A new Metallica documentary, “Metallica Saved My Life,” made its debut earlier this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. Drummer Lars Ulrich talked about the doc and much more in a recent interview with Variety. Metallica’s first foray into sounds outside of thrash came early on in the band’s career on their sophomore effort, “Ride The Lightning.”
“When ‘Ride The Lightning’ came out, the fourth song, ‘Fade To Black’, had acoustic guitars on it,” Ulrich said. “There were definitely some raised eyebrows, and people in the very hard-rock end of the community wondered what we were doing. But I would like to think that very early on, we stated that we were not to be boxed in, and we were not to be doing always what was expected. We would not be the band to churn out the same record over and over again, just in a different sleeve with different cover art. We were gonna do everything that we could to prevent that from happening.”
Ulrich also revealed that the “fear of stagnation” is part of what keeps the band inspired and constantly evolving.”
“I don’t think it was ever a choice,” Ulrich said. “I would like to believe that we dictate our own narrative, and one of the key pieces of the individual and collective DNA in Metallica is curiosity. We’ve always wanted to turn over rocks and look at new ideas and challenges. If curiosity is a significant part of our DNA, another part is the fear of complacency, a fear of fear, of getting stuck. The claustrophobia, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to keep evolving. We’ve got to keep growing. We gotta keep trying different sh*t.'”
“The fear of stagnation, of ending up on autopilot, a fear of repetition, of just getting stuck. So we’ve always pushed ourselves into new and different creative endeavors. Whether it’s the films or doing stuff with symphony orchestras or playing with different producers or new approaches, it’s to make sure that we always keep it fresh and there are always challenges in front of us.”
