METALLICA's LARS ULRICH Says 'Big Four' Tour Would Be 'Super-Fun' To Do

Nudge of the Dayton, Ohio radio station 103.9 The X conducted an interview with METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich on Tuesday (September 15) before the band's performance at the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the rumors of a tour featuring the "Big Four" of thrash (METALLICA, SLAYER, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX):

"I think that that's a story that definitely has gotten its own legs recently. I can trace it back to a night in London in, I think it was in March [2009], where a bunch of us were sitting around way later than we should have been sitting around [having] a bunch of very heavily red wine-induced conversations... It was right before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and we were all very nostalgic. And the idea of doing that at some point came up in that conversation.

"I think it would be a super-fun thing to do. It's something that I would definitely support. It's something that I would love to encourage. It's something I love to be very proactive in putting together. But right now it's not something that really left that party; it's not something that's like hush-hush being worked on behind the scenes or anything like that.

"I read some of those Internet sites myself once in a while, and it's not something that's going down, but it's something that I would be totally for at some point if it could happen. And we would love to be a part of that at any level possible."

On when fans can expect to get a brand new METALLICA album:

"Are you familiar with the phrase 'Don't hold your breath?'

"When I think ahead of my life, I see more or less touring up through probably the end of next year — the end of '10. Then there's the obligatory six months of 'let's just catch our breath.' Then we'll probably get to making another record, start thinking about new songs, probably in '11. So based on... if you do simple math based on how long it's taken us in the past....

"Basically, the thing that's really different now is 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you'd make a record, then you'd go out on tour on it, and then you'd go home. And then you'd make another record, then you'd go out on tour on it, then you'd go home. And you would just do these cycles all the time. Now, as you get older, at least for us, being out and touring is a lot of fun, and it's also because we have a lot better of a handle on it than we used to. It doesn't turn quite as nutty as it used to in terms of driving us crazy and making us lose our minds and getting into all kinds of trouble. So it's like, going on the road now, we do it much more often but in much shorter spurts. So I don't really think that... this whole thing about, like, you make a record, then you go on the road, and then you're done.

"I think we're gonna keep touring and it's only about how long you take off in between dates, you know what I mean?! OK, now you do a bunch of dates and then you take six months off, and maybe three of those months you write, and then you go and do a summer run in Europe and then you write for another three months and then somebody says, 'Come and play in South Africa for two weeks.' And then you go play in South Africa and then you go in and record, and then somebody says, 'blah blah blah...' So it's like this thing now that seems to be much more of a mix-up. There's no particular cycle to it; it's just much more... You go tour when you feel like it, you write when you feel like writing, and that type of stuff.

"So, to answer your question a half hour later, I don't think there's gonna be a new METALLICA record until at least... I mean, the earliest would be '11, and that's even... But also, like, the record itself is starting to be sort of an outdated format, so who knows... We're out of our record contract, so we could go back to HQ [METALLICA's headquarters in San Rafael, California] and record something and then we could put it up on our web site and whoever wanted to download it could download it. [But] a new record full of 10-12 new songs, it's not gonna be for a little while, because we've still got a lot of touring. We've got another 30 dates here in America, we've gotta go to Japan, Australia, here, there and everywhere next year."

The audio of Nudge's entire 14-minute interview with Lars Ulrich can be heard below.

Lars Ulrich on rumors of "Big Four" tour (click on player below to launch audio):

Nudge of the Dayton, Ohio radio station 103.9 The X's entire 14-minute interview with Lars Ulrich (click on player below to launch audio):