METALLICA Was 'Fortunate' To Have 'Ten-Year Adjustment' Period To Band's Massive Success

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich was interviewed on the August 8 edition of "The Men's Room", which airs on the Seattle station KISW 99.9 FM. You can now listen to the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On METALLICA's "dominance" of the hard rock and heavy metal scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s:

Lars: "First of all, when we look out through our eyes and our windows to the world, the word 'dominance' is not usually a place we go. But obviously… we are aware of what METALLICA means to a lot of people, and we are appreciative and humbled by that. The great thing that happened to us, or one of the best things that happened to us in relating to that conversation is that we put out five or six records before it reached crazy craziness. And so there was kind of a ten-year adjustment that increased every couple of years when we put a record out. So 'Kill 'Em All', then 'Ride The Lightning' was way bigger, and then 'Master Of Puppets' was way bigger than 'Ride The Lightning', and 'Justice' hit more and more people, and then the 'Black' album came out and it went totally nuts. But for a lot of other bands, like… I guess… I don't know… Like GUNS N' ROSES or I guess [bands from] Seattle, like PEARL JAM or whatever, when you put out your first record, and that record sells eight hundred million copies, that's a pretty serious life adjustment in the space of a year or whatever. And so we were fortunate in that we had more like a decade to deal with all the craziness that ensues and all the headtrips that you have to deal with and so on."

On the members of METALLICA still making themselves relatively accessible to the band's fans:

Lars: "We've always tried to… I think very early on, you kind of make a decision — whether it's conscious or not — about whether you're gonna be, sort of, off limits or whether you're gonna have an open-door policy. And we've always, in METALLICA, felt: 'The door's wide open. Come on in. Everybody's welcome.' So whatever we've done, we've always tried to make ourselves as accessible as possible. Whether it's movies like 'Some Kind Of Monster' or having open rehearsals. Every night, before we go on stage, we go into a room backstage and we play for thirty minutes. It's like a tuning room, and that gets broadcast. You can go on the Internet and find whatever link it is and you can see us warm up. So we always have kind of an open-door policy and that's part of… You know, ultimately, to me, METALLICA is about connecting — people to each other connecting, people to music connecting, fans to each other, and us connecting to the fans and vice versa and all that, so we try to… we've gotta keep that door open as wide as we can make it."

The North American leg of METALLICA's "WorldWired" trek will hit stadiums in three more cities before ending in mid-August.

The next stop on the tour is San Francisco, California on August 12.

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