What Metallica Were ‘Unprepared’ for When Recording ‘Lulu’

In a brand new interview, chatting with Lou Reed’s widow Laurie Anderson, Lars Ulrich reveals what Metallica have been “unprepared” for whereas recording the collaborative, divisive Lulu album.

The two spoke for a characteristic in Interview Magazine, recollecting Reed’s strategy to music, which was instinctual, decisive and was at odds with Metallica’s normal writing and recording course of.

Both musicians needed to really feel one another out on the fly and discover ways to work in concord whereas writing and recording, leading to an surroundings that was moderately alien to Metallica. Despite this, working outdoors of their consolation zone is also one thing the steel legends have lots of pleasure in doing, which Ulrich expressed when first speaking concerning the band’s M72 worldwide tour, performing solely completely different units throughout two nights in the identical metropolis at every cease.

Lars Ulrich on Metallica Finding Their Musical Footing With Lou Reed

Ulrich tells Anderson that it wasn’t till Lulu was almost completed that he and James Hetfield “understood the intensity of the work and the scale of it.”

He goes on, “[We] were trying to figure out our role in it, to try to serve Lou, but also to bring to life what the musical bedrock could be to everything that was coming out on top of it. It was instinctive in the beginning. And for us, it was those kinds of impulsive and momentary musical reactions were not something that we had ever really done before, because with our own records and with our own process, it’s quite labor-intensive.”

“And we do a lot of analyzing,” he notes, “we remove ourselves from the creative process to try to get some space, and an understanding of what it is we’re doing. But everything with Lou was about the moment, and that was something we weren’t prepared for. But when it happened … it was so fucking liberating.”

READ MORE: Jason Newsted Defends Metallica’s Lars Ulrich – ‘He’s Way Ahead of You in Most Things’

Unfamiliar Recording Territory for Metallica

Speaking additional concerning the in-the-moment course of Reed had a choice for, Ulrich remembers what it was like really laying down the takes within the studio compared to Metallica’s normal habits.

While figuring out musical concepts to accompany Reed’s imaginative and prescient, they discovered that what they thought was simply fumbling round looking for their means was what Reed was most content material with.

Ulrich remembers, “Lou said, ‘That’s great.’ The first couple of times it was like, ‘Well, thank you for that, let’s now go out and make it happen.’ But he would say, ‘No, no, no, that was great.’ As in, that was it,” as Anderson states, “He was a one-take guy.”

It was one thing that caught Metallica’s members off guard.

“We were so unprepared for that and didn’t quite know how to react,” Ulrich relays, “And obviously, since we had not worked together before, we knew that part of the attraction was the unpredictability. But we didn’t know what that meant, Like, ‘Are we good for today, but then we’ll come back tomorrow and try again?’”

How Did Metallica Learn to Accept This Recording Style?

The Metallica drummer tells Anderson that the recording course of labored for each events because of the degree of belief they’d in each other, returning to the idea of freedom/liberation of not being slowed down in monitoring take after take after take.

Anderson calls it instinct, to which Ulrich replies, “It’s something that wasn’t in our arsenal until then, but we embraced it quickly. And like I said, there was an incredible—and I know this word is overused so much—but there really was just a freedom to it. Liberating is maybe a better word, because we just set ourselves free and trusted in the moment. There was no reason to go back to continuously readdress what had just happened.”

Metallica On Tour

Metallica can be on the highway this 12 months and subsequent in help of their new album, 72 Seasons. See all of the upcoming dates at this location and get tickets right here.