| |

METALLICA’s Drummer Lars Ulrich Talks About Movies

METALLICA‘s drummer Lars Ulrich talks about his movie references. He also reveals thoughts for the ‘S&M2’ project and ‘Mission: Impossible 2’ movie.

He’s not just a drummer. Lars Ulrich also loves the movies and applied this inspiration on the METALLICA records. Ulrich says: “I was around 12 or 13 years old when I started listening to the metal band, and 20-plus years later, I still haven’t stopped headbanging in my car, where I can really crank up the volume and rock out to ‘Blackened‘ track.” Ulrich also talks about movies, music projects, and more.

During the interview on Collider, Lars Ulrich reveals his thoughts for movies and music projects:

“So when we did the first METALLICA – S&M collaboration 20 years ago in 1999. It felt very fitting, and obviously, Michael Kamen, who was sort of steering that ship, had a significant relationship with movies and basically came out of the movie world. He was a composer who scored films, so it was a fitting thing that would get the treatment of the orchestra. And when we did it again a second time, that was one of the things from the first go-round that we repeated.

The good folks at Warner Bros. and the good folks in Morricone‘s world know about the relationship with his song. There was actually a tribute album to Ennio Morricone himself, maybe about 12 or 14 years ago, where we played kind of electric, heavier version of the track for this collaboration album. There were a bunch of other artists on it, like Bruce Springsteen and many others, so hopefully, that gives you a little bit of background.”

Lars Ulrich also added:

I flew down to L.A., this was right around the same time, actually, as the first S&M. This was probably right after S&M came out, I flew down to L.A. to meet with Tom Cruise. He was on the set, and so it was probably January or February of 2000, and he was on the set. Obviously, soundtracks and original songs had a very different meeting at the time. You think of the Whitney Houstons of the world and the associations to movies like The Bodyguard, so original songs were a whole different thing. So they reached out, I flew down, Tom was filming in L.A., and it was great, because not only was I a fan of Tom and everything that he’d done, but I was also a huge fan of John Woo. This was one of the first films that he did in America after some of my favorite films before that, like Hard Boiled and The Killer and A Better Tomorrow and Bullet in the Head. So to be on the set for a day, and to hang out with Tom…

I spent a couple of hours with him in his trailer and hearing his vision for the Mission Impossible 2 and hearing his vision for how the music would sort of work within it, and how the song that we were gonna write, what that could be. He showed me probably 30-45 minutes of early cuts and early edits of scenes so I started to get an idea of what the movie was, and I flew back to San Francisco and reported to James, and then we wrote: “I Disappear.” And certainly, we would do it again, absolutely, except that association of writing songs specifically for movies may be… I’m not saying it’s never gonna happen, and certainly, METALLICA is always open to those kinds of endeavors.  But obviously, the original soundtrack type of thing is maybe not quite what it was. But there was nothing about that experience that was not great, and to get close to the filmmaking process…

I’ve always been fascinated with film, and I’ve always been very inspired by the film, and Tom’s been very generous. Because it was a project for their movie, and though it was a collaborative, there were different dynamics in play on the practical side. But Tom’s been very supportive of us, putting that video into all our different things, like compilation DVDs and all that kind of stuff. Tom is very personable, and always engaging and interested, and has always been super cool to me.”

Lars Ulrich also talks about which movies watch during the quarantine like Midnight Express, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Platoon, and other things like Amores Perros, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and The Seventh Seal.

You can also order METALLICA – “S&M2” on here.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.