LARS ULRICH Explains METALLICA's Massive Commercial Success

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich last year took part in the popular "Not My Job" segment as part of NPR's Peabody Award-winning show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" The question-and-answer session, which was taped last August in San Francisco, can be streamed below.

Asked what it was about METALLICA and its sound that helped it become one of the biggest hard rock bands of all time, Ulrich said: "We were really inspired by what was going on in Europe [in the early 1980s]. So we took those European influences and kind of had a new sound. And so when you say, why did we end up becoming more well-known or whatever? It was because we had a different sound than most of what was going on in California and in the States at the time."

Regarding how he came up with the name METALLICA for his band, Ulrich said: "Well, I came up here [to San Francisco], actually, in the spring of 1981 and ended up at a kegger over on Strawberry Hill. And I met a bunch of really cool San Francisco kids. One them was named Ron [Quintana]. And he told me he wanted to start his own fanzine, like a hard rock fanzine, where he wrote about all his favorite bands. And he wanted… he asked me whether he should call the fanzine Metallica or Metal Mania. So I suggested that he call it Metal Mania."

METALLICA took one of the five top slots on Pollstar's list of the top 20 worldwide tours of 2017. The band's "WorldWired" trek was the fifth-highest grossing tour, with 1.5 million tickets sold and $153 million earned.

METALLICA will head back to Europe in February and continue there through May, although the band is also expected to book another leg of North American gigs.

The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame band is touring in support of its tenth studio album, "Hardwired... To Self-Destruct", which came out in November 2016.