LARS ULRICH EXPLAINS WHY WE’RE ONLY GETTING ONE BIG 4 SHOW IN THE U.S.
So yesterday The Big 4 finally announced a U.S. show, but it caused as much weeping as it did celebration, ’cause fans were hoping for a full tour, not a single gig. Now Metal Underground tells me that Lars Ulrich was on KROQ-FM yesterday, explaining the decision. Here’s what metal’s most famous living midget had to say, with my own comments in bold:
“Let’s take baby steps here. Because Lars’ legs are so short that baby steps are all he can take anyway. We did seven or eight dates last year, we’re doing one show in England and one show in France. So that’s eleven dates total, which strikes me as already being past the ‘baby steps’ phase, but I guess that’s open to interpretation.
“Listen, we don’t wanna cram this down people’s throats You’re in Metallica, idiot. Your most famous shirt says ‘Metal Up Your Ass.’ Cramming it down people’s throats is what you do., we don’t wanna sort of overstay the welcome So you should have broken up in 1990., and we don’t know what kind of response there’s gonna be to this in America You’re right, no one in America could possibly be interested in seeing a show with Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax. That’s why we’ve all been talking about it for the last year, and that’s why the event poster acknowledges that the fans both ‘prayed’ and ‘demanded’ this show., so we’re starting, obviously, without being disrespectful to the rest of the wonderful country… Go back to Daneland, you fucking immigrant tennis player.
“We have a history in Southern California, Slayer has a history in Southern California, [Dave] Mustaine ‘Fuck the rest of Megadeth’ has a history in Southern California The next part of that thought was ‘…and Anthrax will do anything we tell them.’, so there’s a lot of history in California. ‘Mustaine wouldn’t shut the fuck up about this, so we picked someplace close to home so at least we won’t have to travel.’ And we picked the Coachella site where this is going down the week after the Coachella, which is probably – along with Bonnaroo – the favorite festival site to go to in North America.
“If there is enough demand for it, obviously there’s a very strong possibility that there’ll be more shows Read: ‘There will be more shows, do not travel for this.’, but we don’t wanna overextend the welcome Again, feel free to break-up anytime, the world will find a way to survive without ‘The Unforgiven IV.’ and we also don’t wanna turn it into something that becomes just this whole nostalgia trip. Holy crap balls, do you think Lars is really under the impression that people are coming to these shows to hear music from Death Magnetic, World Painted Blood, Endgame, and whatever Anthrax album is never coming out? IT’S 2011, TIGER. YOUR ENTIRE CAREER IS A NOSTALGIA TRIP. So it’s a balancing act, you know.”
Like I said yesterday, there might be a perfectly good reason why this is currently a one-off event… but I don’t see a plausible explanation in Lars’ statement. I do find it reassuring that he basically says there will be more shows forthcoming, though. MetalSucks readers might be smart enough not to buy tickets and travel hundreds, or even thousands, of miles for this, but don’t forget that some people read Revolver instead, and those people will almost certainly miss mortgage payments to attend this “festival.” So just sit tight — I’d wager that everyone who still wants to see these four bands play together will get their shot eventually.
-AR
asd
