METALLICA's LARS ULRICH Says He's Not 'Greedy' Or 'Anti-Internet'

Dan Rutledge of Rip It Up magazine conducted an interview with METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich prior to the band's October 2010 concert in Auckland, New Zealand. You can now watch the first part of the chat below.

On the craziest stuff he's read about himself on the Internet:

Ulrich: "I don't read a lot of it. I mean, of course, you end up looking at some of it, but you try to... The great thing about the Internet, obviously, is that you have access to information and you can find... [There's] no need for hard copies and if you wanna check out a quick review or what somebody [wrote], it's all there. The bad thing about the Internet, of course, is that it gives everybody an opinion and it gives everybody kind of a... they get a chance to be anonymous. And sometimes, as you know, things that people can write and end up writing are not particularly pleasant or respectful. So I'm pretty thick-skinned and have been pretty thick-skinned for most of my life. As I get a little older, I find myself being less and less interested in... You know, when you are 20 or 30, it's like, 'Oooh, what are people thinking? What are people writing?' As you get to be 150 years old like me, it gets a little less interesting; I don't do it as much. But, obviously, when you start a tour or whatever, your managers, they send you six links, six reviews of the gig or whatever — that type of stuff. But I don't spend a lot of time sitting, Googling myself or finding out what somebody... what they say. I mean, listen, I'm an Internet junkie as much as everybody else is, but not so much about myself; [I'm] looking for things that are more interesting."

On the weirdest things he's heard about himself on the Internet:

Ulrich: "I think probably the weirdest thing in the wake of the Napster thing [METALLICA famously sued the original Napster several years ago for making the band's music available online without its permission. — Ed.] — and I'm not a guy who spends a lot of time defending myself; I [don't] feel this particular need to be combative back — but the one thing about all that Napster stuff... Well, the two things about the Napster stuff that were really weird was that we were anti-Internet... I mean, I have, probably, in my house... I think we have, like, nine computers. We have, like, a computer in every room. I have an iPad, I have, like, three iPhones... I mean, I'm the computer whore. Seriously. I am the reason [Apple head honcho] Steve Jobs has sold half the devices that he has. Trust me. So this whole thing, like, 'Lars Ulrich is anti-Internet.' That one's out there. The other one that came in the wake of all that stuff was the stuff about Lars Ulrich being really greedy. I've always had an incredibly aloof relationship with money. Like, when I didn't have any money, it was not anything that mattered to me. And now that we're fortunate to have some money, it doesn't really play a role in anything we do, it doesn't really play a role in anything I do. I don't sit there and look at my bank balances or count the money or sit there and micro-manage METALLICA... 'If we do this, if we do this, or if we do this... It'll be 17 dollars...' None of that stuff happens at all. I mean, the great thing about being successful is, obviously, in the wake of that comes... It gives you freedom, it gives you freedom to not think about it, actually; that's the best thing. And it gives you freedom to, kind of, put as much money back into the shows and into the travelling and into making it all work. But this thing about, like, we're some sort of Gene Simmons-like people that sit there and count pennies or something like that, it's absolutely preposterous. Those were the two strange things that came in the wake of all that. Are we control freaks? Absolutely. Guilty as charged, your honor. Slap on the wrist, all that stuff. Are we interested in, sort of, managing what happens to 'TALLICA and our songs and our name and all this type of stuff. But anti-Internet? Crazy. And greedy? Absolutely crazy."

METALLICA wrapped up its two-year-long "World Magnetic" tour on November 21 with the last of three shows in Melbourne, Australia, bringing to an end a trek that began on September 12, 2008 in Berlin to support the band's ninth studio album, "Death Magnetic". The group issued a statement compiling the tour's numbers, which included "45 countries, 143 arena shows, 34 festival shows, 29 stadium shows, four club/theater shows, three TV/radio shows, two Hall of Fame shows, 3790 songs, and not a single setlist was the same."

The group played a total of 216 shows in 800 days.

METALLICA is already confirmed to headline Rock In Rio next September in Brazil.