Metallica's driving force: drummer Lars Ulrich turns 60

Music - Metallica's driving force: drummer Lars Ulrich turns 60

There was a moment in his life when Lars Ulrich had to choose between sport and music, between tennis and heavy metal. His decision to pursue a career as a rock star paid off. As the founder of the US heavy metal band Metallica, the drummer, who turns 60 on Boxing Day, celebrated successes that he could hardly have dreamed of as a teenager. "My body may look like 60 years of wear and tear, but my mind vigorously disagrees," he recently told Rolling Stone. "I still feel like the 18-year-old who doesn't get it all."

From an underground band in the early 1980s, Metallica established themselves as one of the world's leading heavy metal groups with riff-heavy hits such as "Seek & Destroy", "Battery" or "Enter Sandman" and sweat-inducing shows, also thanks to Ulrich's intense and powerful drumming. Just this year, Ulrich and Co. played a worldwide stadium tour with two concerts in each city, where the set list of songs varied from evening to evening.

Lars Ulrich's childhood, however, began quietly. Born on December 26, 1963 in the tranquil Danish town of Gentofte, he grew up in an environment shaped by his father's cultural interests. Torben Ulrich was a professional tennis player and a big music fan. "When I was growing up, my dad played a lot of jazz - Coltrane, Miles, Dexter Gordon, Ornette Coleman," Ulrich junior told Classic Rock magazine, "and a bit of rock - Hendrix, the Stones, the Doors."

Decision for the music

A concert by the hard rock band Deep Purple, which his father took the then nine-year-old Lars to and which made a lasting impression on him, is said to have provided perhaps the decisive impetus for his career. According to reports, he also had the talent to follow in the sporting footsteps of his father, who was a professional tennis player from the 1940s to the 1970s. But the young Lars' passion for music prevailed.

His grandparents gave him his first drum kit. As a teenager, Ulrich moved to California with his family. In his new home, he continued to be particularly enthusiastic about music from Europe and bought British records from an import mail order company. The so-called New Wave Of British Heavy Metal with representatives such as Iron Maiden, Saxon and Diamond Head appealed to Ulrich so much that he flew to the UK to see some of these groups live.

The song "It's Electric" by Diamond Head made him decide to form his own band, he says. "After I heard the song for the first time, I must have played it about 9,000 times in the following months, I think," Ulrich said in the "GQ" interview. "If ever a song made me want to have a band, it was this one. I was still very busy with tennis at the time, but that quickly went down the drain."

Decision for the music

Together with singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield, whom Ulrich had met through a newspaper advertisement, he eventually founded the band Metallica in Los Angeles, which initially included bassist Ron McGovney and guitarist Dave Mustaine, who later became the founder and frontman of Megadeth. When the US rock scene was increasingly dominated by glam or hair metal bands such as Mötley Crüe, Poison and Ratt, Metallica gave their first concert at the Radio City club in Anaheim, California, on March 14, 1982.

"We felt like total outsiders," Ulrich recounted in a live interview on stage at the New York cultural center "92Y". "But Metallica started out as a cover band. We thought that if we covered all these songs by unknown bands from England that nobody had heard of, people might think they were originals." Only later did he write his own songs with Hetfield. According to Ulrich, "Hit The Lights" was the first.

In the beginning, they described their style as power metal, today it is referred to as thrash metal. Metallica, whose current line-up is completed by guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo, are among the pioneers of the genre. Their song "Whiplash" from their first album "Kill 'Em All" from 1983 is also considered the origin of the term. The lyrics say: "You're thrashing all around, acting like a maniac, whiplash!"

Success and changes

The breakthrough came in 1986 with the LP "Master Of Puppets", an absolute classic of the genre. Two years later, "...And Justice For All" was released and brought Metallica their first Grammy nomination. In 1990, they received the coveted music prize for the first time for their song "One". Their biggest commercial success was "Metallica", which is known as the "black album" and was released in 1991. The band then changed their style and even released ballads for the first time with "The Unforgiven" and the hit "Nothing Else Matters".

"72 Seasons", Metallica's eleventh and final studio album to date, was released in April and won over fans and critics alike. According to Lars Ulrich, many more albums and tours are to follow if his health cooperates. He gave up cocaine around 20 years ago and only drinks alcohol occasionally. "Who would have thought that Metallica would still exist, that we would survive all this and that people would still be interested in us?" the drummer told "Rolling Stone". "That's very cool."

Throughout his long life as a musician, his father Torben Ulrich has always been a critical and beloved companion to the drummer. A few days before Christmas and his son's milestone birthday, he died at the proud age of 95, as Lars Ulrich announced on Instagram. "95 years of adventures, unique experiences, curiosity, pushing boundaries, challenging the status quo, tennis, music, art, writing ... and a whole lot of Danish contrarian attitude," he wrote alongside a black and white photo of his father and other shots. "Endless thanks! I love you, dad."