've been fortunate enough to, at least in America, to have bigger numbers or whatever but if you or anyone would've told me in 1981 when James and I started this band that one day we might be able to be mentioned in the same breath as Iron Maiden, it would've blown our minds. We were not as goal oriented as the press in England tagged us to be, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Maybe later, by the time you could sense that whatever it was that we were doing was kind of working and turning people on, we're talking about the late '80s. But when we started? We couldn't fathom any of this and we simply did not have such goals. When we started it was drink some beers or some Goldschläger or Schnapps or whatever horrible shit we were drinking and get together to play our favorite heavy metal songs. The first six months the band was together we didn't even write any songs! I mean we had "Hit The Lights" and then the next ten songs we had were all covers, it wasn't until "Jump In The Fire" with (Dave) Mustaine, that's when we thought, "OK, it's kinda fun writing your own songs." (laughs) Those first few whatever was just about having a good time and sweating it out and banging into some shit. A few years later, there was a turning point and you may have heard me talk about this before, but there's a few turning points for Metallica that can be looked at upon and this was one of them. I remember the last date of the Ozzy tour and this would be James' birthday, so that's August 3, 1986 in Hampton, Virginia, and our manager, Cliff Burnstein, came down from New York for the last show. So we're all sitting there in the back of the bus and he said, "You've now sold enough records and you've made enough money to go and buy houses." We'd been on the Ozzy tour, at that point for five months. All of us, band and crew on one bus, drinking twelve hours a day, fucking, just living every crazy fantasy about girls and heavy metal and being on the road. We were completely blissfully ignorant to what was going on, you know on that side of it. I remember Cliff [Burton] sitting there and going, "Fuuucccckkk, I can buy a house," and the rest of us were, I mean the rest of didn't want to buy a house  we wanted to stay on tour (laughing)! We didn't want to go home! So yeah, I remember that day because it was like, "Whoa, you mean you can actually make money doing this? You can buy a house and buy shit?" And this was what? Five years into it? Then we did the Van Halen thing in the summer [Monsters of Rock in 1988] and then all fall we did Europe and then we came back to the States to start in November of 1988. We had AC/DC's production manager, Jake Berry, and we had a real stage show and we were playing the arenas and they booked two nights at Long Beach Arena and I seriously didn't think we could even sell one out, but we sold both out and that was another turning point. It was like, not only can you make enough money to buy a house, but you could make enough money to buy a big fucking house (laughs)!! But the first six years or so was ignorant bliss, four nerdy dudes out there banging away, having a lot of fun. But "Justice" was when we actually had to get it together as we were the headliners and we had a two-hour show to play every night, but you know after that it just kept building and all of a sudden you're making records with Bob Rock. But man, as far as Iron Maiden is concerned, I'm a fanboy of Iron Maiden, always will be. We did a few shows with them in Spain back in 1988 and it was us, Anthrax and Iron Maiden and it was like, "Fuck, we get to play with Iron Maiden," and we got a chance to hang back at the hotel and party with them. Dude it was super-cool. I'm super-psyched that they're still out there and kicking major fucking ass all over the world. I got to see them at Long Beach Arena four or five months ago and it was awesome! Steve Harris, I swear to god, I met Steve Harris for the first time in 1981 and it was the last show they ever played with Paul Di'Anno in Copenhagen, Denmark at a place the size of your living room. Steve Harris, when I saw them back in February of this year, he's the exact same guy, the exact same guy as the guy I met back in '81 except he's got longer hair now! How many dudes that are 50 years old have hair down to their ass? I mean why can't I grow my hair, what's up with that (laughs)?!
1 Comment
Good stuff. Metallica is gaining my respect again :)