METALLICA's LARS ULRICH On Major Labels, LIVE NATION And 'Guitar Hero'; Video Available

METALLICA was in Austin last week for a not-so-secret show at the South by Southwest music festival designed to promote the Guitar Hero: Metallica, due out this month. The band's drummer, Lars Ulrich, spoke to Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times and set the record straight on key issues facing the group, including its relationship with its longtime label Warner Music Group and the proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger.

On whether METALLICA needs a major label:

"Without offending any of the good people from the record company in the room, no. Let's cut to the chase. . . . The primary — not the only, but the primary — function of a record label is to act as a bank. When you're fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don't need to rely on record companies as the banks. . . .

"We're doing a bunch of shows with Trent [Reznor, NINE INCH NAILS] this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what's on his radar."

On the proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster:

"We haven't sold out to Live Nation, and we are certainly not planning on it. And we are very, very fortunate that we do not need what they offer to continue to be who we are.

"Certainly, some of the practices that come in the wake of this — like direct reselling and all the stuff that Bruce [Springsteen] was up against in January and some of these other things — obviously are very distasteful, and downright . . . it's just ripping people off. It's impure. So obviously I'd stand up and scream from every rooftop that I think that's . . . impure."

On being affiliated with the Guitar Hero machine:

"When we got a chance to do this — and hopefully score another couple years of being semi-cool in our kid's eyes by having our own video game — this is something we jumped at pretty quickly. The bigger questions about brandings and perceptions? I really believe that if we sit here five years from now or 10 years . . . it'll be a fairly standard way of releasing music."

Watch Lars Ulrich's interview with the Los Angeles Times below.

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